Is the Seder Sick?:  A Jewish Prescription for Passover

At the spunky caldron of Progressive Jewish thought, the Forward, we are told that the contemporary Passover Seder, like the Judaism that spawned it, is broken.  The ”traditional,” old time religion, Seder narrative locates Israel in an existentially hostile world; every generation discovers that there are those bent upon Israel’s destruction.

In contrast to this parochial perspective, the Globalist Progressive processes Passover as the season of pan or post-ethnic solidarity with the world’s oppressed populations.  Because the initial Seder was a sacrificial family meal, it clearly underwent change over time.  And since then, there has been ample precedent for different Seders.  Alternative Seders have evolved with their various and occasionally  conflicting narratives, be their stress on supporting exploited workers, liberating oppressed women, empathizing with and providing for people of color, disabilities.  Some Jewish Progressives turn the redemption metaphor on its head by advocating “Palestinian rights.” According to this curious Narrative, Israel becomes the oppressor Pharaoh and the Palestinian people are the innocent victims, and to use Benny Morris’s metaphor, “righteous victims.”   In point of historical fact, Palestinian peoplehood is the product of 20^th Century’s War against the Jews.  According to some versions of militant Israel, the word divided between the House of Islam, the faith of military and political submission, and the House of the Sword, the world that has failed to accept Allah’s call and Islam’s society. However, Islam’s God talks to its adherents in Arabic, while Hebrew Scripture’s God speaks to Israel in Hebrew. Until Jews and Arabs stop demonizing their adversarial “other,” a lasting peace remains a distant dream.

 

Actually, the contemporary Seder really is broken.  It is broken because its message has been mismanaged. For the Progressive Left, the past and the memory it preserves is pretext. Its real religion, the “orthodoxy” that yearns for and works to create a social democratic utopia must go unchallenged. This secular faith is strikingly similar to Orthodox Judaism’s structure, albeit with a competing agenda. For Progressive ideology, wealth and income redistribution is a moral imperative based on equity and fairness, an educational system must be established that promotes, through public education, this public ideology, and a health care system that provides universal catastrophic care to all, paid for by leveling the Worker and Bourgeoisie classes’ wealth, leaving a small, plutocratic elite that, in the Tradition of Plato’s autocratic philosopher king, sees the “light” of right social doctrine.  Because ideological “wrong” has no rights, Social Democracy has a difficult time dealing with the consequences of a free, democratic election.

 

Progressive morality is “truth,” and all other moral systems are at best deficient and ineffective, and at worst, oppressive, exploitive, and enslaving. Bourgeoisie ethics are selfish, greedy, puritanical, and inefficient in its allocation of scarce human resources.

 

In order to create a social democratic utopia, the Bourgeoisie ethic must be discredited. To accomplish this end, LGBT unions are validated as a matter of right. Single gender lavatories do not comport with Orthodox Jewish gender ethics or with the Bourgeoisie monogamous preference. While religious coercion is correctly condemned, political coercion is exciting; the chance to play a God in Whom one does not really believe can be exhilarating.  Imagining reality is almost as powerful an experience as is shaping reality.  Sexual freedom is that pleasurable, social disposition that undermines the moral authority of the conservative sensibility.

 

The Progressive “orthodoxy” has its dogmas, too. Social justice is defined by its elites, the Messianic age is realized in a world of radical equality of human persons, and its axioms, attitudes, and assertions, like its contending religious Orthodoxy,  may not be questioned or subject to review.   Failure to tow the political—theological line invariably and inevitably results in personal ridicule, social exclusion, and the tyranny of unreflective groupthink.   This social sanction is not unlike the excommunication, or herem of pre-modern Traditional Jewish society that determined insider identity by defining who is the outsider.

 

The Jewish Progressives have, to my mind, picked the wrong Orthodoxy as its adversary. Progressive Jewish intellectuals are the “rabbis” of this “orthodoxy.”  In Israel, Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshu’a, and David Grossman call for social justice, a secular public square, and themselves as the thoughtful, worthy elite. The Orthodoxy that sees Israel as an ever embattled minority is seen as selfish, self-absorbed, and hopelessly parochial, irredeemably misogynistic, is the convenient target of attack because it is the Orthodoxy it hopes to replace.

 

The popular religion Orthodox Judaism offers its adherents a Seder of obsessive ritual.  There are large quantities of food that must be consumed, so many words that must be said, questions that are to be asked, with the expected and accepted answers being ever so carefully crafted, choreographed, and most essentially, controlled. Curiously, according to canonical Jewish law, the Seder dessert matsa must be eaten while one is sated, but not overstuffed. By obsessing that one must eat three olive bulks of matsa, one olive bulk for the maror, the bitter herbs, and four mouthfuls of wine, a Seder celebrant usually finds himself fully fed relatively quickly.

 

For this “Orthodoxy,”  “Tradition” is the way we were, the way we are, and the way we are expected to remain. The Seder should be the same every year with the father presiding as the embodiment of Torah truth; we are at this Seder celebrating the unchanging pristine Torah as the Jewish anchor in eternity.  In the Tradition of my Orthodox Jewish Theological Seminary mentors, I have been conditioned to see the nuances, ambiguities, and multiple voices of the Jewish tradition.  One hears God speak and discovers God’s revelation in the canonical textual library. I asked at one cookie cutter Orthodox Seder when still in my Conservative incarnation, “why don’t we say the blessing  borei peri ha-adama before tasting the maror?”  My host replied, “Because we already said this blessing for the karpos, the wetted vegetable, and we need not recite an additional blessing.”   I then asked, “So why then do you say a blessing for all four cups of wine because,  if the hagaddah narration interrupts  and divides the wine cups into discrete acts, why does this policy not apply equally to the karpos and maror?” The host was very unhappy with my unscripted question, because there is no handy, easy, choreographed answer to this most unwelcome query. For this learned rabbi, it is “traditional” to recite the Hagaddah; corrupted as I am by the “heresy” called “philology,”  I asked if we are supposed to be reading a text  [qeriyya] or telling a story [hagadda]?  After all, “haggadah” means “telling,” we are instructed to tell the Exodus narrative to our children, not to read a text that is fixed in word, mood, or time, and without regard to the audience, whether wise, wicked, simple, or unable to assess the goings on. I was informed “this recitation is the ‘Tradition,’ the way of our ancestors.” Realizing I touched a raw nerve, I decided not to remind my host of the Talmud’s words that somehow entered the Hagaddah,  “originally our ancestors were idolaters.”

 

In cookie cutter, street culture Orthodoxy, only the master, the Superman, the Overman, or the Halakhic man, a.k.a. “the great one’s” may express an opinion, issue a Halakhic  ruling, or compose a Jewish narrative; rank and file Jews, i.e. the obedient religious adherent, do not have the standing, or the right, to an opinion or a personal, religious narrative.

 

Both Progressive and cookie cutter orthodox Judaisms deny individuals their individuality.  From the Maimonidean, formalist perspective, the only way an act can be forbidden in Jewish law is if the textual legal canon itself forbids the act.  In the Mishnah, the child asks what she or he wishes to ask; only if no questions are asked does the father ask the so-called four questions.  The Oral Law directs Jewry to apply its own best efforts to compose its own narrative, to sing its own new song, and to do so in its voice.  By offering an Orthodoxy ruled by rules rather than rulers,  the Oral Torah library projects a narrative of a questioning, probing, curious, creative Jew. This is a Jew who will hold rabbis to the Halakhah, for whom all are worthy of respect but only God gets deference.  This Oral Torah Orthodoxy presents a frontal challenge to the Progressive and cookie cutter street culture Orthodoxies because Oral Torah Orthodox Jews think for themselves with a healthy dose of Nietzchean skepticism regarding human ideologies that require uncritical submission to human elites.

 

Progressive Jewry’s orthodoxy and street culture religious Jewish Orthodoxy are mirror images of one another. Neither Orthodoxy encourages individuality, the holding of elites to public principles of law, the right to formulate one’s own creative narrative, or tolerance for other competing perspectives. For the Progressive, the capitalist is an immoral person; for the cookie cutter religious Orthodox, the worst kind of Jew is the Orthodox Jew who understands and applies Torah differently, independently, and confidently in ways that are different.  Cookie cutter Orthodoxy uses horse radish for maror and justifies the practice by invoking “Tradition.” The Oral Torah Orthodox Jew realizes that the horse radish is sharp, but not bitter, and in any case the maror is a leaf, not a root.

 

Although Maimonides rules that “important” women should recline at the Seder, R. Isserles claims [1] all of his women are important, but [2] they still do not recline.  Maimonides allows women to shake the lulav and to wear the tallit, both without the commandment blessing.  While R. Isserles allows women to shake the lulav with the commandment blessing, he disallows women from wearing the tallit because for a woman to do so is “arrogant.”  How R. Isserles knows these facts, [a] that the act of a woman wearing a tallit is an expression of arrogance, and [b] great rabbis may forbid for all Israel what the Oral Torah law permits because they may surmise that people exercising their rights must be regarded as arrogant is unstated. This “knowledge,” that people asserting their Oral Torah right may be designated “arrogant” is not authorized by the canonical Jewish narrative. Should it be argued that “Ashkenazi Jews generally follow R. Isserles’ rulings,” we recall that, contrary to popular cookie cutter Orthodoxy, R. Isserles does not require glatt kosher provisions nor that Jewish men cover their heads at all times, but he does require that tefillin be worn on the intermediate festival day. When confronted with the gap between the Traditions of Oral Torah law and the pulsating culture of the Orthodox street, one Yeshiva University Rosh Yeshiva proclaimed, “We follow R. Isserles except when we do not.”   Cultures usually organize their institutions hierarchically, with slaves and masters, conventional religious men and extraordinary Halakhic men, compliant plebes who are conditioned by habit or the whip to defer to their betters, the aristocratic patricians. In Oral Torah Judaism, the Tradition is transmitted from one generation’s Bet Din ha-Gadol to its successor.  A Tradition that is not publically accessible is not a Torah Tradition commanded  to “us, the Congregation of Jacob” [Deut. 33:4], that ended with the demise of R. Ashi, when the authority of the Bet din ha-Gadol to issue “hora’ah,” or apodictic decrees, had lapsed [bBava Metsi’a 86a]. Post-Rav Ashi rabbis have local jurisdiction but may not impose their will on other communities.  Appeals may be made to canonical text, consistent reasoning, and appropriate policy. Rabbis today are entitled to be teachers and guides, but they are not godfathers or bullies. When one leading Orthodox rabbi implied in a public lecture that a colleague who argued that agunot might be freed by marriage nullification came close to heresy, several questions arose in the “Halakhic Mind,” notably, [a] why wasn’t the “offending” rabbi simply shown to be mistaken, and not denigrated for heresy,  [b] why are Hillel and Shammai allowed to disagree collegially on matters of personal status and today’s rabbis are  not, and [c] how is a great rabbi able to ascertain if another rabbi’s unstated intentions  are heretical? Jewish law actually deals with that issue at Hoshen Mishpat 25 and 34.

 

Orthodox Progressive political thought on the Left, like Orthodox Jewish religious street culture on the Right, freely and easily disparages and de-legitimates their opponents.  Reform Jews are often portrayed by some within Orthodoxy as religiously illegitimate, and Progressives delight in savaging what it takes to be the wrong-headed political Right.

 

Modesty in Jewish Tradition is more about what men reveal than about women conceal.  The command to be modest is directed toward men, not women [Micah 6:8]. Both Progressive and Orthodox elites must learn to make more modest claims if they hope to win the hearts, minds, and consciences of their communities.

 

The Oral Torah is both a code and a map. The Jewish Seder, in its canonical iteration, allows for a free exchange of ideas, the asking of hard questions, and the respectful welcome of all four sons, with their differences and challenges. The father must impart a sense of Jewish belonging to his offspring, with their biases, hang-ups, and baggage. It is insufficient to merely read a transcript of ancient words as though those words are themselves canonical.    The father is not the “boss,” the father is God’s agent in Tradition transmission.  By respecting his children’s autonomy, the father behaves with restraint and with modesty, joining with his children as a resource for them and not a yoke over them. According to Torah, when the Law is silent, autonomy is authorized [Bet Yosef to Yoreh De’ah 1:1].  If an act is permitted by Oral Torah law, e.g. letting children ask their own, unscripted questions on Seder night,  allowing “important” women to recline at the Seder, or for that matter to lead, direct, and comment, one needs very good—and convincing—arguments to forbid it.  In the face of Oral Torah license, apodictic post-Talmudic restrictions require very convincing explanations.

 

Both the politically orthodox Progressives and theologically Orthodox religionists have broken Seders. The former want a modern, secular, social justice, Liberation Theology Narrative to supersede and replace the canonical Narrative; the latter, like the Tanna Rabbi Tarfon, feared that the Exodus was to be remembered as a one-time event that occurred in the dim, distant past.  R. Aqiva believed that the Exodus is an event in Jewish history, memory, and consciousness. And because history is re-livable in ritual gesture, ritual gestures impact Jewish destiny as well. R. Aqiva’s Seder is both faithful to the past and progressively looking “forward” to the future, to a season of freedom, sovereignty, and sanctity.  The Oral Torah Seder looks to the past for the resources to be applied proactively in the present in order to shape the future.

 

The Jew who is free is the Jew to whom God encourages, cajoles, and challenges to ask the right questions, to create a liberating community, and to compose a convincing Narrative. This Oral Torah Jew is a free person because he or she is bound by rules and not rulers, who because she or he knows Torah will challenge tyrants because she or he has the Halakhic mind—and conscience—to empower humankind to be humane, kind, and proactively good.

 

R. Aqiva’s Seder looks to the future, even though it remembers the past.  The Exodus event will one day recur, and Israel will in its future Messianic moment once again eat from the Paschal and Festival offerings that are to be restored to the saints who will be marching in toward Jerusalem’s Temple on the Passover Festival.  May we merit to be in their number.