1
Passover is entirely intended to teach us about our destiny as a people in this world: smashing idols, slaughtering sacred cows, rebelling against human authority. Anyone who was taught his entire life not to accept human authority and to bow his head only before his God, knows how to dare to break boundaries in other areas as well – in science, in philosophy, in society, and more.
This idea – which went along with much practical activity, not only at Passover but in consistent study and reading from a young age, for thousands of years – was so successful that many of us sit down for the Passover seder and immediately ask, "What do you mean by this service?" or in the terms of today's discourse, "Why are you going all religious on us?"
It's an oxymoron: on one hand, we are honoring the ancient tradition of sitting together as a family on Passover eve and focusing on the historic memory of our exodus from slavery and our rebirth as a free people; on the other hand, we have a certain sense of strangeness and even alienation toward the ancient texts and part of the customs. I would argue that for us, it has always been this way. Back and forth. "Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?" wondered the psalmist (Psalms 139:7). In any case, we fled the presence many times, and when we returned, we carried with us the cultural and spiritual riches of the peoples among whom we dwelt in our wanderings, and embraced it.
2
Our ancient declaration of independence lies in the Ten Commandments. The first commandment deals with belief in that same God that was revealed in our people's history: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." It is immediately followed by the second commandment: "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above … You shall not bow down to them or serve them." The belief in the God of Israel has always entailed smashing human idols. And take a close look: "You shall not…" – and not only idols, but your own personal idols. The idol simply changes form; sometimes it's an actual statue, and sometimes it's an idea, a social or spiritual convention, or in effect any spiritual prison into which our free thinking could be locked, including the institution of political correctness that seeks to rule language and even our thoughts. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above" could be interpreted as: don't make an idol of yourself, don't worship yourself, or your ideas; beware of spiritual and psychological rigidity.
The first commandment talks about the importance of historical tradition and the belief in God, and the second about the importance of breaking down tradition and the belief in other gods. The two commandments, therefore, include the possibility of conflict in faith. This paradox is an abyss that we've crossed, walking a thin line, for thousands of years. The power of the paradox – faith that allows for the possibility of being smashed and dismantled – has helped us as a nation throughout history and as a unique philosophy throughout the history of opinions and other faiths. Thanks to this fertile paradox, we built a great textual skyscraper the like of which no other nation has ever constructed for its descendants.
3
"Fertile paradox" isn't just a nice turn of phrase; from the beginning of our existence, we have been arguing with God, with the belief in him and the commandments that are part of that belief – essentially, arguing with our own identity. That argument has created the need to debate and interpret and prove and answer both among ourselves and with other nations and their religious sages. Many times, the debate was so fierce that it created the impression that the schism would be permanent, but it wasn't; the debate produced books and article and generations that rustled with each other, and amazingly, it made us stronger. "For you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed." Israel – our name contains the constant struggle with God and people, a struggle that is an ongoing argument that gives us life.
From here, a reply to the doomsday prophets among us, who regularly predict an "end to democracy." Anyone who talks that way is overfamiliar with foreign literature and not so well-versed in the literature of their own people. We are the "people of the book," the book is our calling card. Anyone who wants to talk about us and our future must first know the people about whom he is making predictions. There are no shortcuts here. To talk about the historic and spiritual phenomenon known as the people of Israel (or the Jewish people), one must study the Bible and the Midrash, the Mishna and the Talmud, Jewish law and the Zohar, medieval commentaries and the poetry of Spanish Jewry, hassidism, the Enlightenment, and more.
As far as that goes, the secular revolution in the last few centuries was no historical accident; secularization was the other side of our ancient faith – it fertilized it. In 12th-century Spain, Rabbi Judah Halevi defined it this way: "The root of faith is (also) the root of heresy." Even in biblical times, we espoused the dialectical method, back and forth, clinging to the faith of our ancestors while at the same time – sometimes – the faiths of the peoples around us, as well. "How long will you go limping between two different opinions?" the prophet Elijah scolded the people in the eighth century BCE, "If the Lord is God, follow Him. But if Baal is God, follow him." (1 Kings 18:21) Therefore, secularization is not the end of the story of our historical spiritual and national development. Expect surprises.
4
Let's get back to Passover. This is our birthday as a people, our birth certificate. The ceremony we have been carrying out on Seder eve for thousands of years includes the core of dialectic I pointed out. Passover is the sacrifice of the lamb our forefathers were commanded to slaughter on the eve of the Exodus, whose blood they used to mark the doors of their homes. That was our first seder eve in history. The ceremony includes stage directions: "In this manner, you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover."
In the 12th century C.E., Maimonides wrote in his seminal philosophical work "The Guide for the Perplexed" that the Egyptians "worshipped Aries" and had cults that worshipped demons that assumed the form of goats. This worship was widespread in the time of Moses, which was why those sects refrained from eating goat flesh. To eradicate these "false principles," he writes, the people were commanded to offer sacrifices of the cattle, the herd, and the flock. ….. So to escape these beliefs, the people were commanded to sacrifice one of their herd, to show that the act they considered the worst of all was the one that would bring them closer to God. "Thus the very act which is considered by the heathen as the greatest crime, is the means of approaching God and obtaining His pardon for our sins. In this manner, evil principles, the diseases of the human soul, are cured by other principles which are diametrically opposite."
In ancient Egypt, the main god Amun – the only one mentioned by name in the Bible – was portrayed as a figure with a ram's head. Slaves mimic their masters and are influenced by the ruling culture, and therefore physical liberation began by them liberating their consciousness. The Passover sacrifice comprises the slaughter of the gods of Egypt at the hands of the slave masses and the smashing of their masters' main source of authority. Freud called it "patricide" – rebellion against parents and cutting the umbilical cord as a vital stage in the life of an adolescent on the way to establishing his own independent personality. Smearing the Passover sacrifice's blood on the outer doorway was a challenge to the oppressors and in effect a declaration of revolt. From then on, there was no going back, only out to the desert, on the way to independence in the ancestral land.
An act like that can't be repeated for thousands of years and be left at the door, not to be internalized among ourselves. The source of the secular revolution can be understood, it was also a kind of "patricide," and things run very deep. Nevertheless, despite everything, we adhere to tradition and recline around the seder table, repeating the story of that great liberation and teaching it to our children. That is the secret of our strength and the root of our existence.
