Passover this year
In our time, in our generation
Somehow, only this year have I focused on the relationship between Passover and genocide.
Breathe!
If just reading that sentence and that word has triggered you, I invite you to take a few moments to breathe and feel the pain and horror and fear that word transmits. It is a word and an action meant to transmit all of that. And this is part of what it means in the Passover liturgy, when we say, every generation is to experience leaving the place of enslavement and journey to liberation.
Every generation adds its own experience and insights to the meaning and path of liberation. On the Passover night as retold in the Torah and reenacted this Monday night all over the world, enslaved peoples huddled in their homes while genocide was committed against the metaphoric Egyptians (Mitzrayim, translated in the Torah as Egypt, refers to a constricted place.) In the ancient text Mitzrayim/Egypt is the place where children are slain, first Hebrew and then Eygptian. Both actions generated by the same God. This is called the slaying of the firstborn.
On the Passover night the enslaved peoples, called Ivri, boundary crossers, in Torah, were protected because they slayed animals and marked their thresholds with blood. Our thresholds were marked with blood. Our liberation was marked with blood.
And here we are in the 21st century. Can't we find another way to cross thresholds, to liberate ourselves and all peoples, from whatever is oppressing us? How can our Passover rituals and commemorations take us in that direction? And if they don't, if they can't, how do we change the story?
I want to take time at my Seder table this year to feel the horror and grief and shock from the realization that my liberation was accomplished through genocide. In ancient times, in American history, in Jewish history. How can I put this awareness in service of ending domination and enslavement?
Don't Turn Away From Suffering
The Bitter Herbs on the Seder Plate
Both the Talmud, the 1500 year old authoritative text of Judaism, as well as the teachings of the Buddha 2500 years ago, suggest a starting point for our seder. In the Talmud section on Passover, called Pesachim, the instruction is to slowly chew the bitter herb that we place on the seder plate. What brings us closer to liberation, the mitzvah, is to slowly chew and transform the suffering into something else. Feel the bitterness of slavery with slow bites, do not turn away, slowly let the saliva, chewing and energy transform the bitterness. Our liberation will not come from anger and bitterness. It will come from transforming anger, hatred and bitterness.
A few hundred years before that, the Buddha taught that the path to liberation begins with the understanding that where we are in this moment came from suffering. Liberation builds from the awareness of human suffering.
Eating Meditation with Matzoh
Similarly, we do this with the transformative power of matzoh on the Seder plate. In the Passover story the enslaved peoples ate matzoh in a rush of fear and anxiety. This night is different. We can sit and slowly chew each bite of matzoh, envisioning our chewing and our bodies as temples of transformation.
Slowly, deliberately, we chew the matzoh that came from the place of enslavement. With each bite and chew we digest and metabolize the fear and anxiety that have paralyzed us, in all genocides. We mourn that we didn't know how to argue with and stop the gods committing genocide in our names.
As we slowly chew, we feel fear and anxiety transform into deep grief and regret.Lets the tears flow. As we slowly chew, we allow fear and anxiety to transform into grief. As we slowly chew, we transform and metabolize the grief into new possibility.
I take inspiration from the Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace who say, our grief is our greatest strength. We metabolize our grief and fear to transform them into peacemaking. We acknowledge the suffering upon which our liberation is based and use that awareness to transform how we are in the world today.
The Four Children
In the traditional Passover Hagadah, children are encouraged to ask questions and still there is a vilification of some types of questions. This year we celebrate all the questions. We can especially celebrate the questions that have led thousands of young people back into participating in public discourse whether we agree with them or not. We can especially celebrate the ones who are speechless when they see the ongoing cycle of killing and trauma. We can celebrate all parts of ourselves represented as wounded children, our own inner wounded child, experiencing joy, belonging, separation, disgust. We welcome all of it. The journey of liberation cannot be completed without everyone and all parts of us. There are no bad parts as contemporary teacher Richard Schwartz writes.
Permission to Narrate
Passover is also spoken about as the journey from the place of exile of the word to finding our voices and singing together triumphantly for the gift of freedom. In our world today, how can we bring a new awareness of how our liberation is bound up with everyone else's into our individual and collective narratives? This is a practice of making space for everyone's narrative. This is a practice of realizing when I am centering my own narrative in a way that prevents others from centering their narratives.
At our Passover tables, we can share narratives of other people in our lives or globally that are challenging for us to accept. we can use this skills of nonviolent communication to help us make space for both narratives. This involves liberating the world of our imaginations. And nonviolent communication we call this an exploration of all the strategies that are available to protect and honor and uphold the values behind everyone's narratives and needs. And then partnering to envision ways of meeting all the needs, and allowing all the identities and narratives in ways that don't cost each other's liberation.
The expression, permission to narrate, of course, comes from Palestinian, leader and teacher, Edward Said, of blessed memory.
Closing the Seder
Suggested reading as an alternative to "Next Year in Jerusalem":
Today my Hope is Vertical, Jane Hirshfield:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/08/today-my-hope-is-vertical-jane-hirshfield-poem
Today, my hope is vertical.
Tomorrow it will be horizontal.
The next day, cloudy.
My hope is like a Greek myth:
exchanging skin for bark,
bark for scales,
scales for the hollow bones of a bird.
In these ways my hope
attempts to escape its fate.
In myth, hope surely knows,
escape is useless.
Still, hope will try.
I, who will someday leave behind
this three-dimensioned puzzle,
pity my hope.
Poorling, I say to my hope,
even I cannot spare you,
even I cannot make you mortal.
Winged, rooted, finned,
roofed or roofless,
of all my shapes, only you, hope,
know nothing of irony,
only you cannot be cynical
or cloak yourself
in the objectivity of grammar.
Only you
cannot suffer suffering.
You exempt, you deny,
you protest with speech and with silence.
You forgive—helpless to not—
in speech and in silence.
I, citizen of perspective,
born into the tribe of time,
will vanish into its blurring distance.
But you—most intransigent,
most stubborn of all my parts—
will be forced to continue.
How tenderly, with two open hands,
you reach again today for hunger’s apple.
The Journey, by Mary Oliver :
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Some more Passover Mindfulness practices:
https://torahattheintersection.com/passover-intersection-mindfulness-seder/
AND
Not too late to sign up!
A few spaces left in our end of Passover, Splitting the Sea, harvesting Passover, retreat:
Loving Kindness at the Heart of Liberation: An End of Passover Retreat
With Roberta Wall and Reb Karen Levine
April 28 - 30, 2024
RETREAT BY INVITED PRESENTER
Join us for a two-day retreat at the end of Passover, an especially rich time for spiritual deepening. On the seventh and eighth days closing the Passover week we will explore creative interpretations of traditional Jewish mystical and contemplative practices. We will put special attention on loving kindness (Chesed in Hebrew) as the quality that permeates the Passover week. Our time together will include teachings, discussion, music, ritual and movement drawn collectively from Jewish, Buddhist and Nonviolent Communication practices.
STAY SAFE DURING COVID-19: We are committed to your health and safety. Please read our COVID-19 Precautions & Preparations to understand our strategies.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
The seventh day of Passover, called Shvii Shel Pesach in Hebrew, takes us on a mystical journey toward freedom, through the splitting sea. Through ritual, teachings, discussion, music, movement and song we will explore letting go of the constrictions we wish to leave behind and embrace the openings and insights we want to take with us. In the beauty and peace of the retreat center we will draw on Jewish, Buddhist and Nonviolent Communication teachings and practices to integrate loving kindness as a path to individual and collective liberation.
