the traditional pass-over night

The traditional pass-over night

By David Verveer

The high lights of my personal Jewish life is the yearly celebration of the Pass-over night festivities, in which we sit together with family and friends and remember our (the Jews) exit from Egypt. I know it is a long time ago, without any serious historical base, with a mixture of stories and traditions, which are kept alive, throughout the ages, not withstanding the difficult environments of the Jews of that time.

In actual fact the precise wording of the story are irrelevant, the idea behind this evening is the celebration of freedom, combined with the fact that our freedom was achieved through struggle and should not be taken for granted.

Nothing what I have said until now is new, we say it every year, and fully enjoy it, as tradition provides a certain feeling of belonging, just if we say, this is us, (with help of course) we beat the Egyptians, toke a shortcut through the desert (only 40 years), and liberated our promised land. But there is a problem; we had to repeat those actions over and over again, not only by fighting the Egyptian, Malachite, Canaanite, Kazak, German and Arab, etcetera, and surviving the hell of Babylon, the Pogroms, Holocaust and now surviving Terrorism, as we, the Jews, have a task. In old days, we would say, our task was to spread light to the gentiles, which we did and still do in the many fields of science and research. Don't forget that both Christianity and Islam came from accepting the Jewish monotheistic laws, and even though, not admitted by Christians, Jesus was a Jew and died a Jew (and was not crucified by Jews, according the Pope).

The last supper, celebrated also by the Christians, is the same traditional pass-over night ceremony, a family affair in which the participants relate the past and the yearnings for freedom.

Even though, we (the Israelis) talk about freedom and equality, living in the holy land, we are far from holy; we forget that in our society there is no full equality, and that we act badly with our next door neighbors, the Palestinians (even though, there is a somehow justified historical rift between them and us) we forget that they are also human (and most likely family) and should have the same rights, not only by law, but also in the street and daily life, we even treat Jews (or those who claim they are Jews, but don't have a DNA similarity) not as fully equal, specially if there skin color is darker than the average Israeli.

But enough about our human shortcomings, by tradition, we invite others to participate, and many foreigners are invited to participate in the traditional Seder (Passover) night. The point I try to make, is that the Passover night celebration has nearly no religious function, the prayers and precise wording are irrelevant, the evening is a traditional tool to explain to the next generations, the importance of humanity and freedom for everyone.

The infamous blood libel claiming Jews use Gentile child blood in preparing the Matzo (unleavened bread), which caused pogroms and execution of Jews, originate from Medieval Gentile cults. The first recorded instance of a blood libel against Jews was in the writings of Apion, who claimed that the Jews sacrificed Greek victims in the Temple of Jerusalem. After this, there are no existent records of the blood libel against the Jews until the 12th century legend surrounding William of Norwich, first recorded in the Peterborough Chronicle. The libel afterward became an increasingly common accusation. In many subsequent cases, anti-Semitic blood libels served as the basis for a blood libel cult, in which the alleged victim of human sacrifice was venerated as a Christian martyr. Many Jews were killed as a result of false blood libels, which continued into the 20th century, with the Beilis Trial in Russia and the Kielce pogrom in post-World War II Poland.

Peculiar, that these accusations repeat themselves throughout history up to current times. I can not imagine why the Matzos are chosen for this anti-Semitic function, don't we Jews not suffer enough, by having to eat them, causing serious digestion problems, and funny enough, Jews are not allowed to mix meat products with milk products, and consuming blood is forbidden, the animal slaughtered is drained from blood, according Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughter laws.

But the main part of the celebration is of course the meal, based on many courses, from soup with kneidlach, gefilte fish, meats and vegetables and wine, making the day after, a day of remorse for the damage done to the weight regime and phone calls telling the entire world, what we had to eat, how it was and with thanks for the wonderful night, which made this Seder one of the best ever.