Passover and the arc of the universe.

Of course — of course — at this point in the day, mere hours before the Seder, I have very little time at my disposal, indeed. Indeed, some might argue (me, for instance) that I am, in fact, out of time and nearly out of luck! The sun will set, the holiday will arrive, and it won’t matter if my skirt is ironed and my Pesach dishes out of their boxes yet — the sun has yet to pay much mind to my needs. At least the house is clean. (That’s what cleaning until 2 am the day before the Seder will get you!)

But I wanted to at least post a little something before the holiday comes, something about why this holiday resonates so strongly for me.

We as a people, the Jewish people, are a people whose very existence is predicated on the notion that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. We were slaves in Egypt, strangers in a strange land — and then we were freed.

It is the fact of our own cruel oppression that serves as the bedrock for all Jewish involvement in social justice movements anywhere and everywhere. We are to remember our bondage, our strangeness, and act righteously toward those in need of God’s hand.

You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pawn. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there (Deut. 24:18)

I cannot help but think of the more than a million souls — strangers to us — living today in Gaza, many of them fatherless or widows by Israeli hands. How many dead, how many hungry, how many without medicine, how many without hope. An entirely human-constructed humanitarian disaster — and the humans who constructed it are my own people. The people who were freed from Egypt and told in every generation to think of themselves as having escaped Pharaoh’s lash themselves.

There are many political arguments swirling around the occupation of Palestinian lands, many fears, many military concerns. I do not doubt that Israel will have to remain on its guard, should we finally do the right thing and release our strangle-hold on the lives of millions upon millions of strangers who now live in our midst. Decades of murderous rage between two peoples do not end without leaving a mark.

But to continue this way, to continue the occupation, the settlements, the stealing of land, the starving of children — it is a shanda, a disgrace. It flies in the face of all that is good and right about Judaism — no, it spits in the face of all that is good and right about Judaism. It spits in the face of Moses, of Sinai, and of all those who for centuries upon centuries have tried with all their might to remember that we, too, were once strangers in a strange land.

He has told you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness and to walk modestly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

May this be the Passover in which we, the Jewish people, choose to act on our own story, and the command given us by God as we stood before Him in the desert. May this be the Passover in which we choose to act, not as Pharaoh, but as Jews.

A happy, healthy, and kosher holiday to all.

Posted by emilylhauser on March 29, 2010

http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/passover-and-the-arc-of-the-universe/