god grudge monday.

Last night, at a seder chez mama, while reading the haggadah, i couldnt help but feel desencantada with the whole passover plotta. (desencantada loosely, if not firmly, translates to disenchanted, although it's possible i should have used desencantado, depending - i think - on whether passover is a masculine or feminine noun. then again, the masculine wouldnt have rhymed, so eff that!).

anyhoo, as you may or may not know: Passover commemorates the Exodus and freedom of the Israelites from ancient Egypt. As described in the Book of Exodus, Passover marks the "birth" of the Children of Israel who become the Jewish nation, as the Jews' ancestors were freed from being slaves of Pharaoh and allowed simply to become followers of God instead. (from wikipedia)

i dont want to come across as trite, but dredging up this tale of jews vs. arabs, age-old though it may be, just doesnt sit well with me at this time.

do we really need to give young jewish kids another reason to feel contentious towards a group of arabs? talking about ancient populations like the corinthians and the assyrians is one thing; they dont exist anymore, at least not with those labels. but you can look at a map of the world and find egypt quite easily. and it's way too close to countries like iraq and syria for me to feel totally great about reminding myself that the egyptians used to enslave us.

i mean, whenever the haggadah mentioned how bad pharaoh was to us, i kept thinking, 'enough already. have you seen the state that egypt's in today? people there dont have a pot to piss in, or the proverbial window to throw it out of. we won. it's over. in today's cairo, pharaoh's decendants are standing outside mcdonald's, hocking miniature polyurethane replicas of the sphinx to american tourists just so they can earn enough dough to feed their kids stale scraps of pita at night.'

but we're telling little david and sarah that this country was the primary source for our millennia of misery? the seder is specifically geared towards teaching young children about passover, and i dont take it for granted that most little kids are gonna be able to differentiate between 'egypt was the source of our misery,' and 'egypt is the source of our misery.' not with things the way they are today in the middle east.

now, you might be reading this and thinking 'by your logic, blacks should never teach their children that they were ever slaves; women should never acknowledge that there was a time when they couldnt vote, etc etc. by your logic, we should all indiscriminately let historical bygones be bygones.'

not quite.

the thing that irks me about the passover teachings is the very fact that it's a holiday (read: holy day). as jews, we are led to believe that god was complicit in the entire passover saga; that he was controlling it every step of the way (he gave egypt the plagues, he helped moses lead the jews into the dessert, etc etc).

i believe tying god into the story gives it a timeless quality that grants tacit license to those who want to keep hating on arabs. god is forever, so wouldn't his consternation with the egyptians be forever? if little sarah thinks arabs are evil, well, why shouldnt she? last night we were kinda celebrating that very fact.

see, as an example, blacks dont celebrate martin luther king jr.'s birthday as a holy day. they, and we, remember the birthday b/c it symbolizes a great man, who fought the good fight against many flawed men. and now he's dead, as are most of the men he fought against, and we can say that as the human race, we've moved forward, bettered ourselves since then (at least to some degree).

but if blacks specifically told their children that god gave them civil rights, and that he did so b/c they were the "chosen ones," wouldn't that just give more fuel to racial tensions than there already is? it's always inflammatory to say god's on your side.

it's fine to say god is with you. no doubt a large percentage of african slaves, and civil rights leaders, and women looking for suffrage believed god supported them. but in those cases, it's more like god was helping one side, rather than effing with the other. it's a nuanced difference, but to me it means a great deal.

to me, by teaching jewish children that god was not only with us, but against the egyptians, we're just recycling that age-old hatred.

passover should be about acknowledging our painful past, and celebrating our freedom. it should not be about differentiating between who god was down with, and who he smote.

honestly, somewhere in there, the haggadah should acknowledge that the average jew reading it is prolly about ten times more well off than the average egyptian is right now. to not do so is kind of negligent.

ps - yes, much of this is specious reasoning, but i think ive got something here.