Thursday 10 April 2014

I'm passing over

This upcoming Monday Jewish people all over the world will celebrate 'Leil Haseder', the first night of Passover (Pesach). I will not.

This night, as suggested by it's name ('Seder'='order' or 'series' in Hebrew), is a long, ordered series of rituals, guided by a text in Hebrew and Aramaic called 'The Haggadah', which loosely translated into 'The story'. The Haggadah is a detailed manual for the evening including text (to be read by everyone around the table, taking turns), songs, ritualistic instructions ("now drink the second wine glass", "now turn to the left and say...") and even food suggestions (the Seder meal is incorporated into the rituals).  There are variations on the particular implementation of these instructions, variations on the melodies of the songs and differences in how tightly we stick to the text, but any Jew, even a secular one, randomly wandering into any Seder in the world would most likely feel right at home, and should be able to participate and contribute to the evening.

All this sounds quite wonderful - a story, songs, food and most of all a global chain of people linked together by these rituals, which had lasted thousands of years ('The Haggadah' itself dates back almost 2000 years).  Indeed, throughout my life, this evening was a reasonably pleasant one. As an atheistic family, with my parents possessing very little knowledge of Judaism, we mostly ate. Since my mother is a good cook and tried her best on these nights, it was tasty. As the only one in my family who went through the religious indoctrination of the Israeli public school system, It was up to me to introduce the traditional content, and so I did, as much as was tolerated. When I say religious indoctrination I don't mean to say that we were taught to believe in god at school, not at all, we just had to study the bible over and over again, as well as other Jewish texts. It is safe to say that we spent the same amount of time studying the bible as we did studying language, literature or Mathematics, and undoubtedly much more than world history or geography.  I always disliked these classes, never appreciated the bible and it's stories, and couldn't care less about god, which I always considered an absurd concept. And yet, the indoctrination worked, since it did teach me that even though you may object to the content of the rituals, you should still perform them blindly because that's what unites us and makes us Jewish. My famaly Sedders weren't the only ones I experienced. Since Passover is also a very hospitable kind of holiday we did attend several traditional Seders with other families, were The Haggadah was followed to a tee, so I got to appreciate some variety.

Now I live in Canada, have my own family, and since society no longer dictates my rituals in the same way it did in Israel, I need to decide for myself what rituals to follow and in what way. Mind you, this is still my indoctrinated self we're talking about, because that's the nature of indoctrination, it never leaves on it's own accord. The default solution for most Israelis in my situation is to find an alternate extended family (congregate with other Israelis in a simialr situation) and keep up the tradition. For most, it actually becomes more important here because of the kids. How are they going to learn about our origins and traditions? How different from myself can I allow them to be? That's what we used to do for a while. Since our friends are as religious as us (not at all) these celebrations weren't what you'd call a Kosher Pesach, but we did attempt to read a bit of the Haggadah and sing several songs - the highlights.

From time to time we'd have some non-Jewish guests present which was an opportunity for me to act  as the teacher that I am, and explain some of the content of Haggadah. This made me much more conscious of how it may sound to someone who never heard it before. On these occasions I was confronted with how terrible this text is. It's basically a retelling of the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. One may think that this story focuses on the idea of liberation, on what it feels or means to be free. It isn't. Instead it serves as nationalistic/religious bonding text based on exclusion, on reenforcing the notion of 'us and them'. What is it that unites Jews as a people, as a nation? It's the fact the we were once enslaved by others and now believe in the God that saved us. The text describes in horrific detail the cruel actions of god against the Egyptians. In an especially gruesome part of the ritual each person dips a finger into the wine and spill a drop on the plate ten times as we recite the horrible ways in which god struck the Egyptians, ending with the killing of all their first-born children, for which we thank him.

I will not go into an analysis of this text, it isn't worth it, it's long, boring and cruel. In the many times that I've read it I haven't found much to hold on to, nothing that is relevant to my life today. God is credited with our redemption over and over (our father, our king, king of the world) and is mentioned many times in every page, hundreds of times in total.

Through the years I've tried several things to tone it down - read only what's inoffensive, introduce new, more relevant traditions. Last year I actually re-read the book of exodus in the bible to try and tell my kids the story in my own words. It always fails.  The story in it's core is made to glorify god and constructed to promote fear and exclusion. It also isn't historically true at all. Jews were probably never slaves in Egypt and just borrowed this mythology from somewhere else (pardon the oversimplification) to use as bonding material.

The Haggadah explicitly underlines the importance of retelling this story (we are instructed by the text to think of ourselves as if we personally escaped enslavement in Egypt). Well, it's working. Millions of secular Jews all over the world indeed retell it, as a tradition that justifies itself - "we do it because that's just what we do". I'm done with it.

Similarly to my decision on circumcision, I decided to reject this tradition, to reject the text and the negativity that goes with it. I also reject the original biblical story and all the references to god. My home has been a god-free environment for a while now and I like it this way. I may continue the meal tradition and let contemporary, relevant content take over this springtime celebration. I do feel a desire to have seasonal festivities, celebrating the revolution of our planet.   

 

2 comments:

  1. Over the yearsvI myself has drifted away from monotoism or the conceptvof religion. I am a complete atheist today. However I am Jewish by definition even if I dont give this definition much weight.
    By the way way - the basis of most Jewish holydays is: "They wanted to kill us, we won, lets eat."
    Passover is no exception...
    Happy Pesach my friend.

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  2. I think it is unnecessary, help me convince my parents :)

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