My Problem With Pesah

My maternal grandfather, the product of a 19th Century orthodox education but later also the gymnasium, purported to cast off religion at the age of 25, during a physics lecture. Yet, sometimes it seemed that his hostility to Judaism was a little forced. Although I’m convinced that he ceased to believe in any kind of god, I’m not as certain that he rejected the whole package.

There was at least an ambivalence that had a funny way of manifesting itself around Passover. I say ambivalence because if he had simply not cared any longer, I don’t think he would have made such a fuss. But like clockwork, moments before the start of each year’s first-night Seder, a war would break out. Grandpa Moses (as I fittingly knew him) would denounce Moshe Rabbenu as a “dictator.” My grandmother would respond with the non-sequitur, “Vos has de Moses?” (“What do you have against Moses?”). This would prompt gales of laughter from my mother and her brothers, my uncles and aunts.

At the time, I was too young to appreciate the humor of the moment. To be honest, I’m not even sure the recollection is my own or something I’ve internalized, having heard the story so many times. Either way, it comes to me every year around this time, almost as a Pesah ritual. As I’ve gotten older, however, a certain bitter-sweetness has infused this cherished family memory. For, like my grandfather, I also feel ambivalent about Pesah.

To be blunt about it, Passover makes me uncomfortable. The Passover holiday, and liturgy surrounding it, are inextricably intertwined with the concept of freedom. Indeed, it’s fair to say that freedom is one of the founding principles of the Jewish religion and Nation. Yet, I believe that there is a Jewish principle even more important than freedom, one that is primary to freedom and, without which, freedom is no more than an illusion. That principle is the truth, Emes.

The truth is primary to freedom because living a free life includes being honest and truthful with oneself. A person who lives according to myths or unfounded assumptions is being dishonest in a fundamental way. In that condition, it is easy to become a slave to those myths. And, of course, slavery and freedom are incompatible.

If we’re honest with ourselves, the Passover tradition is incompatible with reverence for the truth. Archaeology has raised serious questions about the premise that the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt or that they left Egypt in a mass wave. That, in itself, would seem to preclude the revelation at Sinai, since the Bible portrays them as parts of a seamless story. But even assuming that the exodus actually happened, what about revelation? Who really believes that the law, the abundant law in all its rich detail, really came to the Israelites in this way? And, indeed, the rabbinic tradition is full of midrashic alternatives to the incredible concept of a God conveying a prolix code to a single man, who then bestowed it on his followers.

The dependence on an elaborate myth as a founding moment of Judaism is surely a part of my discomfort with Pesah. The rest of the year, I can ignore it if I want to. But this time of year, the myth becomes a matter of religious ritual that’s hard to avoid. Yet, there has to be more to my Passover malaise than that. After all, as a non-believer I’m confronted on a weekly basis with a ritual that I don’t accept literally. Participation in the Shabbat ritual, nonetheless, holds great meaning for me. Something about the Pesah message doesn’t sit right with me.

So let me return to the Sinai revelation. The Sinai tradition posits a special entitlement to a piece of land in return for fealty to God’s principles. The contract, however, wasn’t offered to everyone, only the Chosen. In other words, the entitlement stems from a particular national and religious affiliation. In other contexts, many of us would be extremely uncomfortable with such a policy.

The sense of entitlement central to the Exodus tradition is not only unflattering, but destructive of our values. For even as the tradition symbolizes our love of our own freedom, it may blind us to the parallel, but apparently incompatible, yearnings of other national movements. We can start with the Canaanites, but more to the point is the dismissive attitude too many Jews have manifested toward the nationality most recently indigenous to that piece of land, the Palestinians. Passover makes a holiday and a ritual out of that dismissive attitude.

But it’s not my purpose here to go political on Passover because my problem with it is of a more fundamental nature. It’s not simply the Israeli-Palestinian conflict echoing in the background; more to the point is the general sense of entitlement manifested in the Exodus story and Pesah’s attendant rituals. Much as I’ve tried to think of Passover as a holiday steeped in universal themes and values, it’s actually the most particular of Jewish holidays.

In the past, Yom Kippur was the holiday that caused me spiritual and ideological difficulties. I found the expression of boilerplate prayers of contrition a completely artificial exercise. I’m still not comfortable with the breast-beating aspect of Yom Kippur, but that’s really not what the holiday, at its core, is about. Asking God for forgiveness at Yom Kippur time is a ritual, but the performance of teshuva (approaching another individual in contrition) is an act of personal accountability and humility. By contrast, Passover’s celebration of the Exodus and revelation myths represents an of absence of national accountability and humility on the part of the Jewish People.

So what do I think should be done with Pesah? Left to my own devices, I might take a break for a few years, let it air out and take another look with the benefit of reflection. But, of course, that’s not realistic since, first of all, nobody is going to do it and, second, there is the small matter of the Torah’s command to celebrate the festival every year. That, in itself, is an impossible tradition to buck.

Nonetheless, Torah doesn’t require that our seders be annual exercises in triumphalism. Though the Exodus is a central biblical story, like anything else in the Hebrew bible it is subject to reevaluation and interpretation. Unfortunately, many have already tried and failed at that. One year, we read passages from Bennie Morris’s “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.” Then there are the “environmental” seders, the oranges on the seder plate and all the rest of the symbolic gestures toward making the ritual more “relevant.” It’s all window dressing.

Humility, honesty and a reverence for the truth are values most successfully pursued by individuals in their every day interactions, not on a community wide level. But Pesah is first and foremost a celebration about community, a particular community, not the obligations of individuals. How to infuse a holiday whose central theme is the victory of a particular Nation with the sacred values we demand from ourselves as individuals is a paradox that seems harder and harder to solve every year.

No Resolution Needed on the Iraq War

The umbrella organization of Judaism's Reform movement is contemplating the adoption of a resoluton opposing the Iraq war. I'm kind of surprised at myself, but I'm not particularly enthusiastic about issuing such a call as community.

Now, I have been against this monstrous war since the time when it was still merely a gleam in our president’s eye. As the recent Libby trial has shown, as virtually every piece of information that has ever emerged about it has proven and as history will show, this is a war built on deception, exploitation of fear, on a lie. It’s really doesn’t matter whether there are parallels to Vietnam because this war is happening now and not then, but I do believe that the analogy is compelling. We’re stuck in another quagmire and that it was only by government deception that we got there in the first place. Unfortunately, there seems to be no end to human misery and no shortage of fear and loathing available for tyrants big and small to exploit. But that doesn’t mean that the exercise of American imperial power has anything to do with alleviating the misery. More often than not, we seem to be part of the problem rather than the solution. We’ve met the enemy in Iraq alright — and it is us.

Having said all that, however, I really think the resolution is an irrelevancy, or worse. The various textual sources cited in the resolution make a convincing case that under Jewish law we are compelled to be cautious in our resort to violence and its ultimate manifestation, war. So what else is new? I suspect that every religion in existence has a similar principle written down somewhere. Besides, most people are going to determine their positions on an issue of this sort based on the news (or what they’ve been led to believe is the news). Whether they believe the war is discretionary or compelled derives from whatever information they have at their disposal.

This brings me to what I believe the proper role of Jewish tradition should play in evaluating one’s position on this issue and then responding accordingly. If our tradition teaches me anything, it’s the importance of personal accountability and responsibility. For me, being accountable means taking action as often as possible based on my opposition to the war. By virtue of our status as citizens and the tax payers who are footing the bill for it, the government is fighting this war in our name. That makes every one of us responsible for what’s going on. If that’s the case, it’s not enough merely to say you’re opposed. You have to try to do something about it.

What’s even harder for me to live with is the idea that the government is sending other peoples’ children to die in my name. My teenage boys would go to Iraq over my dead body. So what right do I have to sit by and do nothing while other young men and women are going in their stead? Let’s all be honest with ourselves, Park Slope parents. The Iraq war would end next week if the draft were reinstituted (this time, of course, minus the college deferments, probably the clearest manifestation of class bias ever formulated by a modern industrial society, though our current “volunteer” army is running a close second).

To me, a resolution from our movement’s umbrella organization is an invitation to do nothing rather than being accountable. If I’m against the war, I don’t need the URJ to do my bidding for me. I need to get out in the streets where I belong. The time has passed when armchair activism is an acceptable reaction to this war. It’s simply not good enough merely to be smug about the moron in the White House or his evil Rasputin of a Vice President, or to rely on resolutions. The time for action is at hand, and if you think a resolution from an abstraction like the URJ has anything to do with stopping our government from continuing to pursue this evil deed, you’re deluding yourself.

On the merits, I found the resolution kind of mealy-mouthed. Want an anti-war resolution imbued with the wisdom of our sages, here it is: “If you’re against the war, get off your ass.” All the rest is commentary.

Ki Tisa: A Retrospective

This week's Torah portion, Ki Tisa, is dear to the hearts of my family since both of my boys (twins) had it as their Torah portion. Plus, I once gave the following d'var Torah at Friday night services at our shul:

The centerpiece of this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, is the well-known Golden Calf story, in which the Israelites awaiting Moses’ return from the mountain fashioned what appeared to be a visible god for themselves, a direct violation of the Second Commandment’s prohibition against idol worship, or so it seems. This parsha has engendered widespread commentary over the ages and I was initially very excited to have an opportunity to discuss it. But this week as I began to work on my D’var Torah, it became clear to me that I was going to have problem. To be honest, I just froze. None of my usual research sources – the Plaut commentary, its conservative counterpart – Etz Chaim, nothing, prompted any workable ideas. So in a near panic ... Let me put it this way, there are these two old guys, Ben and Moe, whom I’ve consulted from time to time in matters of the Torah. And it occurred to me that if I could get together with them for an hour or two, something might click. The problem is that even though they’ve known each other for years, Ben and Moe can barely stand to be in the same room together. It doesn’t help that Moe is a retired doctor and tends to take on airs around Ben, who had a less glamorous career making glasses at Pearl Vision or one of those optical chains.

Anyway, I made the necessary calls and this afternoon the three of us got together for lunch. This was a feat in itself since Moe initially insisted on The Second Avenue Deli, while Ben demanded Bernstein’s On Essex until I reminded him that Bernstein’s went down with Shmulke Bernstein about 15 years ago. We finally settled on Katz’s, where it quickly became clear to me that my best bet was just to let them talk and get as much of it down on paper as I could. So in the absence of a better idea, I’m going to read this lunchtime debate between Moe and Ben that I eavesdropped and I hope that nobody is offended by what these two opinionated, old coots had to say.

Moe: Frankly, Ben, I think too big a fuss has been made about the Golden Calf incident. In the first place, I’m not convinced that it really amounted to idol worship at all, just a little confusion on the part of the Israelites. Moses had acted as an intermediary between the Israelites and Hashem, but when Moses disappeared up the mountain and stayed there for so long, the Israelites panicked and created the Golden Calf as a substitute intermediary. The calf was an attempt to replace Moses, not the Holy One, may his name be exalted, so there really was no idol worship at all. Second, it is clear that, if anyone engaged in idol worship, it was the Egyptian rabble that tagged along with the Israelites and what do you expect from them?

Ben: Not suprisingly, Moe, I have a few problems with your very interesting theory. The business about the Egyptian rabble is offensive and I don’t want to hear any more about it. But beyond that, the argument that the Israelites were merely trying to replace Moses and not the Holy One – may his name be a pronoun – is so typical of you. Anything to keep to the party line, right Moe? I guess your interpretation is necessary to protect Aaron, since he was personally responsible for the actual construction of the calf.

However, I do agree with one thing you said. Confusion undoubtedly played a large role in the incident, but confusion caused by God. Despite the Second Commandment’s prohibition on idolatry, the religion that God imposed on the Israelites had a pronounced physicality about it. Read through Exodus; in fact, read through the entire Torah. How many parshot are concerned with technical rules, rites, ceremonies and tributes to an almost tangible God. Take a look at the Torah portions leading up to Ki Tisa. Terumah is a virtual manual for the building of a shrine. Tetzeveh: fashion week with the priestly class – breast plates 101. This type of worship is laden with phsyical images. So when the Israelites fashioned a physical God for themselves in the form of the Golden Calf, they were only following a suggestion that Hashem, however inadvertently, had given them.

Moe: Let me get this straight, Ben. You’re saying that the Golden Calf incident involved idolatry, but you’re blaming the Holy One, may his name be ...

Ben: Moe, can you give that Holy One business a rest, please?

Moe: Tough. You’re blaming the whole thing on the Holy One? I guess the Second Commandment is clearer to me than it is to you. Anyway, there’s a problem with your Biblical analysis. The Israelites had no way of knowing about your so-called rituals and ceremonies from Terumah and Tetzeveh, because it was only after God finished speaking to Moses half way through Ki Tisa – in other words, after Terumah and Tetzeveh – that Moses descended from the mountain the second time. Therefore, at the time the Israelites fashioned the Golden Calf – namely, prior to Moses’ descent – the information in Terumah and Tetzeveh had not yet been conveyed to them as a group. In fact, the only Israelite who knew about the rituals and ceremonies was Moses himself!

Ben: Fair enough Moe. But don’t forget about Mishpatim, which preceded Terumah and Tetzveh. At the end of Mishpatim, with his feet still squarely at sea level, Moses led his people in the ritual slaughter of a bull, culminating with his splashing of sacrificial bull blood on the assembled “faithful.” Is praying to a golden trinket in the form of a calf so different from worship based on the slaughter of a live one? That’s what I mean when I say that God was sending the Israelites mixed signals about what He wanted from them.

Moe: Leave it to you, Ben, to rescue the profane from the sacred. You just mentioned the parsha Mishpatim. Do you know what Mishpatim means, Ben? It means judgements. It is a Torah portion about the law: the law, that most Jewish of subjects. Civil law, Criminal law, ethics. If you think Mishpatim is about cultic sacrifice, then you have completely missed the point.

Ben: Well, you know Moe, I agree that the Torah is about law, but probably not in the same way that you mean. As far as I am concerned, there is really only one religious principle in the Torah and that is not to do to your neighbors what you wouldn’t have them do to you.

Moe: I know Ben, and all the rest is commentary, right?

Ben: Not quite Moe. All the rest, or at least most of it, has very little to do with religion in the sense that I mean. For me, religion is a very simple proposition. It’s about a few basic civilizing ethical concepts which, if followed, serve the greater good. Beyond that, as far as I am concerned, the Torah is the detritus of a rather verbose national code laid down at God’s insistence by Israel’s first national leader Moses, a dictatorial figure who, given the primitive nature of his childish flock, probably had no choice but to rule with a firm hand based on a slavish adherence to rules.

Moe: Moses was a dictator, Ben?

Ben: Yes, Moe, a dictator, a tyrant in fact. Remember what Moses did when he came down from the mountain and found the Israelites cavorting with the Golden Calf?

Moe: Yes, Ben, he smashed the tablets. A fairly measured response, I’d say, given what was going on?

Ben: Except Moe, he didn’t stop there. Perhaps you recall the little matter of Moses leading the Levites on a rampage that resulted in the deaths of 3000 of his countrymen. In another context, we might call that a pogrom.

Moe: The rabble, Ben.

Ben: I thought I asked you to lay off that rabble business, Moe. And besides, even if they were the rabble, even the lowest of the low, can we please give them a break? For God’s sake, they had just emerged from an absolutely wretched condition in Egypt. We’re talking about simple people lacking in the theological sophistication that you purport to bring to the table. They had no way of knowing better. So how can you possibly justify Moses’ reaction?

Moe: Typical bleeding heart stuff from you Ben. As you just admitted, they had already emerged from Egypt. They had their freedom. The yoke had been lifted. Slavery was simply not an excuse at the time of the Golden Calf.

Ben: Excuse me Moe, but don’t we say the following prayer every week: “Assembled at a Mountain, our people, still bent from oppression ... and so on?

Moe: To tell you the truth, Ben, we don’t go for that one at the shul where I daven.

Ben: What a shock, Moe. You pray for the return of the ritual sacrifice, but you scoff at an expression of compassion for a band of former slaves making their way in the desert.

Moe: And the way you think, Ben, you may as well join a Protestant Church. Why don’t you just say what you really mean. Idolatry is just fine with you, isn’t it?

Ben: To tell you the truth Moe, I don’t believe that anything is inherently base or inherently sacred. A Temple can be a place of blessed worship or base capitulation to evil. It all depends on who or what is being worshiped and to what end. So, if it were to be demonstrated that the worship of an idol brought a particular person or people peace and prosperity, I’d have to consider it. But, no, I don’t really favor idolatry. Above all else, I favor the accumulation of knowledge as the best way of coming close to God. And you, with your elitist attitudes and insistence on finding immutable truth in every Biblical passage seem to believe just the opposite.

Moe: Thank you Ben. I rest my case. The heretic Spinoza couldn’t have said it better himself.

Ben: I’ll take that as a complement, Moe, but tell me. If you’re such a great authority on everything Jewish, why are you putting mayonaise on your pastrami sandwich? A regular Maimonides, aren’t you?

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At this point, it really began to get ugly between Ben Spinoza and Moe Maimonides. Spinoza said something about Maimonides being a pompous egomaniac, whose strained interpretations of the Bible required a doctorate in comparative religion to understand. Maimonides responded that he didn’t have to take that from a mere lense grinder, that Ben’s nickname should be “Shonder for the Goyim,” and that he should be excommunicated. I was about to jump between them, when suddenly they stopped screaming at each other, seemed to share a smile, and looked like they were about to turn on me. With my physical safety at risk, I made a quick exit from Katz’s, concerned that if a police officer saw two old Jewish guys running down Houston Street after me, it might look like something else. “I swear officer, I didn’t steal anything, just a Torah study session gone bad.” I fled to the subway, jumped on the F train, and arrived back in Brooklyn just in time for a little text-editing before sundown. I don’t expect to have lunch with Ben and Moe very soon, but they seem to have saved me from a bad case of writer’s block, and for that I am eternally grateful to them.