Passover: Our Liberation is Not Complete: A Sermon by the Reverend David Weissbard, April 9, 2017
Preacher: Reverend David Weissbard
“Passover: Our Liberation is not Complete”
David R. Weissbard
The First Universalist Society
Central Square, NY
April 9, 2017
[my Seders]
My paternal grandparents were Romanian Jews who came to this country early in the last century. My maternal grandparents were White Anglo Saxon Protestants whose ancestors had come here early in the history of the European settlement of the continent – on the Mayflower on my grandmother’s side – from Holland to New Amsterdam on my grandfather’s. My parents met in Albany where my father had moved from Brooklyn to seek work with the State during the depression; my mother was there attending the teacher’s college. They encountered one another in politically progressive circles, and married. They soon joined and became active in the Unitarian Church, in which I was raised.
I was taught that I was lucky to be a Unitarian because that made me open to all kinds of religious perspectives. I could tap into the best of the Jewish and Christian traditions. I would go to a Methodist Sunday School when we visited my mother’s parents, where I was taught to sing “Jesus Loves Me,” and I could celebrate Christmas and Easter; and I could also celebrate Hanukkah and Passover with my father’s family.
[related to UU‘ism]
Later, after I had studied such things, I began to realize that the underlying theme of Passover is a theme that is close to the heart of Unitarian Universalism. For a long time I thought it would be worthwhile to create a Seder service, the ritual through which the Passover story is celebrated, as an opportunity to stress the meanings with which Unitarian Universalists identify. I finally did that while I was serving the Fairfax congregation, and when I went to Rockford, with the addition of art by a talented member of the congregation, we published the service that has been used in UU congregations and homes across the country.
Since only a minority of our members of this congregation have ever attended a Seder, I decided that this morning I would share with you what I see as the linkage of Passover to Unitarian Universalist values.
[the Passover Story]
Passover is the celebration of the mythical history of the Jewish people. I trust you know the story as it appears in the Hebrew Scriptures (what Christians refer to as the “Old Testament.”) Myth, of course, is not the same as history.
According to the myth, the ancient Hebrews were a nomadic people, some of whom emigrated to Egypt during a drought. They were surprised to find that one of their number, a man named Joseph, had, through misadventures and then good fortune, preceded them and become a trusted advisor to the Pharaoh. The immigrants became plentiful. The problem was that after a time, things changed in Egypt and a ruler came to power who did not know Joseph and was afraid of the Hebrew people. To keep the strangers from becoming too powerful, he made them slaves. He ordered the killing of all the male children born to the Israelites. One was saved and adopted by Pharaoh’s own daughter. The boy was raised in the court and was given an Egyptian name, Moses. As an adult, he came upon a taskmaster beating Israelite workers and killed him. Moses fled from Egypt and took refuge with a Midianite priest, and married his daughter.
The Israelites back in Egypt continued to suffer and called upon their God for help. Their God turned to Moses, appearing to him in a burning bush on Mount Horeb, the Mountain of God. He identified himself as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and the God of Moses’ father. This God commissioned Moses to lead his people to freedom. Moses wanted no part of it, but accepted the charge.
Moses went back to Egypt, persuaded the people to follow him, and then persuaded the Pharaoh to let his people go, by doing magic and finally by bringing ten successive plagues upon the Egyptians. After the killing of the first born sons of the Egyptians, Pharaoh consented to let the Hebrews go. We are told that their deity, for unspecified reasons, hardened Pharaoh’s heart so he sent troops after the Israelites, and the Lord opened the Sea for the Israelites to pass through, and then closed the sea to drown the pursuers. [Not exactly fair play on their God’s part.]
The people followed Moses through the desert, griping all the time about how much better off they had been in Egypt. We are told they were in the dessert 40 years before they finally arrived in the land of Milk and Honey their God had promised them. Moses, possibly because of the murder he had committed, never got to the Promised Land himself. Although he was healthy, he died and was buried in an unmarked grave. Under the leadership of Joshua, the Chosen people prevailed against the barbarian Canaanites who happened to be living in the land God had promised them, and created Israel. (Interesting how history repeats itself.)
[dubious historicity]
I trust that sounds familiar. Archeologists tell us that this story is not without some historical foundation, but it’s infinitely more complicated than it’s presented to be in the scriptures and in the Seder. But historicity is not an essential for most of us. We celebrate Christmas each year, not because we believe a god in human form was born to a virgin named Mary, but because we find meaning underlying the myth. Unitarian Universalists do, however, tend to critique the Christmas story, so we should do the same with the Passover one.
Much of what we have as a history of the Hebrew people was written down a minimum of 400 years after the events. It is a blending of oral tradition, legends shared, possibly sung, around desert campfires, with the way religious leaders believed things should have happened. It is, to say the least, an idealized history. A great deal is left out, much is reshaped, and some is created out of whole cloth.
[the historical version]
There was no such thing as an Israelite or Hebrew people in or near the time of Abraham, who was probably contemporaneous with Hammurabi – about 1700 BCE. What there were were small clans of wanderers of semitic stock. The word ibri, the root of Hebrew, means transient, nomad, and did not refer to any unified ethnic group. They were adventurers, soldiers of fortune, gypsies. It is most likely that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were the leaders of separate clans, each of which had a separate God – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, but in the course of preparing a tradition, they were retroactively melded into one family and their Gods into one God.
There are ancient records of tribes out of the desert, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, and Habiri who moved into Palestine – not as conquerors but as immigrants who settled peacefully, intermarrying with the natives. There were Habiri who settled in the North of Palestine and adopted the agricultural life and much of the religion of the Canaanites. These people, who came to call their country Israel, never went to Egypt and never related very well to their cousins who did.
It is a matter of historical record that a tribe called the Hyksos, or Desert or Shepherd Kings, invaded and conquered Egypt in about 1730 BCE. They were not an ethnic group but included Hittites and Semites and Hurrians. The Jewish Historian, Josephus, believed they were Hebrews, and it is possible that some of them were. It is likely that they were at least friendly to the Hebrews, and would have welcomed some of them in, as we are told in the Joseph legend, except that the Joseph story is actually a retelling of an older Egyptian legend about a man with jealous brothers and a coat of many colors. It appears most likely that only a few Hebrew families, possibly only the descendents of Levi, emigrated to Egypt. The Levites are the only Hebrew tribe who were recorded as having Egyptian names.
An Egyptian historian, Manetho, suggested that the Hyksos invaders were savage and raped, burned, and pillaged the cities. The Egyptians put up with this foreign domination for about two hundred years, and then in 1550 BCE, they united to throw them out. Josephus suggests that the Exodus was really the expulsion of the Hyksos, but that doesn’t really wash — people who had been rulers would not have described themselves as slaves as the Hebrews did.
There is evidence of a heavy incursion of Habiri into Palestine about a hundred years after the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt. Letters have been found from local governors of Egyptian provinces asking for help against the Habiri, and warning that the Habiri would take over if help was not forthcoming. Archeologists suggest that the Hebrew domination in the North of Palestine was accomplished by about 1400 BCE. The tribes were loosely organized into a confederation or amphictyony at Schechem near Mount Gerizim by Joshua, whose name is recorded in the cuneiform records. It is most likely that Joshua and Moses never met, and that Joshua was actually the hero of the kingdom in the North of Palestine, whose story was later incorporated in Moses’ story by the writers in the South who sought to meld the two traditions, just as later Christian writers combined the story of John the Baptiser with that of Jesus to bring his followers on board.
It seems likely that only some of the Habiru left Egypt after the defeat of the Hacks, and those who remained could have been put into bondage. Inscriptions have been found which refer to the ‘Apar [probably the Habiri] having done much of the heavy work of rebuilding the cities during the reign of Ramses II.
The Exodus, such as it was, is likely to have occurred during the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptha, in about 1230 BCE, two hundred years after the ejection of the Hyksos by the Egyptians. The Hebrew legends tell us that the Exodus was a movement of six hundred thousand men plus dependents. Actually, that is based on the misplacement of a later census done in the time of King David (recorded in II Samuel 24.). The Scriptures tell us that two midwives were sufficient to care for the entire group, and remember, they were wandering from oasis to oasis in the desert. Can you imagine moving six hundred thousand people –providing for food, water, toilet facilities? No way! It is most likely that the emigration Moses led was composed only of several families of the Levite clan, with whom Moses was identified.
The great Bible scholar, Theophile Meek, concedes that:
It is true that the account of the Exodus as we have it now in our Bibles, seems to represent all the tribes as being in Egypt and all as a unit wandering through the wilderness, because that was the later interpretation. As the various tribes and groups of tribes became consolidated into a national unit, as they did by the time of David, the traditions of each became the common possessions of the whole, and as the tribes and their traditions fused into one, the various episodes naturally became the experience of the nation as a whole; the experience of each became the experience of all.
In addition to the fact that not all the Hebrews ever went to Egypt, there is evidence that many of them did not leave Egypt with Moses- there were references to their continued presence during the reign of Rameses IV a century after Moses’ Exodus.
Erich Peet referred to speculation about the route of the Exodus as “a happy playing field for the amateur.” The problem is that the records we have combined the travels of the settlers of the north under Joshua and the settlers of the south under Moses, more than a century later.
An obstacle to our understanding is that two very different histories of two very different peoples were forced together in a way which confused the whole story. As Theophile Meek points out:
Only for a brief period were [the Hebrews] ever united and then not very closely, when they were engaged in a common cause against a common foe, the Philistines. As soon as the pressure was removed in the time of David, their differences quickly reappeared. Internal dissension developed and grew in intensity until the two peoples on the death of Solomon split definitely into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah and went their separate ways. Not even the long reigns of David and Solomon or the reorganization of the state by Solomon could weld the two peoples into a homogeneous kingdom or make Israel feel that it was one with Judah. As two peoples they began; as two peoples they insisted on living, even to the bitter end.
Any historical claim the Jewish people have on the land of Palestine is purely romantic and mythical. The truth is that an independent Jewish state existed for a very brief time, indeed.
But historical fact is not all this is about. This mythical history has served the Jewish people well as they spread across the face of the earth and suffered at the hands of tyrants and bigots, through Inquisitions and pogroms. The repetition of this history, as they wish it had been, has given them unity and strength. But that’s not all – if it were, it would be only of passing interest to us. Along with the myths there are values.
[values: continuity]
One is the celebration of continuity. We act sometimes as if we have sprung to life ex nihilo – out of nowhere. We are products of our past – a collective past. Episcopal Bishop James Spong wrote a book on how ignorant it is of Christians to believe they can understand Jesus or Christianity without understanding the Judaism of which he was a manifestation. We cannot understand Unitarian Universalism without understanding the Judaism and Christianity which are the roots of our religious tradition.
Central to the Passover Seder is the assertion that it is WE, not our ancestors alone, who were slaves in Egypt. We are different than we would be, if our story, which is at least as important as our reality, did not include slavery in Egypt and liberation from that slavery.
Think for a moment about that history. As I said earlier, that history of slavery is a demonstration of the error of the Jewish historian, Josephus, in claiming that maybe it was the Hebrews who were kings in Egypt. Who claims slavery as a heritage who can claim to be of royal blood? We were slaves. One Haggadah says it this way:
We gather tonight to tell the ancient story of a people’s liberation f rom Egyptian slavery. This is the story of our origins as a people. It is from these events that we gain our ethics, our vision of history, our dreams for the future. . . Our tradition requires that on Seder night, we do more than tell the story. We must live the story. Tonight we will re-experience the liberation from Egypt. We will remember how our family suffered as slaves; we will feel the exhilaration of redemption. We must retaste the bitterness and must rejoice in our newfound freedom. We annually return to Egypt in order to be freed. We remember freedom in order to deepen our commitment to end allsuffering; we recreate our liberation in order to reinforce our commitment to universal freedom.
[value: empathy]
That carries us to an important value. Not only are we free because of the risks taken by our ancestors, but by identifying with slaves, we are called to identify also with those who suffer from slavery now – and by slavery we mean injustice and exploitation. If we come from slaves who were freed, there is an implied obligation to work for the liberation of those in our time who are enslaved. It’s about empathy.
[value: action]
And it’s about action. Freedom did not come easily to our ancient ancestors -they had to take risks and they suffered along the way. For forty years they wandered the dessert because they were led by a man, who therefore couldn’t stop and ask for directions. But, seriously, think of how hard it was for them to leave the security of Egypt. We often leave out the fact that even oppressive security is hard to give up – think of women in oppressive relationships today – think of the courage required of the peasants in Europe who left their homes to come to America, the refugees in Syria who want to come here now.And yet, Passover celebrates that drive inside human beings to take the great risks for freedom, to seek a better life in spite of the risks. Think of the American colonists, think of the natives of South Africa, think of the Cubans under the dictator Battista, think of the Jews under the Czar, think of the women who have led the fight for the vote and equality in America. It was not only in the ancient past that people risked for freedom. And freedom was not instant. It required that journey. And we are all on a journey.
Roberta Israeloff has written:
The potential to be enslaved and to make our tentative way to freedom is perennially within us. It’s not simply that each generation is commanded to feel as if it was personally brought forth from Egypt, but that at every moment we are presented with the opportunity to liberate ourselves.
Richard Hirsh says:
[Passover] is replete with perpetual tensions between slavery and freedom, between redemption and exile, between homeland andwandering, between what has already happened and what has yet to occur.
[not only then, but now]
We are always in danger of submitting to slavery. It is one thing to be free, and a very different one to avail oneself of freedom – to act free. Often the greatest oppression comes not from force but seduction. We face continually the challenge of withstanding the temptations of comfort for the sake of what we know in our hearts is true and good. And we make compromises. And they lead to further compromises. And before we know it, we are enslaved by chains we have ourselves forged.
Passover is a powerful reminder that the work of liberation is not in the past only, and it is not for others only. Until we can testify that we are able to live fully in accord with that which we believe is best, in a world in which others are also free, we are not yet liberated. The work of liberation goes on.
The traditional Seder ends with the hope, “Next year in Jerusalem,” which is a prayer for the future – a prayer over the centuries for the restoration of what the Jews viewed as their homeland. Today that prayer has come to symbolize for others of us, “next year in a time of freedom for all people – an achievement to which we commit ourselves.”
We need to remind ourselves, from time to time, to cherish our dreams of a better world, and to commit ourselves to their achievement. For some of us, the annual celebration of Passover serves as such a reminder. If that is not your choice, I encourage you to find a way to remind yourself of the gifts which you have received from the past, and the challenge you face to do what you can to pass on a better world to the next generation.