FEW ARE CALLED ALL ARE CHOSEN
Whether they were the plagues on the Egyptians or whether it related to ensuing gifts on tablets of stone in the sinai desert immortalized in the ten commandments is not entirely clear. Somehow, perhaps through the ”miracle” of compound interest those plagues seemed to expand exponentially to attain over two hundred, or as many as were deemed necessary to bring the enemy to heel. Ten plagues but with feeling.
Memorial to the Children of Lidice
“Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know Thee not, and upon kingdoms that did not call upon Thy name. For they have consumed Jacob, and laid waste his habitation. Pour out Thy rage upon them, and let Thy fury overtake them. Pursue them in anger and destroy them, from under the heavens of the LORD.”
Fighting words. Not an open door policy. Call it the Asher Scharfstein mysteries.He copyrighted this odd version of the text, but the general line of thought is hardly original and and bold-face type of the ten plagues does little to restrain the spirit of vengeance. The Jewish tradition of Passover suffers from a tradition of over-sacredness that can be bellicose and destroy the sense of community it was supposed to engender; something tender and sacred, something secret and mysterious, something unrestrained and paradisiacal about the atmosphere charged from above and below.
The door was open to all. We who enjoy freedom and ample food, should always bear in mind the less fortunate who are not so privileged. It is for them that the door is opened–symbolically, at least. The above quote is contrary to the spirit of the holiday, which should be ”All who are hungry to come and eat”. In fact the Book of Numbers states there were many non-Israelites who also left Egypt with Moses.
''Arlington National Cemetery, L to R: (unknown), Episcopal Reverend Roger Alling, Roman Catholic Bishop James Shannon, (Rev. Richard Neuhaus in 2nd row), Conservative Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, Rabbi Everett Gendler ''
The legend of Passover, and the birth of a people lacks the austere power of the Buddhist legend, the grandeur of the Hindu and even the intimacy of certain Christian sects. It did not grow in the shadow of ancient groves or other idyllic locales of quiet reflection. It came to life in the narrow, dusty streets of Egyptian ghettos passing from awkward lips to the ears of anxious listeners. A stammer gave birth to it and it has ben stammering onward from generation to generation since. A relation between the caller and the called, the finite and the infinite.
Correspondence between Mireille Silcoff and Schmuel Rosen that appeared in Haaretz newspaper. It highlights a ”slavery anxiety”; the Babylonian Exile is subtext for the interpretation of what is ”tradition” , and how for many, it excludes the notion of community and the sense of freedom. The differences are irreconcilable between the narrow particular and the larger universal. Dialogue, on the one hand, being a manifestation of inner liberation and is the central theme as institution capable of forming a real community rather than one binded by fear and loathing. Moses did not come when the corpses were piling up at Auschwitz; witness that everything in creation can be transformed into a commodity. The meaning of the Exodus, is too see oneself as if they were personally leaving Egypt; a reflection on why life contains so many questions that remain unanswered. Exodus as a huge work of Kinetic art; a cry for movement of a nation of people, a community, against the Babylonian establishment that fought against the cause of freedom.
We can destroy the bondage in our hearts though spiritual awakening, but we cannot free the other unless we act in this world. Freedom is dialogue. Freedom is between a you and an i ( Buber )
”Dear Shmuel,
Ah, yes, of course, “rebranding.” How good of you to color my attempt at explaining myself with marketing jargon. Not to mention your use of the word “fun.” Want to make a notion seem shallow? Use the word fun. It works every time. In response to your question (and did I yet mention how fun your question is? You, Rosner, have got SO many fun ideas!): If Diasporic Jewishness is not “fun,” if Diasporic Jewishness is more a construction of earnestness, burden, fear (and accompanying paranoia), and, all told, anything BUT fun, then I believe we should just pack it in right now. Joy, to me, seems a necessary fuel.
http://spaightwoodgalleries.com/Media/Chagall/Chagall_Exodus_Moses_Law.jpg
Maybe you and I are from the same generation (I’m 32), but maybe we have different point of view. You may look at the glasses I wear and see specs rose tinted (in a fun, brand-ish kind of way). I might look at yours and see lenses shadowed by a fixation with Jewish continuity. In all honesty, I don’t know if this fixation is truly yours or just the flavour of your question, but the current Jewish obsession with continuity is one I find counterproductive in making the Diasporic young want to do anything with their Jewishness other than get AS FAR AWAY FROM IT AS POSSIBLE.
Looking at my peers I see people who are beyond rich in options and with a billion likely prescriptions for living. If some have chosen to live in ways considered non-Jewish, then I would argue that part of the reason is that, perhaps in their youth, they were led to believe that Jewishness is too sacred a behemoth to be nourished by in any way but a few. In my letter, I did not write that I wanted to “rebrand” Jewishness – I wrote that I wanted to desegregate Jewishness in my own life. I wanted to take Jewishness out of its ritualistic compartment, and see what happened to it when mixed in with my entirely secular day-to-day. (Not such a new experiment, then).
Chagall. parting of the Red Sea
”The story of Passover is about liberation in community. Everyone left Egypt together, the awakened with the sleepwalking, with the ones who did not even ask for freedom. Liberation is not an inside-out or outside-in process. Liberation occurs in the between of an ”i” and a ”thou”. Individual salvation is actualized in the context of community”….There is a sense of sadness in Passover. Too many centuries of slavery before liberation. Too many civilians dead in Egypt, war and suffering in the desert and Moses himself never made it into the promised land. The exhilaration of the holiday is that moment at the foot of Mount Sinai when God for the first time manifested himself face-to-face to the entire community. Moses as the narrow bridge between the people and their God.An all too human holiday indeed. But here’s the relevant thought: God never again in history manifested himself in that same liberating mode, not even when he was most needed. ( Martin Buber Institute for Dialogical Ecology)
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