Thursday, May 1, 2008

Meditations on Passover

My wife and I attended our first Passover Seder this year. We were invited by my oldest friend and his wife; other than my sister, he’s known me longer than any other living person. I was surprised to learn that his family celebrated Passover when we were kids—he said he was probably too embarrassed to tell me back then.

The invitation was significant for another reason. Through my middle-aged interest in genealogy, I’ve learned my mother’s mother was Jewish. Indeed, her grandfather was a shochet (kosher butcher) and her great-grandfather a well-known Bavarian rabbi. Why she denied her family’s traditions, exactly, is a mystery to my sister and me. I’d very much like to know what led her to reject her family’s faith.

Anyway, there was a lot of good-natured joshing in this party of 13, plus the place for Elijah. None of us has kids at home, so the “youngest child”, who asks the ritual questions, was over 40. My friend referred to his Haggadah (the guide to the order of ritual acts in a Seder) as “the ancient text of my people”, when in fact it came from a Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee promotion in New York City during World War II. The best line of the evening concerned someone’s claim that the oldest Jewish temple in the US is in Newport, RI (true, in fact):

Q: Newport? What were Jews doing in Newport? Were they whalers?

A: Why do you think there’s a ‘Whaling Wall’ in Jerusalem?

I was very struck however by the section of the Seder concerning personal deliverance. The Passover celebration not only commemorates the Lord’s deliverance of the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt, it exhorts each Jew to participate personally in the Exodus, from Egypt (in Hebrew, Mitzrayim, literally “the narrow place”) to The Promised Land, from bondage to freedom.

I think the celebration of freedom inherent in the Passover Seder resonates with most Americans. Our history is one of progressive understanding of who is free by right. From the Founding Fathers’ narrow definition of (mainly) propertied white males, we now include nearly all adults in the franchise of citizenship and equality before the law. I say nearly because our gay and lesbian family, friends and neighbors are currently a gray area. Their civil rights and protections have expanded, but they are not equal. They make bricks and build pyramids, as it were, only part-time.

Now Michael Heath and his so-called Christian Civic League are determined to send the LGBT folks back to the brick pits. If you find my metaphor extreme, let me point out that Mr. Heath & Co. hasn’t proposed remitting gay taxes. So gay people can pay more than married couples throughout their lives and get marginal social entitlements in return. Just what am I supposed to call this, other than slavery?

This referendum drive is immoral, as well as bad public policy. It denies the beliefs that my Jewish ancestors celebrated in their great spring festival, and that some of them suffered and died for.

And it is unchristian. Whether Yeshua Ha-Notzri, or Jesus of Nazareth, as most of us know him, celebrated a Seder at the Last Supper or not, he and his disciples embraced the Passover message of redemption and freedom. And freedom is impossible without equality.

Next year in Jerusalem—for each and every one of us.

Où sont les Mugniers d'antan?

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