Let redemption and freedom ring
Seder is more than ritual
Rituals have their place in Judaism. Chief among them is the Seder at Passover, which begins at sundown Sunday. But, there is a difference between participating in a Seder as ritual, and participating in a Seder as a means of Jewish identification.
To me, it’s the difference between talking-the-talk and walking-thewalk. The “talk” is the text of the Haggadah, the retelling of the ancient story, which is fundamental to our place as Jews in the world. It is the foundational story of our people transformed by 430 years of slavery into a people redeemed, forever.
To “walk the walk” is participating in acts of Jewish identification that compel us to bring our message of hope and freedom to the world.
We learn from Talmud (Megillah 10a), when the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea, the Angels wished to sing for joy, but the Lord silenced them, saying: “The [Egyptians] are dying. How can you sing at a time like this?” The Talmud teaches that the Angels wished to sing so loudly that the souls of the Egyptians would take their departure through the sweetness of their celestial melodies. But God said, “My children [the Egyptians] are perishing so that the Israelites may go free; should they not perish on their own account, rather than die amidst your singing?” The Egyptians who enslaved them perished, so that the Israelites might know freedom. The magnitude of the Egyptians’ failings was preserved as a principal part of the Passover story. The Angels’ singing would have mingled the Egyptians’ deaths with sweet songs; an anathema to the end that befell them and an affront to God, in whose image we are all created.
Today, the walk is still an important act of Jewish identification, and it is still precarious. For centuries, Jews have told the story of Passover, because generations needed to know that we are here not only because we defended ourselves, but also, as Deborah Lipstadt urges us to know, we persevered to extol the positive goodness inherent in Judaism.
The walk is precarious only if we fail to remember the story. Our own walk, like the Israelites who found a leader in Moses, picks up momentum when we engage in the meaning of our redemption and revelation that began at Sinai, with leaders in a community who share the hope of such an epic story.
A Seder table welcomes the stranger among us, the neighbor nearby and “all who are hungry” to come and eat. There are no strangers at Passover, for “we know the heart of the strangers.” The songs that accompany the Passover story reflect the familiar stories of other communities that have gone from slavery to freedom, too.
“Go Down Moses,” a spiritual song at Seder and in the AfricanAmerican community, resonates with us because it intones the tribulations that came before the revelations. It goes deeply into the soul of a person held against her will, and the glory of reaching higher than she ever thought she’d reach to breathe the air of freedom. It tells a common saga that brought many of our ancestors to this country to seek freedom from all forms of bondage.
Today the talk of redemption and freedom rings fresh in our ears as familiar themes of immigration and refugees surround us. The Talmud urges us to follow leaders who don’t return us to the proverbial Egypt; who bring us to times of revelation where it isn’t Angels’ songs that portray human suffering as sweet deliverance, but God’s love and teachings that lift up all humanity in freedom.
The Talmud compels us to use our nation’s moral authority and constitutional principles to lift up those who stumble and suffer, to offer refuge to those who have been driven, and to welcome home those who never aimed to be here, but for reasons only God knows, reach out to us so that we might reach back “with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.”
At this season, the Seder is a ritual performance that deepens Jewish identification. The blessings of this season are found in the symbols that tell the story about God’s role in our redemption. With fewer signs and portents of biblical magnitude, today, but no less aware of the contemporary signs all around us, we would do well to take seriously the grave circumstances that rising anti-Semitism and inhumanity to humankind portend.
During the week of Passover, talk the talk of familiar rituals, songs, and food; but, also walk the walk that moves peoples and nations from fear to faith, from insecurity to courage and from despair to hope.
“Behold a good doctrine has been given unto you; it (Torah) is a Tree of Life to those who hold fast to it; its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:18 ).