Humanistic Judaism View of Passover

What Is Passover?

Passover, which begins on the evening preceding the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Nissan, is the great spring celebration of the Jewish people. Passover began as a nature holiday, celebrating new life. In the priestly and rabbinic traditions, it became a commemoration of the biblical exodus and the escape from slavery in ancient Egypt. This familiar tale, contained in the traditional Haggadah, is retold each year at the seder, the Passover celebration.
Humanistic Jews view the biblical Exodus story as one of the most powerful myths of the Jewish people, a tale that relates the courage and determination of a people fleeing slavery for freedom. Secular Humanistic Judaism views Passover as a time to celebrate the modern, as well as the ancient, quest for freedom. A Humanist Haggadah includes both the legendary tale of the exodus from Egypt and the modern Jewish exodus stories, as well as the themes of its origin. Passover is also a celebration of human dignity and of the freedom that makes dignity possible.

A Humanistic Passover Celebration

Humanistic Jews question the traditional explanations of Pesakh. There is no evidence that the Exodus occurred or that the Hebrew people were in Egypt in the numbers described. The traditional Haggadah includes an anthropomorphic, active, ethnocentric God and the passive deliverance by God of the Hebrews. There are few, if any, women in this Haggadah, and there are no daughters while four sons are described. A secular Passover relates a nontheistic tale. Humanistic Jews celebrate the actions people take to improve their own lives. A cultural Passover recognizes gender equality and the value of inclusiveness so that both girls and boys, men and women feel connected to their history

So what is meant by a Humanistic Passover celebration? For one thing, Humanistic Jews continue the tradition of telling the Exodus story, but they accept that it is a story, not history. Humanistic Jews also talk about the possible history behind the story, perhaps a small slave escape that grew in the retelling. A secular Passover celebration emphasizes the themes of human freedom and dignity, the power of human beings to change their destiny, and the power of hope. Humanistic Jews recognize the power and value of many episodes in Jewish history, not only ancient times. Passover thus becomes a celebration of other times and events when people have left their homes for a new life and where human dignity and courage are honored. Events of the twentieth century record the courage of millions of Jews who left the land of their birth, escape persecution and seek freedom in Palestine and the land of Israel. Passover recognizes the struggles of millions of people to overcome oppression to achieve freedom and equality. The immigration from Eastern Europe to America, perhaps the largest Jewish Exodus ever, is a powerful part of a Humanistic Passover. Even more significant, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis in 1943 began on the first night of Passover; including a commemoration of this struggle provides a meaningful true story of a people fight for dignity, using their own power to control their destinies. The departure of Refuseniks from the former Soviet Union for Israel and America, the successes of the labor, Civil Rights and women’s movements in the twentieth century – all of these find a place in the Humanistic Haggadah. A Humanist Passover celebration is a celebration of human courage and human power, of the quest for human dignity and equality. This is what makes it one of the most meaningful and enduring Jewish holidays today.

The Seder

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Savory Hamantaschen

The same shape with some surprising new flavors for Purim.

By Rachel Harkham for Kveller

Hamantaschen as savory hors d'oeuvres? Or perhaps as a hearty supper dish? Maybe reimagined as a saucy and cheesy personal pizza? For too long the hamantaschen has been cornered into being the expectedly sweet holiday treat. When culinarily considering the iconic Purim cookie, it's clear that its most important characteristic is its shape. Its triangular form is meant to ridicule the Purim villain Haman's hat, or even more insulting, ears. And beyond the shape, a hamantaschen is about the crust that holds or cradles a flavorful filling.



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Creative Ideas for Mishloach Manot (Purim Gift Baskets)

Reprinted form ReformJudaism.org

Traditionally, mishloach manot (the sending of food) are two food items (from different food groups) sent to at least two friends. Over the years, mishloach manot have developed into sometimes elaborate food packages to many friends and family in your community.

Always on the hunt for new creative ideas for mishloach manot, here are a few ideas.

Breakfast-Themed: Some people like to give out their mishloach manot first thing in the morning so that their package is waiting at the front door. Here are some morning ideas:

• Freshly squeezed orange juice and a homemade muffin
• Muesli with yogurt and freshly squeezed orange juice

Simple and Adorable: Mishloach manot do not need to be elaborate and expensive. These ideas are easy and fun!

• Homemade cookies and a small carton of milk
• Tea and scones
• Beer and nuts (for an older crowd!)
• Mini cupcakes and a small carton of milk or chocolate milk
• Wine and cheese

Family Involvement Required: If you have young children, find ways to involve them in preparing and delivering your family's mishloach manot.

Mini cookies bouquets! Get free plastic flowerpots at your local greenhouse. Have your kids decorate the outside of the flowerpots with stickers. Older children will help make flower-shaped cookies on sticks. Place the sticks in Styrofoam at the base of the flowerpot. Fill the pot with Mike and Ikes!
Have younger kids pick two or three friends to send Mishlo-ach Manot to. Let them pick a candy or fruit and a cookie or muffin. They can decorate the basket or write a card to their friend.

Themed Mishloach Manot: Picking a theme for your mishloach manot is an easy way to stand out from the bunch.

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The Fun Holiday

A Fateful Party

It all began in Ancient Persia in the 4th century BCE. The Holy Temple that had stood in Jerusalem was destroyed more than 50 years earlier, and the Jews were subjects of the mighty Persian empire which extended over 127 lands.

Three years after King Ahasuerus ascended the Persian throne, when he felt secure in his new position, he celebrated by throwing a grand 180-day-long party for all his subjects. Following this extravagant gala, Ahasuerus hosted a smaller week-long party for the residents of the capital city of Shushan. In the palace's women's quarters, Ahasuerus' wife, Queen Vashti, hosted her own party for the Shushanite womenfolk.

On the seventh day of this party, Ahasuerus' heart "was merry with wine," and he commanded his wife Vashti to appear before all the partying men—he wanted to show them all her exquisite beauty. Vashti balked at this request, and at the advice of his advisor Memuchan, Ahasuerus ordered Vashti's execution.

The Beauty Contest

When Ahasuerus' wrath dissipated, he was lonely for a wife. His servants suggested that he orchestrate a beauty pageant. Officers would be appointed in all the king's lands, and all beautiful girls would be brought to Ahasuerus. And the girl who would find favor in the king's eyes would be the new queen.

The leader of the Jews at that time was a Shushanite resident named Mordechai. He had a cousin, Esther, who was orphaned as a young girl. Mordechai raised her and treated her as a daughter. Though she had no desire to be the queen, Esther was forcibly taken to the king's harem, to participate in the contest. While all the other contestant beautified themselves with perfumes and lotions, Esther did nothing. But G‑d had His own plans. When Esther appeared before the king, he immediately liked her, and Esther became the new Queen of Persia. But as per Mordechai's directive, Esther refused to divulge her nationality—even to the king.

Mordechai to the Rescue

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For more information on Purim, see our Holiday Spotlight Kit. If you're a JVN website, find out how you can carry our Holiday Spotlight Kit on your own website. If not, go to our website to see it. 

For more great Purim ideas, check out our    page.

Purim

Purim 2014 begins in the evening of Saturday, March 15 and ends in the evening of Sunday, March 16

Purim is celebrated with a public reading—usually in the synagogue—of the Scroll of Esther (Megillat Esther), which tells the story of the holiday. Under the rule of King Ahashverosh, Haman, the king's prime minister, plots to exterminate all of the Jews of Persia. His plan is foiled by Queen Esther and her cousin Mordechai, who ultimately save the Jews of Persia from destruction. The reading of the megillah typically is a rowdy affair, punctuated by booing and noise-making when Haman's name is read aloud.

Purim is an unusual holiday in many respects. First, Esther is the only biblical book in which God is not mentioned. Second, Purim, like Hanukkah, traditionally is viewed as a minor festival, but elevated to a major holiday as a result of the Jewish historical experience. Over the centuries, Haman became the embodiment of every anti-Semite in every land where Jews were oppressed. The significance of Purim lies not so much in how it began, but in what it has become: a thankful and joyous affirmation of Jewish survival against all odds.

For more information on Purim, see our Holiday Spotlight Kit. If you're a JVN website, find out how you can carry our Holiday Spotlight Kit on your own website. If not, go to our website to see it. 



For more great Purim ideas, check out our    page.

Sigmund Freud’s Sicko Grandson: Cruel Lover, Terrible Father, One Hell of a Painter

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

By Vladislav Davidzon for Tablet Magazine

When the previous record for the world’s most expensive painting was blown away by the price paid at auction for Francis Bacon’s 1969 triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” this past November, two widely held art-world intuitions were verified. First, that the art world is an annex of the Bourse, and second, the critical ascendancy of Freud, whose second-hand presence, as the subject of a painting by another famous artist, was a major reason for the fierce bidding.

Behind Freud’s triumphant moment is the fact that the English do not produce more than a few great artists every century, and so they embrace them with patriotic glee. Which also means that the enigmatic and reclusive grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis must now endure a degree of scrutiny of the sort that he never tolerated while living among mere mortals. A pair of newly published biographical studies, the affectionate and scabrously judgmental Breakfast With Lucian: A Portrait of the Artist, by journalist Geordie Greig and the beautifully ruminative Man With a Blue Scarf, by art critic Martin Gayford offer up a rounded view of an extraordinary and closely guarded life: Born in 1922, into the family of architect Ernest Freud—the youngest son of Sigmund—in the upscale Tiergarten district of Berlin, he was taken to London at the age of 10 by his family in 1933, as the death knell of the Weimar Republic rang. (Sigmund joined the family there in 1938, only to die a year later.) There exists a general consensus among critics that Lucian would have been too young, and too sequestered by his bourgeois family, to absorb Berlin’s avant-garde developments such as the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity); his mature style was genealogically, even inexorably linked to developments in modernist Vienna. Effusing about the recently closed retrospective at the Kunsthistorisches, the Viennese press made the obvious comparisons between his works and the limb-contorting figuration and sallow coloring of Hodler, the frigid eroticism of Klimt, Kokoschka’s macabre portraiture, and Schiele’s appreciation of the pliable female form.

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Jewish Comedy Turns Sane

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

Once an institutionalized mental patient, the comic Moshe Kasher unleashes his psychological self-abuse in the new memoir Kasher in the Rye

By Josh Lambert for Tablet Magazine

Moshe Kasher introduces one bit on his 2009 debut comedy CD, Everyone You Know Is Going to Die, And Then You Are, by saying the words, “I went to college.” Which, given that Kasher is a 32-year-old American Jew, would seem a little like his saying that he breathes oxygen.

Except that for Kasher, picking up a bachelor’s degree was anything but inevitable. In Kasher in the Rye, his new misery-lit memoir, the comedian explains that he was, for most of his teenage years, headed in a very different direction. His father, a deaf baal teshuva who found his place among the Satmar Hasidim in Sea Gate, Brooklyn, would have preferred him to train as a Talmud scholar, but even before his bar mitzvah, Moshe had discovered a passion for illegal drugs. “I was 12 years old and I found my calling,” he recalls. “Stay high, stay drunk, at all costs.” He fulfilled this program throughout his adolescence in Oakland, Calif., during which—according to his literary testimony—he was drunk or high every day, stole from grocery stores and from his mother, hung around with homeless junkies, racked up thousands of dollars in phone-sex charges, and was booted from one therapist and teenage rehab program after another. He robbed kids on the street, wrote graffiti, urinated all over the floor of his bedroom, and, at one particularly low point, was accused along with his friends of gang-raping a teenage girl.

Kasher grew up in the home of his divorced mother, who, being deaf like his father, could not hear him sneaking out of the house at night, or blasting Too $hort on her car’s stereo, even when she was sitting in the seat right next to him. But he doesn’t blame his troubles on growing up in a family doubly destabilized by divorce and deafness. How could he, when his older brother sailed through a fancy liberal arts college and onward to a progressive Orthodox rabbinical school so as to return to his hometown and serve as the senior Jewish educator at the U.C. Berkeley Hillel?

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