Haggadah Reflections on Resistance

Passover is here. For the Passover Seder dinner, we read from a Haggadah, a collection of folklore, parables, anecdotes, ethics, symbolism and mysticism.

For this year’s Haggadah, we focus on resistance, on conjuring what the Israelites did before they went forth from Egypt. Each year, we remember and retell stories that have resonated with us about slavery, plagues, the exodus, the desert, and the Bible, with introspection and jarring lessons of being the oppressed and of the oppressors. This year we will also imagine and recognize how humanity and inhumanity collided, how they keep resonating, and we’ll grapple with the crucibles of silence, acquiescence and resistance. 

The Biblical saga of Passover tends to gloss over the resistance to which the Israelites must have resorted to endure slavery. We tell of Aaron being dispatched to demand of Pharoah that he let the people go. Pharoah refuses and doubles down on his reign of terror against the Israelites. The Israelites resist, we’re told, and are not released from bondage until a series of ten plagues befalls the Egyptians.                

Were the Israelites the only slaves? What did the Israelites do to resist? Did resistance intensify Pharoah’s reign of terror? Was the terror targeted or did it indiscriminately punish all Israelites? 

We learn of Jochebed, Moses’ mother, who places her infant in a basket in the Nile River to evade Pharaoh's decree to kill Israelite baby boys. Moses is found by Pharaoh's daughter and raised as her own. She knows he’s an Israelite and even lets Jochebed nurse him. Is she knowingly providing him sanctuary? 

As Moses grows up, we’re told that one day on a stroll from Pharaoh’s palace, Moses sees an Egyptian striking a slave. He rescues the slave and kills the Egyptian. Was Moses immune from punishment because he was family, or had he taken a huge risk? 

As we know, the world has not seen the end of slaves and oppressors. More than a thousand years later, during the Roman empire, there was a slave revolt. Spartacus was a gladiator and an escaped slave. In the movie Spartacus, there’s a memorable scene. The slaves are captured. They’re sitting en masse on a hill. The emperor sends word, “Your lives will be spared. Slaves you were and slaves you remain. The penalty of crucifixion has been set aside on the single condition that you identify the body or the living person named Spartacus. As Spartacus begins to rise and turn himself in, the two fellow slaves chained to him notice, rise with him, and announce together, “I’m Spartacus.” One by one, all the slaves confess. “I’m Spartacus" resonates throughout the valley. 

Are they all slaughtered? ________________________________ 

Pesach Has Come to the Ghetto Again 

(by Binem Heller, Warsaw, April 19, 1943) 

Pesach has come to the Ghetto again. 

The wine has no grape, the matzah no grain, 

But the people anew sing the wonders of old, 

The flight from the Pharoahs, so often retold. 

 How ancient the story, how old the refrain! 

The windows are shuttered. The doors are concealed. 

The Seder goes on. And fiction and fact 

Are confused into one. Which is myth? Which is real? 

"Come all who are hungry!" invites the Haggadah. 

 The helpless, the aged, lie starving in fear. 

"Come all who are hungry! 

And children sleep, famished. 

"Come all who are hungry!" and tables are bare. 

 Pesach has come to the Ghetto again, 

 And shuffling shadows shift stealthily through, 

 Like convert-marranos in rack-ridden Spain 

Seeking retreat with the God of the Jews. 

But these are the shards, the shattered remains 

Of the "sixty ten-thousands" whom Moses led out 

Of their bondage…driven to ghettos again… 

Where dying's permitted but protest is not. 

From Holland, from Poland, from all Europe's soil, 

Becrippled and beaten the remnant has come. 

And there they sit weeping, plundered, despoiled, 

And each fifty families has dwindled to one. 

 Pesach has come to the Ghetto again. 

The lore-laden words of the Seder are said, 

And the cup of the Prophet Elijah awaits, 

 But the Angel of Death has intruded instead. 

 As always -- the German snarls his command. 

As always -- the words sharpened-up and precise. 

As always -- the fate of more Jews in his hands: 

Who shall live, who shall die, this Passover night. 

But no more will the Jews to the slaughter be led. 

The truculent jibes of the Nazis are past. 

And the lintels and doorposts tonight will be red 

With the blood of free Jews who will fight to the last. 

 Pesach has come to the Ghetto again. 

And neighbor to neighbor the battle-pledge gives 

The blood of the German will flow in the Ghetto 

So long as one Jew in the Ghetto still lives! 

In the face of the Nazi -- no fear, no subjection! 

In the face of the Nazi -- no weeping, no wincing! 

Only the hatred, the wild satisfaction 

Of standing against him and madly resisting. 

Listen! How Death walks abroad in the fury! 

Listen! How bullets lament in the flight! 

See how our History writes END to the story, 

With death heroic, this Passover night!

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