Passover thoughts, 2008 (5768)

Passover looms. The dishes and pots and glasses and utensils have been schlepped from storage to cabinet, replacing their everyday equivalents which were simultaneously schlepped from cabinet to storage until the chag is over and we can eat bagels again.

So, it’s time to ask (yet again) what the holiday, the holy day, is all about. It has some unusual rules—what was kosher this week won’t be next week. On the other hand, things permitted during Passover can be done anytime (except for the slouching. My mother never let me slouch at meals. [“Reclining, Mom,” I’d tell her, “I’m reclining, not slouching.] It did me no good.)

To the rabbis of antiquity telling the story of the Exodus speaks of the miracles of God in the liberation of His people. More modern, nearly contemporary secular Jews saw the story as one of liberation only. The miracles? Well, maybe. But the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto who chose Passover, in 1943 to make their last stand were not expecting a miracle; they were hoping for nothing more than that a few escape while the rest died with at least a remnant of dignity.

To me Passover is or ought to be the Jewish equivalent of the first Monday in September or May 1st. It’s Jewish Labor Day, a celebration of the triumph of the downtrodden worker. Oppressed so hard they could not stand, our ancestors overcame to become the role models to Negro slaves in the antebellum South. Both communities, Hebrews and Africans were exploited labor, both sought relief from God or man, whoever arrived first.

But while our tables groan under the weight of the food placed on it; as we drink the final intoxicating drop from the fourth cup of wine; as we open the door for Elijah to join our celebrations, scant attention will be paid to what’s in the dark, beyond that door. Two weeks ago the newspapers reported that 80,000 American jobs had been lost in the month of March, the most in 5 years, the third straight month of losses. Some, I suppose, may be replaced by those whose labor can be purchased at sub-standard wages.

In Israel there is a kibbutz near Eliat which may reflect current practices. The well educated Israelis work up north in business, and give their net salary to the kibbutz which then uses the money in part to employ Tai workers of the fields. Sic transit Gloria tzion. Does the Jew of Israel no longer believe in the nobility of labor? Is the Jew of Israel interested only in the bottom line? Has Thatcherism and Reaganism spread so far? It seems the sad truth. Of whom do Americans who send jobs to China or exploit cheap labor here think when they point to the matzah and pronounce, “This is the bread of our affliction? We were slaves in Egypt…”
When we invite people to our table (“All who are hungry come and eat”) we offer matzah, the bread of affliction, the bread of poverty. It’s what we eat as well so that there is no difference between what we serve ourselves and those in want. We are all equal on Passover, the rich the poor, all of us are descendants from slaves eating the food of slaves on the threshold of liberty.
If we are to think of Passover as though we were in fact slaves, as the Haggadah enjoins, then it’s obvious that Passover is the story of the redemption of oppressed labor. Their burden was heavy, their lives miserable, like the sweatshop workers so many of our grandparents were at the turn of the previous century. At our house we read excepts of the original text of Exodus (something the Rabbis apparently thought unnecessary or distracting, as they didn’t include that in the service) and we sing of liberation—We Shall Overcome, and Battle Hymn of the Republic (though not the “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea” part); and to the same tune, Solidarity Forever! Always we conclude by singing the song of modern liberation, Hatikvah, to me the hope not only of Zionists to recreate a Jewish homeland, but the hope that Jews will not forget that from which we emerged—an oppressed people yearing to be free, the tired the poor of the age of miracles then of the post-holocaust world now. It was as workers of the field that Jews re-created Israel. Now that’s work for foreigners?

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
(Puck [Robin Goodfellow] in A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Act 3, scene 2.)

As if Israeli police don’t have enough problems, there’s a new fracas in the offing. Long ago, even before Sunnis and Shiites started slaughtering each other, Christians were killing other Christians. The cause? A proper understanding of who and/or what Jesus was; a proper understanding of the relationship between the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. This is a series of arguments Jews managed somehow not to have with each other, and I, for one, thought that in the name of sanity that a via media by which each sect agreed not to persecute members of the others had been reached. But Christians can’t agree on things any more than Muslims. Or Jews.

In 326 CE, St. Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great, traveled to the Holy land and identified exactly where every event mentioned in the New Testament took place. “The birth was here,” she pronounced pointing to the spot where there arose the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. “Our Lord was crucified here, anointed there and entombed (from which on the third day He emerged) precisely here.” In short order a huge church was built to encompass all three of these latter spots, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Identifying where something took place 300 + years before is difficult, but did not stop the saint from her appointed task. After all, Jesus had to be crucified somewhere and St. Helen’s location is as good as anyone’s. (The last time we were in Israel we wanted to visit this holy shrine but got lost in the backstreets of the Arab shuk. My wife approached a merchant and asked how to get to the church and I knew that our children’s inheritance would be diminished considerably. He showed us; in fact he took us and gave us a mini-tour and then brought us back to his shop. By the time we were able to extricate ourselves… well, she looks lovely in the items we purchased at bargain rates.)

The Christian community has fractured many times over the centuries. There is the split between east and west that became official in 1054. The Orthodox Church has as many branches as there are nations that adhere to it. In the West from 1517 on Protestants divided, subdivided and continue to create new and fascinating versions of the one true holy apostolic church. Whether Mormons are Christian is a debate I choose not to enter.

But back to the Holy Land, which Zionists such as myself call Israel, there is a new feud developing. No one Christian sect controls the church of the Holy Sepulchre. It’s been divided amongst six different forms of Christianity with precise lines of demarcation ever since 1852 when the Turks, in a vain attempt to stop the shouting, divided authority between the sects and left other areas as common (which means that no one controls them, so no one cleans them which creates a terrible odor from the lavatories. No, I’m not making this up.)

To complicate matters, at noon on every Easter eve (I don’t know what that means either) the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, currently Theophilos III, descends into the tomb in which Jesus was briefly buried and receives from God, fire. According to an article in the April 7, 1982 Christian Century, “The event consists of the sending down of fire by God, the bursting forth of flame at the sacred tomb and the lighting of the candle held in the hand of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem.” It should be noted that this sort of thing has precedent. Two weeks ago Jews read parsha Sh’mini, about the dedication of the Tabernacle. God sent fire then, too. It is said.)

But for the past couple of years the Greek Patriarch has refused to be accompanied by the Armenian patriarch who is slighted, feeling that the Greeks are treating Armenians as second-class Christians. Fisticuffs have resulted. Israeli authorities arrest the miscreant monks, but then release them. Oh, if you’ve not read about the fights it’s because Christians can’t seem to agree on when precisely to celebrate Easter. In the West this year it was March 23. To the Orthodox it will be April 27. Israeli police are hoping that the only sparks flying will be the divine ones sent from heaven.

Lord, what fools these mortals be/To take religion seriously.