This Passover, as we recount the story of the Jews’ Exodus from Egypt, of their trek from slavery to freedom, many in our community will add extra readings.
In the 1980s many American Jews added to their seders prayers about rescuing and liberating Soviet Jews. This year, many may discuss the genocide in Darfur and Jews’ particular responsibility to help end it. “Never again” should indeed mean “never again.”
We may talk about the seemingly interminable and exhausting crisis between Israelis and Palestinians. Why, with so many great minds focused on this crisis of identity and state for so many years, can we not find a path to compromise and end the bloodshed?
We may talk about American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Whether we believe the war was a wise intervention or a mistake based on deception, we may find common ground in our grief for the sectarian violence and bloodshed.
Perhaps we will talk about religious violence and fundamentalism that is spreading across the globe — from Milwaukee to Michigan to Madrid, from London to Paris to Bali and Tehran.
These modern concerns have found a home in Passover. As we celebrate our people’s redemption and liberation, the urge to look into ourselves is natural and healthy and good.
This year, I will add my own intention to the seder, that we negotiate our way past fear — as individuals, as a community and as a society. Fear, whether imposed by the self or by others, is the most effective and intense form of human oppression.
A brave first step
These are scary days, to be sure. B’nai B’rith Canada’s newly released 2006 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents reveals that anti-Semitic activities there have risen to their highest level in 25 years. Last year, 935 incidents were reported to the organization — two-thirds of which were categorized as harassment, one-third as vandalism, and 3 percent as violence.
According to a report by JTA, Frank Dimant, B’nai B’rith Canada’s executive vice president, concluded that more members of Canada’s 375,000-strong Jewish community feel targeted than ever before.
“The acts of harassment and violence are increasing. It’s going beyond ordinary vandalism…. [M]ore individuals are feeling personally threatened, and that’s a frightening experience.”
In Europe, Jewish men are removing kippot or covering them with hats; women and men are unclasping their Star of David necklaces and tucking them into jewelry boxes, hoping for safer times.
We have a lot to fear. In Tehran, a madman brazenly and unabashedly calls for the destruction of Israel. His Holocaust-deniers conference, held last December, attracted people from across the world, including a contingent of Orthodox Jews.
Terrorism, born of religious fundamentalism, seems to be spreading across the globe like a cancer. A mentally ill anti-Semite forced his way last year into an American Jewish federation and opened fire, wounding several and murdering one woman. A farmer and member of the Nazi party opened a shrine to Adolf Hitler in Walworth County last year.
Perhaps because of all those recent events together, combined with our knowledge of history, we are afraid. The Inquisition. Pogroms. And only 60 years ago, the unthinkable actually happened.
But this Passover, as I sit with my family, I will remember the brave first step taken by Nachshon ben Aminadav, who, according to a midrash (rabbinic retelling), first entered the Red Sea and watched it split into two walls of water. I will also think of the Holocaust survivors I know who have transformed their lives from stories of victimization to years of vitality and meaning.
I think of two men who are members of our synagogue and whom I see at the gym. Their sport shoes and dedication to health defies the numbers tattooed into their forearms.
Their sleep may be interrupted by nightmares, but their days are full of living, of defying fear. Their tenacity is my hope for our community, their unwillingness to be victims, the sense that these men have seen the ugliest of humanity and kept their eyes open wide, choosing life.
I pray for the courage in our community to discuss issues that make us squirm, to respect differences of opinion and embrace disagreement as part of growth.
I pray for the freedom in our society to accept others, regardless of their political position, sexual orientation and country of birth or legal status.
I pray for the freedom from the personal fears that lie deep beneath our skin and shape our characters.
Fear is insidious. On a personal level, it can force us to stand in front of a mirror for hours, examining our never-good-enough bodies, or it can impel us to starve ourselves, or binge and purge.
For most of us, it is a voice beneath our conscious that tells us who to love and who to avoid, how to dress and what to eat, where to work and where to live. Most of us are molded in some way by our fear of rejection or humiliation, or the certainty that, at any moment, the world will discover that we don’t measure up.
This Passover, as we bite into our first taste of matzah, let us also be renewed without fear. Let’s defy our high school bully and the anti-Semite down the street by being vibrant, awake and joyous.
Chag Pesach sameach.
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