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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?
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?
From:
no subject
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.
From:
no subject
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.
From:
no subject
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.
From:
no subject
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.