Tonight at sundown Passover or Pesach begins 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!
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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 full day of Passover coincides with Earth Day. Back in 2012 the Passover and Easter 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/Good Friday
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 also fell on an 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, some dusty village in Yemen, or in Gaza 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 un-asked.
That time Passover coincided not with a Blue Moon, but with a Blood Moon, a rare total eclipse under just the right atmospheric conditions that made 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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