I spent the last Saturday and Sunday night celebrating Passover and observing the tradition of the seder when the story of the Exodus is retold (this year we were sure to pour out some liquor for Charlton Heston). Part of the seder is the discussion of the four children. My mother, the consummate educator, asked me to add my thoughts as a teacher on these four archetypes. My thoughts after the jump...

This is a question for my fellow Jewish Kossacks, and is intended as a break from all of those diaries out there about the Pennsylvania primary.

I'll preface this by stating that I'm a Reform Jew, and my tradition tells me that I should always try to learn about particular faith traditions and mitzvot and figure out whether and how they can apply to my own personal Jewish experience.

We all know the five forbidden grains for Passover: wheat, barley, rye, oats, and spelt. Those are the only grains technically forbidden by the Torah on Passover. However, there's also this nebulous area of "kitniyot" that includes everything from corn to peanuts. Only Ashkenazi Jews follow the prohibition against "kitniyot;" Sefardi Jews do not.

According to Ben Smith, Clinton puts up a flag for over-zealous supporters who've been suggesting they'd rather vote for McCain than Obama if Hillary doesn't get the nomination.

My grandpa is one of those Hillary supporters making such suggestions - but not as political posturing, but because he thinks the politicians who he's supported in the past (financial support for the Clintons) would not have been opportunistically misleading to him and his synagogue members about Obama's positions on Israel (i.e., "he'll talk with Iran, among other things, which will lead to limiting Israel's power to maintain and defend itself" ... and so on).

So should I email him with Clinton's statement (below the fold) or will it just piss him off and push him over the edge?  Are you going to email your Clinton supporting family members?

Couple of days late with this on Daily Kos, but had other things to write about. So, slightly late, but still pertinent.

Every year at Passover I write a diary focused on the origins of Jews. This year I have one new insight into the origins of Judaism, and it comes from a direction that isn't quite what I was expecting, and it both goes along with and maybe modifies what is in the bible. So if you have read this before, keep with it, because I caught on to one of the earliest signs of something new in "Israel" originating in Egypt...just like the Passover legend suggests. Read on for a piece of ancient history.

An expanded version of this diary is cross-posted at Very Hot Jews.

This year, as ever, a lot of us will participate in a ritual that celebrates freedom. And as always, we'll be asked to consider the ways in which we're still somehow enslaved – to our obsessions, our emotional baggage, our chemical dependencies and other bad habits.

Like every year, we'll be enjoined to recall our people's past sufferings and – at least at our table – to consider how we are obligated to witness and, if possible, alleviate the sufferings of Jews and non-Jews alike, everywhere in the world.

We'll parse the symbolic importance of the items on our seder plates, and the youngest child (ever more precocious and performance-oriented) will charmingly enunciate the four questions about why this night is different from all others.

But I've got a question of my own (I can't help it – I'm the youngest sibling myself): How will this year be different from all others?

As far as I know Hillary Clinton was not caught fibbing about her reason for declining an invitation to participate in a debate proposed for the beginning of Passover, and it pains me to see that a diary proclaiming that HRC was "caught" in such a "fib" has been sitting on the rec list.  Hey, people.  I thought we were smarter than this.  I thought that manufactured distractions had been put "on notice"

Here's a key part of the news report on which that diary is based:

Clinton didn't agree to the date, noting that night is the beginning of the Passover observance among Jewish people.

[please follow me below the jump]

Cross-posted at Facing South

How is Hillary Clinton honoring Passover this evening?

As you'll remember, Passover is very important to Sen. Clinton. When CBS and Sen. Barack Obama proposed holding a presidential debate tonight, April 19, in North Carolina, Sen. Clinton at first vacillated, and then ultimately condemned the idea, suggesting it would be offensive to Jewish families who will begin celebrating Passover at sundown today.

(The Obama campaign countered that Clinton didn't like the April 19 N.C. debate merely because she wanted more campaign time in Pennsylvania before this Tuesday's primary.)

My 18 year daughter made the Obama rally last night. I was too bone tired after hauling mulch all week and pulling weeds.I have almost 3/4 of an acre and my husband used to take care of the outside. He killed himself in July after years of suffering bi-polar disorder. At least for the time being I am staying here.

WOID XIX-5. The Passover Plot

[reprinted from WOID: a journal of visual language]

I)
Everything I need to know about Passover I learned from a wise old rabbi, actually the only smart rabbi I’ve ever met. "Consider the word, Shamus," he said. "In Brooklyn street-talk a shamus is a detective, an undercover cop, in other terms a nosy guy who’s paid to catch you breaking the rules. Back in the shtetl the shamus was the deacon of the local synagogue, in other terms a nosy guy who’s paid to catch you breaking the rules. The shamus goes around on holy days with a big stick, he raps on windows, he peers inside, entraps you into breaking the rules. There’s a good reason," the rabbi said, "that Jews in Brooklyn call a shamus a shamus. Those who fled were often fleeing the rabbi and the shamus as much as the local lord; often the rabbi and the shamus and the local lord worked hand-in-hand: Pharaoh’s army probably had a Jewish chaplain, too."

Tonight is the first night of Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the Exodus from Egypt and freedom from slavery, and the hope for freedom for everybody.  In my experience it may be the most common Jewish "thing" that non-Jews know much about. Many Jews invite non-Jewish friends over for the Passover Seder (the meal and story telling service). It is a story and holiday that has some resonance for non-Jews too, particulary for African-Americans and the deliverance from slavery (let my people go). For each participant the seder is supposed to be an occasion to relive the Exodus as a personal spiritual event; I experience the passage from slavery to freedom; it is not just ancient history; it happened to/for me; therefore I must fight for freedom in our times.

The tradition includes a telling of the Exodus story -- with commentary, prayer and rituals -- as part of the meal. The book is called the Haggadah, and though following a required structure, order and outline with some required elements, they are written and customized by whomever does the telling.  There are many many Haggadahs. Get three Jews in a room and they will have four favorite Haggadahs.  

I posted this several days ago -- but i feel it is important enough to re-post on the very day of the anniversary.  In light of how poisonous the overall (not just campaign) discourse in this country has become, we all need to take a step and remember a moment when those being destroyed stood up....

To all a happy and peaceful Passover
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The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on April 19, 1943 which was the first night of Passover in 1943. By luck of the calendar (Hebrew and Gregorian) the first night of Passover in 2008 is also April 19th, the 65th anniversary of this historic moment in time.

For nearly three years the Nazi machine had rolled unscathed over almost all of Europe and was at its peak of territorial occupation in early 1943. From Rouen to Russia, from Norway to North Africa, from Belgium to Bulgaria, Hitler’s military had mercilessly destroyed everything in its path on their march toward world domination and lebensraum.

Tonight we do service, taking the day as a convocation to that which led us out of bondage.  We are meant to know and to understand that it is a service that we do, and not a celebration, although in the common meaning that is what we are told it is.  We know this because it is written:

Exodus 12:25

And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the LORD will give you, according as He hath promised, that ye shall keep this service.

Several years ago, I was moved to write a piece explaining why, although I do not accept the literal reading of the Bible, I still observe Passover. Every now and then I update it. Passover starts tomorrow night, and because I will, once again, be reading this piece at the start of the seder, and its message is, I believe, even more important in this crucial time in our history, I decided to post it here.

If you like it, I would be pleased if you would read it at your seders.

Chag sameach.

I was musing-what if the Passover story had been reported by Fox News?

As a scientist who has spent a lot of time with chaos theory, I find the notion that chaos would be the result of our letting the people of Iraq settle their differences without us very unlikely.  In his WaPo column today, Harold Meyerson tells us why.  Here's how he approaches the issue:

Why is the Iraq war different from all other American wars? (Passover is upon us, so I've posed the question in correct Passover-ese.)

In each of our other wars, American soldiers fought the same adversaries from start to finish. We fought the British in the Revolution and the War of 1812, Mexico in the Mexican War and so on. Only in the Korean War did we have to engage an additional nation's army (that of China) after the war began -- and if Douglas MacArthur hadn't pushed to the Chinese border, we might have fought only North Korea. In a number of wars, our enemies received aid from other nations (Vietnam from the Soviet Union, for instance), but the actual combat involved fighting only our original adversary.

Not so in Iraq, where we are now fighting our third distinct enemy

 This analysis has merit for future debates about the war.  Read on to see why.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on April 19, 1943 which was the first night of Passover in 1943. By luck of the calendar (Hebrew and Gregorian) the first night of Passover in 2008 is also April 19th, the 65th anniversary of this historic moment in time.

For nearly three years the Nazi machine had rolled unscathed over almost all of Europe and was at its peak of territorial occupation in early 1943. From Rouen to Russia, from Norway to North Africa, from Belgium to Bulgaria, Hitler’s military had mercilessly destroyed everything in its path on their march toward world domination and lebensraum.

For thousands of years, the Passover Seder has focused solely on the liberation of the Jewish people  -- whether anciently from Pharaoh or in liberations since. But beginning with the Freedom Seder in 1969, in the new atmosphere of an America in which Jews did not fear oppression from the state or from other communities, many Jews have seen that the liberation of other peoples echoes elements of that ancient struggle for  liberation from Pharaoh.
 
This year, two calls for freedom have especially resounded across the Internet as Jews have prepared for Passover: the outcry of Tibetans bereft of their sacred land and leadership by a modern Empire, and the outcry of the earth itself and many of its peoples, suffering from an flood of suffocating gases that are bringing on a global climate crisis.

On behalf of Tibet, Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus that chronicled the unprecedented meeting of the Dalai Lama with a dozen rabbis and Jewish teachers in 1997, has proposed placing a symbol on the Seder table -- an empty picture frame! -- that authentically echoes the nonviolent resistance of Tibetans themselves:

This year, Passover begins the night of April 19 and includes Earth Day on April 22. And today, the greatest danger of destructive plagues comes from the global climate crisis and the top-down, unaccountable power-structures that are pushing us ever closer to the edge of climate disaster.

So this year, it makes sense to focus on the elements of Passover that call us to free and heal the earth and our society from that danger.

The notes below can be used in your Passover Seder, in congregational newsletter columns, and as teaching points for sermons.