Elliot Cosgrove, PhD April 20, 2024
Like the perforated grooves stamped onto a piece of matzah, Passover seders expose the fault lines of our families, and, by extension, the Jewish people. Just two days from now, young and old, liberal and conservative, left and right, we will sit down for our annual intergenerational gatherings, the gravitational pull of Jewish tradition, law, and nostalgia bringing us together for an evening of family dynamics, debate, and dysfunction on steroids. We may be asking the questions of the Haggadah, but we are voicing deeper questions of meaning: Who are we? What do we stand for? And how do we fit into the larger story of our people?
This year, over six months since the brutal attacks of October 7 and the start of Israel’s war with Hamas, our seder tables will be more charged than ever. As I have spoken with congregants these last few weeks, it is not just recipes and rituals and travel plans that are being discussed, but anxieties over what the dinner conversation will be like, and in some cases, whether people are even willing to sit at the table with one another. Just the other night, a congregant shared with me that his college-age niece has announced that this year, for political reasons, she would rather not join; he also related the backroom family discussions that maybe, given the niece’s politics, she shouldn’t.
On the one hand, there are those Jews whose focus, understandably, remains on the atrocities of October 7 – on lives murdered and massacred, on the orphaned and widowed, on the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Israelis, the ones who don’t get to come home for Passover. For these Jews, our prayers and our advocacy remain with the hostages – ghastly thoughts of captives subjected to torture and serial rape and anxious wondering how many are still alive, and if they are, what “alive” actually means. It has been but a week since Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel, prompting questions of what steps Israel must take in response to a variety of Iranian-driven doomsday scenarios. Front of mind is the well-being of Israel, the well-being of our IDF soldiers, and the well-being of our college kids on campus, a subject to which we will return. For many seder participants this year, the tribal instinct is activated, the shields are up, and the wagons are circled.
On the other hand, there are those Jews whose focus, understandably, is elsewhere. Aware as they may be of the attacks of October 7 and the Iranian threat, not to mention Hamas’s cruel use of innocents as human shields, they see the gruesome images emanating from Gaza and openly wonder, at what cost of human life is war justified? Tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed and far more injured, displaced, and suffering from disease and hunger. Since October 7, there has been a surge of extremist settler violence in the West Bank. These Jews harbor, as does half the Israeli electorate, profound misgivings about Israel’s present government, the years of decisions leading us to this moment, the politics of division preceding October 7, the catastrophic failures of October 7 itself, and the lack of leadership since October 7. There are loving Jews and proud Zionists who openly question, as all thoughtful people should, the choices being made today and tomorrow. Questions of proportionality, of justice, and of the wisdom of policies that are problematic both in the short term and long term in that they are bound to sow seeds of violent extremism into the next generation. As one college student who grew up in this congregation asked me the other week, “Just how many Palestinians need to die before I walk away from Israel altogether?”
Whether or not these questions are asked at your table on Monday night, they are, I assure you, being asked at the larger, figurative table of our people. Questions that may be prompted by the latest headlines, but really extend way back and into the core of our being. Can we advocate on behalf of Israel and express compassion for Palestinians? Is it possible to mourn the loss of both Israeli and Palestinian life? Are we a people of empathy or vigilance? Compassion or vengeance? The questions run to the foundation of who we are, and who, in this critical hour, it is we seek to be.
Today is Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat immediately preceding Passover, when the rabbi’s sermon is traditionally devoted to thoughts on the Haggadah, with the hope that everyone leaves the synagogue with a new way to think about the familiar seder story and ritual. This morning, in our charged moment, I want to suggest to you that the Passover Haggadah is precisely the right text for such a time as this. Far more than an account of ancient Israel’s journey from slavery to freedom, the Haggadah provides us with the tools to openly name and wrestle with the tensions we face. The rituals of the seder embrace the complexities of our Jewish soul, nearly every symbol of the seder carrying more than one interpretive possibility.
Think about it. Let’s start with the matzah. Is it a symbol of slavery or freedom? On the one hand, we hold it up and call it the poor man’s bread or bread of affliction – a reminder of our slavery. On the other hand, it is a reminder of our liberation, that we left Egypt in such haste that the bread didn’t have time to rise. Oppression or freedom? The answer is both.
What about the salt water? Does it symbolize the tears shed by the Israelites in their servitude? Or does it signify the luxuriant act of dipping our greens, something only a free person may do? Persecuted or privileged? The answer is both.
What about the haroset? Does it represent the mortar used by the embittered Israelite slaves in their pyramid bricklaying, or is it the means to sweeten the sting of the bitter herb? Bitter or sweet? The answer is both.
Enslaved and free. Persecuted and privileged. Traumatized and dayenu grateful. The enduring power of the Haggadah is that it resists binaries and rejects the either/or. Depending on the year, depending on the person, we sit down at the seder and allow for a multitude of interpretive meanings, as many and diverse as the Jewish people itself.
And to our present challenge of whether we are a people of empathy or vigilance, compassion or vengeance, the Haggadah is particularly instructive. Again, think about it.
When we begin the seder, we do with a wide and warm embrace. Ha lachma anya, let all who are hungry come and eat. All who are needy, let them celebrate with us. And yet, toward the seder’s conclusion, when we welcome Elijah, we do so not with a spirit of ecumenical inclusion but with a spite-filled mélange of biblical verses: sh'foch hamat’kha, a petition that God pour out divine wrath upon other nations. A fear and even hatred of the other goes hand-in-hand with a spirit of inclusion.
Another example: On the one hand, the whole point of Passover is to recall that we were once strangers in a strange land, to see ourselves as if we ourselves left Egypt. It is an exercise important unto itself, but also as a prompt for present empathy, that we must “know the heart of the stranger,” the marginalized and alienated of our present. On the other hand, the take-home message of one of the Haggadah’s central declarations, v’hi she’amdah, is that in every generation an enemy has arisen to destroy us. Pharaoh was the first but by no means the last in a long line of antisemitic oppressors. Empathetic sure, but we Jews must be ever vigilant and on guard; there is always another Pharaoh right around the corner.
Growing up, I was always deeply impressed at the point in the seder when, as we recited the list of the ten plagues, we dipped our finger into our cups and removed drops of wine, one drop for each plague. While there are some who interpret the act as a means to savor the power of God’s vengeance, I was always taught that the gesture is meant to remind us that even though the Egyptians enslaved us and even though the plagues were necessary for our liberation, we are still saddened at the thought of Egyptian suffering. The cup of our redemption is made less full in our awareness of the casualties suffered by our former oppressors.
So too, in our home, we always read the Talmudic passage describing the Egyptian pursuit of the fleeing Israelites and how they drowned in the sea. When the heavenly angels broke out in song at the downfall of the Israelite oppressors, God reprimanded them, “My handiwork (the Egyptians) are drowning in the sea, and you want to sing a song of praise?” All of humanity is God’s creation, God’s empathy, and by extension, our own must extend to friend and foe.
There are, I am sure, other examples, but the point is one and the same. It is not either/or. Empathy and vigilance, compassion and vengeance. They are not contradictions; if anything, they are interdependent, bound into the spine of every Haggadah. Taking time to mourn others neither weakens the strength of our cause nor negates our resolve. We can and must demonstrate both. They are impulses present long before the events of this year, strands of identity that trace back arguably to our very beginning – the double helix of our Jewish DNA.
Every year, but especially and urgently this year, our Passover seders need to name and affirm these multiple threads woven into the tapestry of our people. No matter how one feels about the war – determined, angry, ambivalent, depressed – we should all be able to agree that the loss of civilian life is something we can mourn. One need not get defensive nor get bogged down in semantic debates as to what does or does not constitute genocide in order to acknowledge the obvious fact that lives have been lost on both sides. Expressions of empathy for innocent Palestinians are not betrayals of the cause, but just the opposite; they affirm the essence of our faith.
I know, given what is going on around the country, it isn’t easy to express empathy for the other side. At Columbia, at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, at so many campuses, Jewish students are feeling isolated, excluded, and yes, physically threatened. Universities have lost their ability to articulate the norms for the free exchange of ideas – arguably their very reason for being – for communicating those norms, and for enforcing those norms when they are in breach. With graduation season around the corner, I am deeply worried about the chaos coming to campus convocations in the weeks ahead. And yes, if by virtue of your connection to your alma mater or to your child’s campus, you are positioned to call on administrators to take preemptive steps to make sure graduations reflect the ideals of their schools, then now, before you sit down for seder, is the time to make your voice heard.
Given this backdrop of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, given a world of masked protestors choosing disruption over dialogue, aggression over free expression, I know that some of you are undoubtedly asking if right now is really the time to give voice to empathy, to engage with the counterarguments of the other side, to have our views interrogated at our own dinner table. I imagine someone here is thinking, “Rabbi, it’s not like the other side is sitting down thinking about our sorrow, our fear, and our pain. In a world that is so hostile to us and our interests, can’t we just have one night when we are right and they are wrong?”
And while I hear the sentiment – and truth be told, often feel it myself – the call of the seder demands that we rise above it. The seder is an opportunity to show our guests, our children, and our grandchildren what a culture of dialogue actually looks like. The whole point of the seder is to teach that two people – one filled with vigilance and the other with empathy – can read the same Haggadah, perform the same rituals, and know that they both belong. Each one feels their view affirmed, seeing it expressed in the Haggadah. And each concedes the strength of the other view, seeing it expressed in the Haggadah. Most of all, both must find the intellectual and emotional wherewithal to acknowledge the views of the other in light of their own. It is really, really important that your seder models the world not as it is, but as it ought to be. And as a parent of four college-age kids, I do believe that the most damaging thing we can do to our children is to leave them with the impression that their homes suffer from the same toxic ideological straitjacketing as their schools.
What does this mean in practical terms? Well, if the condition of the Palestinians stands at the forefront of your concern, this Passover push yourself to find a way to give voice to Israel’s right to self-defense and self-determination. And, if it is the continued defense and well-being of Israel that informs your every breath, then model for all those present how to stay true to your principles and express empathy for Palestinian suffering. The horrors of October 7 will forever be a scar on the Jewish soul, the return of the hostages remains at the forefront of our concern, as does the well-being of Israel; family is family. But a good family, a great family – which is what I think we all aspire to be – figures out a way to make sure every voice is heard, even, and especially, the ones with whom we differ.
If we cannot share our hopes and fears with those we know and love, there is little chance that we will be able to do so as a global Jewish people. With so much at stake this year, our seder conversations should serve to bring us closer together. Isn’t that, ultimately, the real message of the seder? Every participant an equal stakeholder, with a place – literally and figuratively – at the table.