Passover is one of my favourite Jewish holidays. Partly because it’s an easy one to explain to a Christian. Explaining what we call Pesach and the traditions and customs that come with it to my non-Jewish friends is something I started taking pride in as I got closer to the Jewish community in Manchester. I was taken to my first Sukkot celebration (the autumn harvest festival to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt) in freshman year by a friend. I never had a bat mitzvah, and we didn’t go to synagogue often in my childhood because we kept a very liberal or, technically, reform household. That is to be expected with a Catholic mother from the States, and given the ebb and flow of cultural history, some things just get lost with the generations.
This Pesach, I read the Ma Nishtana (a section from the Haggadah, a text which details how the seder, the Passover meal, should be performed). The Ma Nishtana asks four questions about the four anomalies that set apart “this night from every other night,” asking why on Passover we dip two appetizers, eat matzo (unleavened bread), eat maror (bitter herbs), and recline as we dine. I learnt of these customs and the responsibility to read them as the youngest capable child of the family from the campus chaplaincy Rabbi and his family, with whom my friends and I spent Pesach last year. My family isn’t so big on customs and traditions, so I never did this as a child. Perhaps they just deemed me incapable. We just got together, ate, and called it a day.
This Pesach, I read the Ma Nishtana (a section from the Haggadah, a text which details how the seder, the Passover meal, should be performed). The Ma Nishtana asks four questions about the four anomalies that set apart “this night from every other night.”
Does it not make sense that I never told people I was Jewish until I went to university? I didn’t even know I was Jewish until I spent time with others of the same faith outside of my immediate family. That is my first Pesach question to myself.
Passover comes from the story in the Book of Exodus, in the Bible, when God passes over the Jewish people, granting them immunity from the tenth plague, the death of first born sons. Whether I believe in it or not, whether I feel particularly religious or not, does not matter so much to me anymore. If white Christians in the UK can celebrate Christmas and Easter and call it a job well done, why can’t we do the same? That’s my second question.
Whether you participate wholly or just sometimes, an understanding of what constitutes a sense of self starts to form. Learning about oneself also requires learning about others. That came with me making other Jewish friends and acquaintances, with their own family traditions for Pesach and other holidays. It’s a time when I was accepted around someone else’s table, even though I had to read the Haggadah in English, not Hebrew. I am not Israeli and do not speak Hebrew.
So what did we do that made me feel Jewish as a child? That’s my third Pesach question. I always knew there was something else in the mix I had not yet tapped into. I knew I was like the people at local North London Jewish schools but not quite the same in lived experience and identity. We lit candles on Fridays some weeks. And now that the world wants to amalgamate us into one evil, we come together more often than before. This Pesach, I eat the bitter herb, albeit begrudgingly because it doesn’t taste nice and, as a symbol of enslavement, it isn’t meant to. I will remind myself that things steeped in tradition can change and be moulded as needed, if it keeps us together.
I have never written about religion because it is associated these days with conspiracy and shame far more than it is seen for its uniting potential on a day-to-day basis.
There is agency in choosing how far you go, how far you observe, and how far you believe.
Belief systems are just as much the victim of “othering” as any other characteristic and I think people forget this is the 21st century and people can evolve forwards with their beliefs. I’ve seen this othering everywhere, between people in my social circle and online in the rabbit holes I fall into. I saw someone comment on an Orthodox Jewish woman’s post, showing her daughters getting a haircut in preparation for “the Omer period observed between Passover and Shavout when we mourn the death of the students of Rabbi Akiva.” Someone commented, “I don’t understand the point of following a religion that has so many rules and restrictions.” So I asked back, “What is religion to you?” And that’s my fourth and final question this Pesach.
By definition, religion is an organized system of attitudes, beliefs, and practices. This random person on the internet chose to use language that frames that Orthodox Jewish woman and her children as if they are a victim to their faith. To restrict and be restricted. To rule and be ruled by something out of one’s control. I find that very shortsighted and a conscious choice to refuse to accept that people have freedom in the way they live their faith. This becomes a risk, as people make a monoculture of Judaism, just as one might mistakenly do with denominations of Christianity, Islam, and so forth. There is agency in choosing how far you go, how far you observe, and how far you believe. I have learnt that and I am glad to be spending Pesach with the family, eating well, and reflecting on the parts of myself which I do not wish to amalgamate. And the parts that deserve a little bit of spotlighting every now and then.
