We Cannot Disentangle Passover from Zionism
Warm wishes to everyone celebrating the holiday.
On Wednesday night, Jews around the world came together around Seder plates to celebrate the first night of the Passover holiday. Over the course of many hours, they read the text of the Haggadah, the special book read at the Seder. They engaged in a variety of traditions that include pomegranates, different types of matzah and charoset, oranges, macaroons, macarons, and countless more that all serve the same purpose: to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt.
Whether it’s from The Prince of Egypt or The Ten Commandments, many of us are likely familiar with the story of the exodus. But in case you aren’t, let’s do a crash course biblical history lesson…
We know from very early on in story of the Torah that everything we commemorate during Passover is going to happen. Gd told Abraham when the Israelites were still living in Canaan (somewhere in the region of modern day Israel/Syria/Jordan), that they would go down to Egypt and they would dwell there, and they would be enslaved there for 400 years. The Israelites travel to Egypt during the seven years of famine predicted by Joseph, who was taken there after his brothers sell him into slavery. Upon arriving in Egypt in search of food, Joseph takes pity on his brothers and they decide to stay in Egypt with their families. This is how the Israelites arrive in Egypt.
Now we fast forward 400 years. The Israelites are slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt, and he has decreed that all baby boys will be cast into the Nile river to prevent the Israelites from being able to form an army and rise up against the Egyptians who serve as their taskmasters. Not wanting her infant son, Moses, to perish, Yocheved, a young mother, places him in a basket and floats him down the Nile where he is found by Pharaoh’s daughter. She rescues the baby and decides to raise him alongside her own son, Ramses.
When he grows up, Moses learns about the truth of where he comes from and leaves the palace. Gd then speaks to him through the burning bush and tells him that with a mighty hand and outstretched arm, he will help him free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. In the Haggadah, it says that Gd remembered his promise to the Israelites that he would free the from slavery and bring them to land he had promised them. This leads to the ten plagues and parting of the Red Sea for the Israelites to flee from Egypt and commence their long March to the Land of Milk and Honey; the promised land; Israel.
The story of the Exodus is at the center of Passover. We are quite literally recalling how Gd passed over the homes of the Israelites when he, and not a fiery or ministering angel, performed the last of the ten plagues: the slaying of the first born. For four centuries, the Israelites had been dwelling in the land of others where they had been oppressed as slaves and watched their children murdered. It was the promise of a return to their homeland that provided the courage to follow Moses and finally leave Egypt. The centrality of Israel as a homeland where the Jewish people can live free from oppression is at the core of the Haggadah.
It has been frequently noted in recent years that the Haggadah, for being the book we read as our annual retelling of the story of the Exodus, goes into surprisingly little depth on that story, with only spare mentions of Moses, Aaron, Mariam, or the other central players. Instead, we are confronted with a very meta text involving discussions of how we should discuss the story of the Exodus, some strange math, and rabbis’ names that are difficult to pronounce. That’s because the Haggadah is a revolutionary text. It was written when Israel was under Greek occupation and the Jews were trying to decide whether they should rise up against their latest oppressor. This uprising would become the story of the Maccabees that we celebrate during Chanukah. The Rabbis who stay up all night discussing the story of the Exodus from Egypt in the Haggadah were not simply speaking theoretically, they were using it as a model and a reminder for why the Jews returned home to Israel and why it is so essential that they have self-determination there and are not subject to the whims of others.
So much of the narrative and materials around Passover focus on the importance of freedom. Freedom is a theme that runs throughout much of early biblical and Jewish history from the Exodus to the events at Masada. But in the case of Passover, the theme of freedom cannot be unwoven from the Zionist underpinnings of the holiday.
The freedom that we are talking about at Passover stems from the experience of the Israelites living under Egyptian control in Egypt. An essential component of freedom is this context is sovereignty in their native land.
In the Haggadah it says that one should think about the Exodus from Egypt as something that happened to each of us personally. We are meant to think of ourselves too as having come out from Egypt. History has shown us that this roleplaying does not often require much of a stretch beyond reality. Be it Egypt, other countries in North Africa and the Middle East or Europe, the Jewish people have rarely fared well living in the land of others. When we think of ourselves as having personally come forth from Egypt, and if the Exodus from Egypt is a metaphor as it was for Judah and the Maccabees, we can apply this thinking to the creation and continued existence of the State of Israel. For the Jewish people, like all people, to be truly free from oppression or the threat thereof, they must have self-determination in their own land.
