drwex | What does this celebration mean to you?

Welcome to Passover 2018. If you celebrate it, I hope your Seder is meaningful for you and that your relatives don't stress you out too much. Happy Easter, if that's your thing.

In comment discussion to my last post related to Passover,

reedrover asked how one celebrates a "secular" Passover. A great question, but a touch hard to answer. There is, as

coraline noted in response, a significant secular Judaism movement that seeks to cultivate the non-religious parts of Jewish life, particularly as experienced by Western (white) Jews in generally liberal countries. I think that's an important movement and one I identify with but I think it's not helping me respond on Passover, particularly. So buckle up, this will get long.

Reedrover noted that her experience had to do with emphasizing being spared a Biblical plague by divine power and so she didn't understand how one could "secularize" the holiday. That's a very accurate and valid point of view, and responding to it caused me some mental struggle. I think I have a better answer now, but it takes some background because it synthesizes a few particulars of this holiday.

One of the unique aspects of Passover is that we are taught "G-d(*) reached out with a mighty hand and rescued us from bondage." In most other Biblical and holiday cycle stories, G-d acts through intermediaries (such a prophets or leaders) or indirectly. As the story goes, it was Moses and Aaron who spoke to Pharoah and who instructed the Hebrews and then led them out of Egypt. So in that sense, Moses and Aaron led, but the text doesn't say that. It says G-d did it. Very interesting, and makes me ask why.

One interpretation I like is that the Passover story is full of lessons on how to behave. The Hebrews wander the desert after leaving Egypt until they come to Sinai where they are given, literally, the laws that govern all behavior thereafter. Hebrew scholars talk about "Noachic" (for Noah, whose family restarted humanity after the flood) and "Mosaic" (for Moses, who received the laws on Sinai) law. The first is a simpler, and universal, system all people are expected to follow. Mosaic law is omfgbloodycomplicated by comparison, and only Jews are expected to follow it. It's full of detailed rituals and rites and people spend lifetimes studying to try and understand and interpret it. Mosaic law is intended to be a living thing - it changes with circumstance and the times. Most well-known is probably the set of changes imposed after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, when it was no longer possible to make the prescribed sacrifices. Prayer and core aspects of modern Judaism (minyan, synagogue) all come as evolutions of Mosaic law.

In order to receive and be able to follow this complex, living, evolving set of laws, it is theorized, G-d needed people who had gone through experiences, and been taught. By this theory, then, G-d takes direct action in freeing us(**) from slavery as an example of how we should treat others. With an outstretched hand, we should reach out to other people and help them to freedom. This is one reason I make refugee and immigrant rights one of my core issues and why Israel's current treatment of African refugees is so upsetting.

Hold the lessons idea in your mind for a moment and turn to the "Four Children" aspect of Passover. During the Seder, we ritually recite four versions of the "What does this celebration mean to you?" question, with different answers. The children are said to be wise, rebellious, simple, and too young to understand. To each we answer in accordance with how they asked. It is said that the children are not literal but rather they are representative of aspects of ourselves - we are all sometimes wise, sometimes rebellious, sometimes simple, and all came from a time of being too young to understand.

Putting this thought together with the first one, I take it that the "meaning" of Passover is that we need to examine these lessons from many aspects, in order to understand and adopt them. As a teacher, I often write exam questions for which there is no single right answer - the point is to see how students have absorbed the lessons of the class and how they can synthesize that understanding. Looping back now to Reedrover's original question, I think the reason I don't think of Passover as a religious holiday is because I see it within this context of learning, questioning, teaching, and growing.

Having wound my brain through this path, I come back to understanding how I was initially stumped by the idea of "secularizing" Passover. It's true that it's a religious celebration, but it's also really NOT a religious celebration. It's like quals for Judaism (PhD joke! don't shoot me!) - it never was about the religious aspects in the way that other celebrations are. At least, not for me.

I hope this made sense if you managed to read through it. I would be happy to discuss it in comments. And please do tell me about your Seders, or what you did with your families this weekend.

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(*) In this text as elsewhere I'm going to adopt the convention of G-d for the Hebrew god: Yahweh, Hashem. Why some Jews don't spell it out is a whole side discussion. Likewise, I follow the convention of referring to G-d with male pronouns. I believe the actual gender of G-d is "god". It's an anthropomorphizing category error to ask what gender G-d is; you might as well ask what gender water is. Also, this is a much longer discussion for another time.

(**) Another interesting aspect of Passover, which I've written about before, is that it's told and learned in the present tense. G-d didn't free our ancestors, he freed us. We respond as though we, personally, were slaves in Egypt and we, personally, were brought to freedom. Super-powerful and important, but not the point right this moment.