The Rest is Explaination, Go and Learn

[attackfish]

It's Passover and everyone at my house is sick, and/or (poor Mom!) neck deep in finals, so we're not doing Seder, and I am studiously ignoring the existence of the Christian Seder t the Von Braun Center tonight, and the plan for tonight is to park myself on the couch with my sick family with my face mask and watch the new Ken Burns documentary about the Gettysburg address, because freedom!

No, seriously, utterly non sarcastically, for freedom.  Passover is about freedom and escape from slavery.  It's a holiday about the world, and social justice, and remembering that although we are free, other people are not.  It's a holiday about freedom for all mankind, and a recommitment to try to free others who are still in bondage or are oppressed, and to not oppress others.   It reminds us of our duty as human beings, that we who have suffered oppression are not so powerless that we cannot oppress others.  It reminds us that we must not use that power to oppress others, that we must look at all the peoples of the world as people, even when we think they are our enemies.  It reminds us how hateful our own oppression was and is to us.

And it reminds us of our duty not to do to others that which is hateful to us.

So I am not performing a single Passover ritual, but I am doing my best to celebrate the spirit of the holiday and observe it in my own way.

Chag Sameach, everyone!

Comments

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

I just read this in James Baldwin's open letter (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1971/jan/07/an-open-letter-to-my-sister-miss-angela-davis/) to Angela Davis, and it seems appropriate:

"We must do what we can do, and fortify and save each other—we are not drowning in an apathetic self-contempt, we do feel ourselves sufficiently worthwhile to contend even with inexorable forces in order to change our fate and the fate of our children and the condition of the world! We know that a man is not a thing and is not to be placed at the mercy of things. We know that air and water belong to all mankind and not merely to industrialists. We know that a baby does not come into the world merely to be the instrument of someone else’s profit. We know that democracy does not mean the coercion of all into a deadly—and, finally, wicked—mediocrity but the liberty for all to aspire to the best that is in him, or that has ever been."

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

That letter is beautiful and deeply sad, because it's all still happening. It does not end, and i want to get away from this world and find a better one. And it's Passover, so I'm reminding myself of the Jewish belief that we are still creating the world, so we can create a better one still.