I wanted to share some ideas, discussion points and questions that people may

find useful during Pesach. Each idea includes a short summary in the text.

Rabbi Steven Greenberg explains that "The key to Jewish exegesis is to

assume that nothing is obvious...We train children at the Passover Seder to
ask why, because tyrants are undone and liberty won with a good question…
when we ask good questions, the Torah is given anew on Sinai at that very
moment."

In this context, I hope everyone has a Chag Sameach full of much joy and
many questions. An extended discussion on each topic can be found by
clicking on the relevant links.

The 10 Plagues (Our Liberation, An-Other's Pain)

The Midrash explains that as the Egyptians are drowning in the sea, the angels
want to sing praises to God. The Almighty's response – "the works of My
hands are drowning, and you seek to sing praises!?" – suggests an aspect of
universality (or that we don’t rejoice in our enemy's downfall) which is
interesting to explore.

What makes it even more interesting is another similar but different Midrash
which uses a similar phrase ("My children are in danger and you seek to sing
praises!?") to describe the Israelites, rather than the Egyptians. It touches on
the tension between God as universalist and God as particularist.

And it raises the question as to the balance be between our freedom and an-
other's suffering

The Shiur (summary, audio and source sheet) on this is here. A blog post on
the topic is here.

Bechol Dor VaDor (Liberating Ourselves from Slavery)

The British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explains that in order for an
individual to truly liberate him or herself from slavery, they must let go of hate
(which explains why the Israelites ask their Egyptian neighbors for gold and
silver – it was an act that would make it harder to hate the Egyptians).

Yet even though we are physically free, to what extent are we still emotionally
traumatized (or enslaved) by the past? In what ways have we succeeded in
ridding ourselves of hate and in what ways have we not?

Furthermore, might one Bechol Dor VaDor (seeing ourselves in every

generation as leaving Egypt i.e. becoming liberated) be undermined by
another Bechol Dor VaDor (remembering that in each generation our enemies
rise up against us)?
The Shiur (summary, audio and source sheet) on this is here. A blog post on
the topic is here .

The Four Sons and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Hagaddah speaks of four sons - wise, wicked, simple and one unable to
ask. Over the generations, this theme was expanded - four different Jews, four
generations, four characteristics present in each one of us. In this context,
here is a reading based on different Zionist approaches to the Israeli –
Palestinian conflict.

The Redemptionist child, who says that talk about ‘peace’ with the Arabs is
dangerous utopianism; The Realist child who believes that peace with the
Palestinians may be possible, but not in this generation; The Pragmatist child
who argues that unless we achieve a two state solution soon, the window of
opportunity for a secure Jewish and democratic state may close; and the
Justice child who contends that the Israeli – Palestinian conflict is a tragic
struggle of right against right and that Zionism loses its moral legitimacy
when it denies national liberation to another people.

The only question remaining is which child is wise and which is simple
(naïve)? And which is so blinded by their opinions that they are not even able
to question them?

A blog post on the topic is here.

Dayenu (Maintaining Meaning in an Imperfect World)

If the ultimate aim of Shemot is leaving Egypt in order to receive the Torah
and enter Israel, how can we genuinely say Dayenu, that 'it would have been
enough for us' if only some of these steps would have happened?

While entering Israel may have been part of our people's meta-narrative, there
is still importance in understanding and appreciating steps along the long
walk to freedom. In fact, as Jonathan Sacks explains, failure to understand
historical processes (as reflected in the French and Russian revolutions), or
forcing perfection and redemption before its allotted time (what Amos Oz calls
'now-ism') can lead to disaster.

Dayenu thus challenges us to see value in interim steps even if we haven’t

achieved full redemption.

The Shiur (summary, audio and source sheet) on this is here.

Chofesh and Cherut (Freedom in a Jewish State)

In A Tale of Love and Darkness, Amos Oz describes two accounts – one by his
father and one by his aunt – of their childhoods in pre-war Europe.

"Then he [my father] told me in a whisper… what some hooligans did to him and his brother
David in Odessa and what some gentile boys did to him at his Polish school in Vilna, and the
girls joined in too, and the next day, when his father, Grandpa Alexander, came to the school
to register a complaint, the bullies refused to return the torn trousers but attacked his father,
Grandpa, in front of his eyes, forced him down on the paving stones and removed his trousers
too in the middle of the playground… "

"A thousand times it was hammered in to the head of every Jewish child that we must not
irritate them, or hold our heads up, and we must only speak to them quietly, with a smile, so
they shouldn’t say we were noisy, and we must always speak to them in good correct Polish, so
they couldn’t say we were defiling the language, but we must speak in Polish that was too
high, so they couldn’t say we had ambitions above our station…You who were born here in
Israel can never understand how this constant drip drip distorts all your feelings, how it
corrodes your human dignity like rust"

These accounts touch on the differences between Herzl's Political Zionism and
Ahad Haam's Cultural Zionism; between Isaiah Berlin's 'negative and 'positive
liberty' (freedom from and freedom to), and between the ideas of Chofesh and
Cherut.

A blog post on this topic, which also touches on African refugees, is here.

The Price of Liberation (Moshe and the Tragedy of Leadership)

Although Moshe does not appear in the Hagaddah, he plays a major role in the
Jewish people's exodus from slavery. Yet despite showing great leadership and
thirst for justice, Moshe is barred from entering the Land of Israel. In fact, it
may be those very actions that are considered praiseworthy in one context that
lead to his failure to enter the land in another.

One Midrash describes an argument between God and Moshe where the
latter's killing of the Egyptian taskmaster counts against him in his request to
live forever and enter the Promised Land.

Can any liberation moment succeed without bloodshed? And what sort of
price might this take from its leaders?

The Shiur (summary, audio and source sheet) on this is here. A blog on this
idea, which also relates to the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, is here

Escape from Freedom

One small idea to end with… Although I haven’t read Eric Fromm's Escape to
Freedom, I sometimes find it difficult to understand why freedom might be
something people would prefer not to experience. In this context, I found this
article in the New York Times "Born and raised in a North Korean gulag"
fascinating.

The story touches on Shin, a North Korean who escaped from one of his
country's concentration camps. 'Now in Seoul, [Shin] said he sometimes finds
life "more burdensome than the hardest labor in the prison camp, where I
only had to do what I was told"…Shin said he sometimes wished he could
return to the time before he learned about the greater world, "without
knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a
place called South Korea."