(no subject)

[hatman]

My annual dilemma approaches. It's just about my least favorite week of the year... and Dad's favorite.

Bad enough that Passover food (and you know Jewish holidays are all about the food) is more work, more expense, less tasty, requires a whole different set of pots and dishes, and is based on a bunch of restrictions which seem arbitrary and illogical until you find out that they're actually a holdover from an earlier Egyptian festival celebrating the renewal of Spring. (Out with the old, in with the new. So no leavened bread because that's a fermentation process.) The one saving grace to it all is matzo bri, but that doesn't really make up for the rest.

No, what really gets me is that the story of Passover is what drove me from strong faith all the way to absolute atheism. (I've since relented, having disentangled the question of whether or not there is or was a creator from the prefabricated structure of religion, but that's a whole other discussion.)

Let's look at what happens.

God tells Joseph to take his family to Egypt, warning him in advance that his descendants will be enslaved for centuries. (But that, despite the hardship, they will grow strong and numerous.)

After a few centuries pass, God suddenly decides (earlier than had originally been indicated) that enough is enough and it's time for the Jews to go back to Israel. All well and good. But He also decides to punish the Egyptians. And so ensues a series of ten plagues, each aimed at something the Egyptian religion considered sacred - the life-giving Nile, the holy insects, etc. The entire country is punished, whether the affected individuals had anything to do with slavery or not.

This culminates in the tenth plague, the death of the first born. God sends the Angel of Death to kill the first born male son of every household in the country while the families are asleep for the night. He warns the Jews to mark their doors (the origin of the mezzuzzah prayer scroll found on the doorways of Jewish households to this day) so the angel will know to pass over their houses. Any Jews who forget to do so? First born dies. Any neighbors who notice that the Jews have been spared the direct effects of all these plagues and now they're doing something strange and maybe we should follow suit? Spared.

And here's the kicker - the story specifically notes that, after each plague, Pharaoh was ready to say yes to Moses's demand to let the Jews go. But, just as he was about to grant them leave, God "hardened Pharaoh's heart," forcing him to say no.

So we have a god who punished an entire country for the the decisions of its absolute ruler. Decisions which, we are explicitly told, were forced upon that ruler by that same god in the first place. Untold numbers of innocent children across the country were slaughtered in their sleep for this. Babies killed in their cribs. As punishment for something God knew their ancestors would do, and because Pharaoh said what God forced him to say.

After that, God finally allows Pharaoh to let the Jews go. But, shortly after their escape, he changes his mind and sends the army after them. The Jews barely escape and the army is drowned in the sea. The Jews pause to celebrate... and God tells them it's no time to celebrate because the men of the Egyptian army were God's children, too, and God had to kill them to save His chosen people.

Now, God could have continued messing with Pharaoh's mind long enough that the army wouldn't have had a chance. He could have held the army at bay using the pillar of smoke and fire He had created to aid the Jews' escape. He could have closed the waters of the sea behind the Jews so the army never had a chance to enter. Instead, he laid a trap for them, waited until they were all in it, and wiped them out, down to the last horse and man.

The Jews then gather while Moses climbs a mountain to get the Ten Commandments. While Moses is gone, for over a month, some of the Jews, feeling abandoned, create an idol. Remember, they were raised amongst idol worshipers. And the law saying you can't have idols is still being written at the top of the mountain. No one's told the people at the bottom yet. But still, for their transgression, they're killed.

This is the story we're supposed to celebrate. This is the god we're supposed to worship and praise and thank and pray to.

I can't do it.

Dad likes to focus on the cultural tradition. The history. The idea of freedom. The beginnings of the ideas that you can change your fate and your station in life.

But still we tell the same story. Still we read the passages about how great this was. The prayers thanking and praising God at every turn. The song which falsely says over and over "it would have been enough." (No, actually, if He'd freed them and then left them to die at the sea shore, it would really not have been enough.)

I have a harder time stomaching it every year.

A few years ago, I finally told Dad much of this. He thought about it. It had never occurred to him. But he didn't really change anything. Now he acknowledges my reservations, but says, "hey, it's only a legend." Fine. It's a story designed to teach us something. And what it teaches us is morally reprehensible. That doesn't answer very much.

I honestly don't know what I would do if it were my house and I was leading. I do believe in maintaining the culture and tradition of my people, even if I don't like religion. And Passover is, in a sense, Jewish Thanksgiving - a big family gathering for a large ritualized meal, with the theme of giving thanks. It's also one of the most important holidays on the Jewish calendar. You can't just skip it. And the structured celebration does date back for thousands of years. That has to have some value.

But that's moot. It's not my house. Not my choice. Instead, I join as a member of the family, down at the end of the table. So what do I do?

Most years, I follow Mom's lead. Her feelings are similar to my own. She, as hostess, spends most of her time in the kitchen - getting the food ready, coordinating everything, putting it in serving dishes, etc etc. I try to help her, for my own sake as much as hers. But that hardly covers the whole hours-long event.

It would be selfish and wrong to just sulk in the corner and refuse to partake. But I can't in good conscience praise and celebrate a story like that.

So what do I do?

Comments

[nicki]

How amenable is Judaism to something like, "This is the story as my father told it, and his father, and his father, back to the time of the Exodus and we value it for the meaning it gives to us today and the unity it has given our community in years past, but we also understand that one viewpoint is never the whole story and acknowledge that the narrative a community needs is not necessarily the explanation in it's entirety. (some kind of traditional thanks and request for understanding and enlightenment- in Catholicism we might say: We give thanks to you Lord for the gift of our community. Knowing that human understanding is often flawed, we pray that we may keep an open heart and mind to things we do not yet understand and have compassion for those outside our community. Amen.)"?

The story itself is important, but your understanding of it's flaws is important as well if you are intended to celebrate the story.

[hatman]

It depends on which Jew you asked, but I was raised to believe that it was right to question and interpret. To draw my own conclusions and make my own choices. To hold on to what works for me and change or discard what doesn't. Dad is the strongest voice I know for that idea.

And it's exactly what landed me here in the first place.

The problem is that I'm not sure how to live with those flaws, which seem so deep and so integral to the story, particularly when dealing with a holiday more rigidly structured than just about any other on the calendar. There are different versions of the seder, but, for the most part, it's a story and a structure which has been written and observed, step by step, for thousands of years. (Interestingly, Moses does not appear at all, because at the time the haggadah in its present form was written, there was a fear that the priesthood was gaining too much power and attention.)

If you're at the table, you're expected to help recite the story as it is written and to say the prayers as they have been said since the dawn of history.

Mom keeps saying we should write our own, updated version. And it has been done by others. But I don't know what I'd write. Nor how the rest of the family would take to it.

[nicki]

The only way I ever really figure out how to deal with those kinds of issues is to deal with a problematic religious story as a story, as a narrative of the culture of that time (they needed that narrative, they were going from a nice, relatively open, relatively technological, stable society into a semi-at-war conservative backwater), rather than as The Truth Which Happened, and in doing that I can celebrate the undermessage (People! forming a nation!) rather than the particulars. But my situation is a bit different because, for the most part, our formal religious celebrations aren't as personal(?) as Passover seems to be.

I'm sorry that what should be a celebration is kind of a problematic quagmire.

[seekingferret]

I understand those reservations. I write about those reservations all the time on my dreamwidth. I live with those reservations, with those doubts about God's plan and its ultimate goodness, every time I lay tefillin, every time I make Kiddush sanctifying God's name part of me wonders what kind of God I am sanctifying. I think the majority of practicing Jews do.

I'm not saying you should follow my lead. But I'm saying that there has always been a place within the fold for questioning. You don't need to question Judaism from outside the Jewish world, the way a Catholic apostate might have to.

I think there are answers to at least some of the problems you raise, and I think these answers are, by and large, hundreds or thousands of years old, because you are not alone or original in questioning these stories. The greatest Rabbis have always questioned these stories, struggled to make sense out of them. No adult Jew is supposed to accept them as stories with clear and obvious morals we can immediately implement.

The Passover table is absolutely a place for these doubts to sit. Think about it. Ostensibly it's about telling the story of the Exodus, but if that were the case, we'd just read straight from the book of Exodus, right? Instead what we read in the Haggadah are a series of debates between the Rabbis of Yavneh on the meaning of those events. They're modeling what we're supposed to do. They're sitting there in B'nei B'rak thinking about the plagues and pondering what brought them about. One Rabbi says "Don't think of it as only ten plagues. it was worse than that. Think of it as forty plagues." Another Rabbi says, "No, think of it as fifty plagues." They're obviously contemplating the horror of the event, and a part of them is pleased, is grateful that God intervened to save us from slavery, and another part of them must surely wonder why it took so many plagues, why the plagues kept multiplying.

When we sit at the Passover table we're expected to do no less.

[hatman]

Yes, I was always taught there was a place for questioning. Encouraged to do so. And this is where it led me.

I'm still Jewish. I still uphold certain traditions. I still wear a magain david around my neck. I'm not outside of Judaism in that sense. But I look at stuff like this and I conclude, for myself, that this is not a god I can worship.

As for the fifty plagues stuff... the annotated haggadah we use says that that part was actually a joke. It was the rabbis playing and making fun of themselves. One-upping each other and coming up with over-the-top justifications for it. I'm not sure that we can really know.

Not sure what else to say just now, but thank you for your thoughts and insight.

[seekingferret]

the annotated haggadah we use says that that part was actually a joke.

Yeah, obviously it's a joke. One of the posts I mentioned goes into the part of it: http://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/65738.html

In my experience most Jews who find value in Pesach strike the balance through laughter.

[seekingferret]

Also, there's a line that I've seen attributed to Orson Welles about the director Luis Bunuel: "He is a deeply Christian man who hates God as only a Christian can." I was deeply attracted to this line, and it's one of the things that led me to a rather in depth study of Bunuel's films. I'm not sure how meaningful it is for an atheist to question God's kindness, and while this was certainly not the spirit in which you asked, I've sometimes seen atheists do it spitefully or tauntingly.

There are books in the Bible like Job and Jonah and Ecclesiastes (and to a lesser degree, Lamentations) that are all about man's eternal struggle to comprehend God's plan. If you haven't read them, I would recommend them cautiously. They're very strange books that in many ways feel awkward and out of place in the Bible (and the Rabbis of Yavneh argued about their inclusion at some length), but it's very important to me that they're included. Iyov in particular is about God's cruelty and its relationship to God's claimed attribute of mercy.

Not coincidentally, they are in their fashion some of the most brutally funny books of the Bible. Jonah, many scholars believe, is outright satire of other prophetic works, and Ecclesiastes is one of the wittiest works of language I've ever read.

[synecdochic]

the thing my not-really-a-rabbi (long story) always said was, the part so many people miss is that the covenant is two-sided. god didn't just promise "i will be your god"; the promise was, "i will be your god, and you will be my people." when you look at it closely, the story the tanakh tells isn't a story about god being sacrosanct and unquestionable and all-knowing, no matter what people have tried to turn it into in the intervening years. the story the tanakh tells is of god doing things, and so many of the people involved standing up and saying "thanks, god, but we're still going to hold you accountable."

and that gets lost in a few places in the story, at points like the exodus (and the destruction of the temple, and a few other places) where the heroes of the story are so weary and ground-down and looking for anything to cling to. but the text keeps coming back to that, over and over again. the people whom the text treats as heroes are the ones who put up a hand and say "actually, that's wrong of you." the covenant goes both ways: god has responsibility to the people, but the people have responsibility to god, too, and that responsibility isn't just unquestioning, unthinking obedience. the text repeatedly approves of holding god accountable. both halves of the equation have a responsibility to expect the other half to be better.

so in that tradition, the idea behind passover really shouldn't be just unquestioning "we will honor god for having brought us out of slavery". there's a strong argument to be made that the motivation behind it really is, "we will honor god for having brought us out of slavery, but the way it was done was kind of crap. and we're thankful for the end result, but we also remember the cost. do it better next time." that's the purpose of the prayers in the second half of the seder: they remind god what the other half of the bargain is. and by ending with "next year in jerusalem", that's what the challenge is: do it better next time. keep up your end of the bargain.

[hatman]

That's an interesting perspective, and not one I can recall having heard before.

I do recall things like Abraham being told to sacrifice his son... and then being told at the last second that, no, human sacrifice is wrong and the point of the exercise was to teach him not to blindly follow orders against his own morality.

The seder table is supposed to be a place for questioning and discussion. (The whole thing was adapted from the Greek Symposium, a formal dinner which used ritualized questions to begin and encourage wide-ranging philosophical debate.)

But I keep coming back to the same things:

1. I cannot see any justification for killing innocent children in their cribs.

2. I am troubled by the hypocrisy of a god who would needlessly kill an entire army and then tell his people to mourn for the tragic necessity of the deaths of God's children.

3. I cannot, in good conscience, worship such a god.

4. I do not wish to antagonize those members of the family who would not be pleased to hear such sentiments.

5. The meal is more than long enough already, and I don't want to make it even longer by starting an involved philosophical debate which won't likely get anywhere.

6. This holiday is just about the only thing I've ever seen Dad be enthusiastic about.

[disastrously]

It is stories like that one that make me an atheist too. Or at least to think that this isn't a kind, loving god.

So, it's not just you.

[marahmarie]

Oh God, I'm always in the mood to see the Bible criticized! And I haven't even read your post or any replies yet, I just had to jump in to say that. *cracks knuckles*

ETA OK, do you seriously want my opinion? (background/disclaimer; Jewish but non-Orthodox dad, Christian mom, raised sort of Christian/not at all Jewish, consider myself a Christian now)

I'm going to play God's advocate for just a moment. You might be aware that God would often say the Jews were a stiff-necked, stubborn people, that *nothing* could turn their hearts toward Him, and to this day, in some cases at least, I don't doubt He was right. He hardened Pharaoh's heart on purpose so he could show His people just how far he was willing to go to save them and to prove to them that He loved them and to make them love Him in return.

Yes, the story itself is very strange and bitter, and the way it arrives at its conclusion awfully harsh (parts of it turn my stomach, always will, it's just unbelievably cruel) but the overall point is the same; it was like God was saying: Look how much I love you, and what I'll do for you out of that passion I have for you, my people, and still you won't love me in return, and still you'll just pay me lip service, and still you won't obey my laws.

That's my take on it. To be clear, I'm not 1) condoning, 2) accepting, or 3) even happy about any of it, BUT I think it happened just as it did because God wanted to make that strong an impression not just on the Jews' minds but on all of us. The overall message is God will never leave or forsake those who love Him, but among those, it's the Jews in particular He will fight for to the end, whether they love Him in return or not, until the end of all days. I think He thought it took a story that completely wild and oftentimes downright sickening just to drive that point home to all of us. In technicolor.

As to the idolators getting killed, look at the point of that there: why didn't those who didn't know the law love Him strongly enough to not be tempted to worship other gods in the first place? It was their hearts that were sinful and wrong, not their grasp of the law as they knew it up until that moment (that was only a sin of omission at worst; something that could not be helped).

Um, OK, I'll go away now if you want; sorry, just had to get that out there (and please don't think I don't understand your feelings on all this: from a purely logical standpoint, you're absolutely right, that it would be - or indeed actually is - hard to worship a God this cruel and unfair and unjust, but I think in His own mind He had a point to make, whatever the cost).

[hatman]

I'm always interested in respectful opinions and new perspectives. There's a reason I minored in philosophy in college.

But, speaking of respectful disagreement...

Your argument here, if I understand it, is that God felt that the Jews weren't responding to His attempts to be nice (although I can't really say He'd been nice up until the Exodus...), so He felt the need to get rough? I don't want to say what that logic sounds like to me.

(Nor can I say I'm really familiar with God saying His followers were stiff-necked and intransigent, but that's another matter.)

Your other argument is that God did this horrific thing to prove that He will always be by His chosen people's side. In order to impress on them the power of His conviction. Again... that does not sound like good or healthy behavior.

All of which brings me back to my original point: Look at God's actions. Look at His choices. Look at what he does in this story. Even you agree it's stomach-turning and cruel and so on. I cannot worship such a God. I cannot praise that behavior.

Somewhat more off topic... Jewish holidays all have the same theme. It boils down to this: "They tried to kill us all, but some of us escaped!" It's the story of our history. I'm almost surprised we don't have a holiday yet celebrating the Spanish Inquisition or the pogroms or the Holocaust. My grandparents survived that last, but they were in the minority there. Most of my family was wiped out. Can you really say that our history is one of a strong and invincible God who will stand by us in thick and thin? Yes, we've survived this long, escaping every time. But to say that we've been the underdogs for the last two thousand years is somewhat of an understatement.

[marahmarie]

Your argument here, if I understand it, is that God felt that the Jews weren't responding to His attempts to be nice (although I can't really say He'd been nice up until the Exodus...), so He felt the need to get rough? I don't want to say what that logic sounds like to me.

Nope, not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying they didn't love Him and even after all that (whatever your take on it, good, bad or indifferent) they still didn't. He was simply proving a point.

(Nor can I say I'm really familiar with God saying His followers were stiff-necked and intransigent, but that's another matter.)

It is, isn't it? Let's check it out:

http://bible.cc/exodus/32-9.htm

""I have seen these people," the LORD said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people.""

http://bible.cc/exodus/33-3.htm

""Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.""

http://bible.cc/deuteronomy/9-6.htm

"Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people."

All 18 references to the term "stiff-necked" are linked to here: http://topicalbible.org/s/stubborn.htm

Stubborn? All 40 references are here: http://topicalbible.org/s/stubborn.htm

Your other argument is that God did this horrific thing to prove that He will always be by His chosen people's side. In order to impress on them the power of His conviction. Again... that does not sound like good or healthy behavior.

You'd do the same for your own kids, though. Or the equivalent of whatever you could do yourself to prove your love for them. Or you wouldn't, not really saying you would like it's a fact, but surely some people can clearly and easily imagine doing anything to 1) prove our love to them and 2) protect them from their enemies, even if it would make us monsters to those people in that moment. Same principle at work there.

All of which brings me back to my original point: Look at God's actions. Look at His choices. Look at what he does in this story.

I did! I've read the Bible cover to cover (both Old and New Testaments) many times. Yes, in the past I've had that much time on my hands: this was a few years before I started getting online. And while I'm not pleased with what happened nor how it happened in the story, the point is God promised to lead His people out of Egypt into their homeland and He kept His promise and did so because He loved them. Yes, He made quite a spectacle out of it in doing so, and yes there was blood and things I can't stomach or even stand in the story but the whole point is it took all that to ensure this story wasn't God just making the path easy and therefore not gaining the Jews' respect, admiration and love in doing so.

God did the opposite, in fact, made this a story no one could ever forget, made the path hard and ugly and sometimes gruesome just to impress upon them how far He was willing to go and how important what they were getting in return - freedom from slavery - should be to them, yet the Jews, as we know from a careful or even a quick reading of the rest of the Old Testament, are still so far away from Him in their hearts that depending on which branch of Abrahamic religion you follow, He still either has to 1) send a Messiah to save us and show us the righteous path to His love or 2) has already done so.

Somewhat more off topic... Jewish holidays all have the same theme. It boils down to this: "They tried to kill us all, but some of us escaped!"

OK, seriously? My father's mother escaped Auschwitz. I wouldn't be here right now if she hadn't. Neither would he. I wasn't supposed to be happy about that? Yet was that not as horrific? Excuse me, but I'm done here.

[hatman]

To be clear, no, my point was not that you shouldn't celebrate escaping a horrific death. And yes, my grandparents were survivors, too. (My grandmother came home to find her husband and their 2 year old son dead, and that was only the beginning of her story.)

My point was that if you look at the history of the Jews, it's one of almost constant persecution and repeated narrow escapes from genocide. It's not exactly a strong argument for the power of God's faithful protection.

[(Anonymous)]

I think I understand your points. They prompted me to go re-read that part of Exodus. From what I understand, the purpose of the plagues was not to punish Egypt: rather, it was to show both Egypt and Israel who was the real God. Thousands of people saw and heard Moses and Aaron say "Let us go worship our God in the wilderness for a while." They saw and heard Pharaoh say "No." Then they got hit with a plague immediately after. After ten times in a row, they would certainly notice a case of cause and effect. Also, I noticed some things upon re-reading: When the Nile turned to blood, the Egyptians were able to dig for water elsewhere, so they could survive. When the hail smote the barley, the wheat survived, so they didn't starve. They also were warned about said hail, and those Egyptians who had picked up on the clues by now brought their people and animals *inside*, to be safe.

God is not callous. He can be very tough, but it's never out of schadenfreude.

[batgirl1.livejournal.com]

Ah, forgot that I wasn't logged in. >_< Yeah, that last anonymous comment was from me. Anyway, Paul, I hope you have a happy Passover. If you're still not sure about things, don't try to fake it; just take the opportunity to spend time with family, and leave it at that.

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the comment. And it does help that the plagues (most of them, anyway) weren't completely devastating to the peasant population (though they did still impose hardship).

But I can't find anything to justify killing babies in their cribs.

In any case, yes, I try to make the most of time with the family and the least of reciting things I have trouble with.