With Purim over, it’s time for me to start updating Tri-Valley Cultural Jews’ Secular Humanistic Passover Haggadah for our community seder April 27. It has always been pretty easy to include references to current events that can be informed by the Pesakh story, but this year, I’ve got a problem. For many years, our haggadah, in telling the story of our people’s central myth, has included this passage:
Traditionally we dip ten drops from our second cup to mourn the victims of the ten plagues visited upon the Egyptians and in memory of the Egyptian soldiers who were killed as the Red Sea closed over them.
Though they were our enemies, they were human, too, and must have suffered terribly. Even in the most righteous of national liberation movements, there are victims.
As we celebrate national liberation, we remember those for whom someone else’s liberation is tied to their own tragedy. We dip from our own cup of happiness the sorrow of others.
This year, I’m having some trouble figuring out who’s who. We’ve always understood the victims of the 10 plagues to have been innocent, ordinary Egyptians farming the land the Pharaoh owned. (He owned all the land.) Our story wants us to accept that their suffering was necessary for our own liberation. Likewise, the Egyptian soldiers were conscripts, not willing collaborators, who, although they were not the enslavers, had to be sacrificed for a greater good, our greater good.
But what are we saying when we say “someone else’s liberation is tied to their own tragedy?” In justifying the suffering of the ancient Egyptians, are we justifying the suffering of the Gazans today? The civilian population is just as innocent as the ancient Egyptian farmers in our story. Do we believe their suffering is sad, but necessary for our own freedom?
But on the other hand, are we justifying the suffering of the victims of the October 7 Hamas attack because Hamas says their actions were in furtherance of Palestinian liberation? Palestinian self-determination is certainly a righteous cause. Are those innocent Israelis and guest workers merely necessary victims in service to their national liberation movement?
How are we to reconcile our acceptance (albeit a sad acceptance) of the suffering of innocents in ancient times with our natural revulsion toward the suffering of the October 7 victims and the children of Gaza? What are we supposed to do with our story now?