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Last night at sundown
Passover or Pesach began when Jews around
the world gather around ritual tables to remember and give thanks for the events that lead to the ultimate freedom of the Hebrew
people and a Promise Land of
their own. That came at a terrible price for their oppressors—a pain that they thank God for inflicting. It
is an uplifting night, a hopeful night, but also a terrible one.
The
story of Passover and the Exodus from Egypt is a saga of freedom that not
only gave comfort and hope to Jews
through centuries of persecution but
inspired others who were enslaved and oppressed. Blacks held in bondage in America in
particular used images from the tale in their coded worship and song in which the Promise Land was freedom itself. In his speech on the eve of his
assassination Martin Luther King evoked Moses when he declared:
I’ve been to the
mountaintop…Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its
place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And
He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen
the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know
tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
The traditions of the Passover feast
are outlined in the Hebrew scripture
making them among the most ancient of continually
observed religious celebrations in the world. On the first night families gather for a Seder meal, the ingredients of which are prescribed
and highly symbolic in re-telling
the story. A service is read from the Haggadah and is in the form of questions asked
by the eldest son of the father.
The form
of the Seder meal shared today, however, dates to the early years of the Diaspora after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, not in the early
years of the First Century BCE when
Jewish religious life still centered on the Temple and the priests attending it. But
some sort of family meal before or after Temple rites was shared.
Christians believe that the Last Super was a Seder meal, linking the two observances. In recent years some Christians have taken to
celebrating Seder meals to connect to the Jewish roots of their faith. This
is a development that is embraced as
a bridge to cultural understanding by some, and as an abomination by traditional Jews.
Many Reform and Conservative congregations in the U.S. invite non-Jews to attend special
Seder meals. I once got to open the door for Elijah.
This year
the first night comes four days before Western Christians celebrate Easter.
Back in
2012 Passover and Good Friday coincided. It was also a Blue Moon, the second full moon of the month, symbolic
of how relatively rare that
coincidence is.
On that
same night I hosted a benefit evening
of song and poetry with bluesman Andy Cohen at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry (now Tree of Life UU
Congregation) Naturally, I committed poetry for the occasion. I have edited the poem and replaced a verse
from the original.
Brief Haggadah for Passover
For Social Gospel in Words and Music
April 6,
2012
The child
always asks…
What
makes this night different
from all
other nights?
You have to
think hard.
Somewhere
children are always
being
massacred for some
accident of
birth
or for mere convenience sake.
Somewhere
slaves are plotting their escape
and Pharaohs hitch their war chariots
to pursue them.
Somewhere
the fearful faithful
kneel at the feet of a dying master,
a maybe Messiah
who frightened an Empire.
What makes this night different?
Nothing, son, except that
you asked the right question.
Now, what are we going
to do about it?
—Patrick Murfin
In 2016 the first night of Passover
fell on Earth Day. At a time when the
realities and projections for global
ecological catastrophe have never been greater moved me to wonder—What if?
Passover/Earth
Day
April 23,
2016
What if
there were no Passover?
What if no sacrificial blood
smeared on the lintel
offered any protection?
What if there
were no Us and Them?
What if the Pharaoh’s son
and our sons fell alike
from the same dark curse?
What if the
Dark Angels were not Yahweh’s?
What if they were our creation,
evoked by our carelessness
and fed by our greed?
What if
there were nowhere to flee?
What if no haven or Promise Land
lay waiting even after wandering
because we have laid waste to it
too?
What if
there were no Milk and Honey?
What if our goats all starved,
we killed the bees
and parched the earth bare?
What if
there were no Seder tables to lay?
What if there were no progeny
to ask what makes this night
different,
no generations ever again?
What if this
is no mere nightmare?
—Patrick Murfin
But Passover has always had a dark side, almost forgotten, glossed
over, or muttered under the breath—the fate of all of those Egyptian children. It is easy
to do, especially if you envision only the
sons of Pharaoh and his court—a just punishment for a king who
had ordered the slaughter of Jewish
babes when he got wind of a rumor
that a liberator would be born among
them. But death was visited not just on
the elite, but upon all Egypt and families of every class and caste.
And that sounds, to modern ears,
a bit harsh.
At Seder meals Jews acknowledge this
in singing Dayenu:
Verse
3:
If He had destroyed their idols,
and had not smitten their first-born
— Dayenu, it would have sufficed!
Verse
4:
If He had smitten their first-born,
and had not given us their wealth
— Dayenu, it would have sufficed!
All of this got me wondering…do the lives
of one set of innocents have to be the
price for the freedom and safety of another people? Are the
babes and children of Dresden,
Hiroshima, or some dusty village
on the Afghan frontier God’s
just collateral damage for our noble
freedom? Do Palestinian dead buy a just safety for a people nearly
exterminated by others?
Uncomfortable
questions, and undoubtedly ones some would wish unasked.
Nine years ago Passover coincided not
with a Blue Moon, but with a Blood Moon,
a rare total eclipse under just the
right atmospheric conditions that make the Moon darkened by the Earth’s umbra seem to turn red.
Blood Moon/Egyptian
Passover
April 15/2014
Was there a Blood Moon
that terrible night
long, long ago?
Khonsu, Disk
of the Moon
was eaten,
turning the color
of old blood.
The wails of
the women
leapt from house to house,
hovel to tent,
it is said even to
the palaces themselves.
The curses
of the men
bearing the limp bodies
of their sons
into the dark air
damning the Moon
the Jews,
Pharaoh
himself.
What quarrel between bondsmen,
the mighty
and their Priests
belongs to
them, not us.
We are the farmers,
fishers of
the River
and
the seas,
the
shepherds, the weavers,
the folk
who cast pots,
the brewers
of beer,
the molders
of simple brick
from
mud and dung,
the house
slaves
and
wet nurses,
the
prostitutes…
What care we for those palaces,
those
temples,
those
monuments,
those damnable tombs,
or
the slaves who build them!
No Jews dug our wells,
laid course
of simple brick
for our
homes,
piled a
single stone on stone
on our
graves
to save our
dead
from the
jackals.
Yet they called down on us
the frogs,
spoiled our
grain
with
locust,
stoned our
kids and lambs
to death by
hail,
our flesh
that erupted
in
festering boils.
And now our very sons!
What harm did they do you,
you Jews?
If your damn God
is so
powerful
why did you
not call him
to just
wipe out Pharaoh,
the
Priests,
the
Generals in their chariots,
and
all their minions
who have
had their sandals
on our
necks
since time
began?
Such a God would be
worth worshiping!
Your freedom—and ours—
would be one!
—Patrick Murfin
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