Oppression Does Not Ennoble

We were slaves in the land of Egypt.

We killed all of their first born sons, the moment we had the chance.

Today we are free to choose our own path, one not dictated by whips and iron chains and chambers. But the experience of slavery guarantees nothing. It’s only through enormous effort that we can become liberated, both from Pharaoh’s whip and from Pharaoh’s throne.

May this Pessah instill in us all the strength to try, enormously, continuously.

May we try.

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1

Moriel Rothman-Zecher on May 1, 2016 at 18:04

Michelle — thank you so much for taking the time to engage with my dvar Torah, and for your beautiful words. I also love and cling dearly to the Midrash which talks about God reprimanding the angels as the Egyptians drowned, saying, are not they too my children? But I think it is significant to note that the Rabbis who wrote the Midrash, while still certainly oppressed in their own way, were no longer under the yoke of Egypt, literally or even figuratively (as illustrated by the fact that they had the liberty to study and learn and teach and critique and reprimand and self-censor and turn even the grimmest of texts into portals for decency). I cherish the freedom from oppression which enables me to see outside the boundaries of personal and collective rage; I do not take it for granted. I want to live in a world (and in a country, and in a city: start smaller, and then work outwards) in which all people have this freedom.
2

Michelle Gubbay on April 22, 2016 at 19:38

An intriguing and welcome dvar Torah, thank you for marking the day with a posting. I also appreciate the succinctness – so much to say, so much you have already said i.e. I recognize you are not trying to “say everything” here. Yet I can’t help but write a few thoughts inspired by what you wrote, and my own restlessness about what this holiday means to me now:

At first I was going to say that “we” i.e. the collective of the people, did not kill all the firstborn. That was the “leadership” – in this case not even Moses, but “God.” But: what does that mean, for those of us who don’t take this story literally, but rather view it as mythic i.e. with an underlying meaning? What is the meaning? At the moment before leaving slavery, the desire is enormous for revenge, the collective consciousness is filled with such anger and frustration and restlessness that no distinction is made between the Egyptian rulers and the most innocent of civilians, and the desire is to strike out, to hurt, in the most hurtful possible way.

And yet … in the rabbinic tradition, when we recite the Ten Plagues, we do so not with a sense of glory, but soberly, shedding a drop of wine, of joy, from our cup with each plague we recite. And then there is the midrash on the drowning of Pharoah’s pursuing army in the Red Sea: God’s angels rejoiced and God reprimanded them saying, “Are these not also my children?”

So all of that is recognized in our tradition: on the one hand, the desire for freedom for ourselves and the hunger for revenge; and on the other hand, the ability to acknowledge the humanity of those who have been born into the opposing side and are acting out that reality, and the sorrow at suffering, universally. And all of that was while we were still oppressed, and just beginning our path to liberation. And what, now? As you write so beautifully: do we recognize that when we have been liberated from the oppressor, it does not mean we have been liberated from his “throne,” his dualistic consciousness of powerful and powerless, of slaveholder and slave, of us and the “other,” the stranger whom we are told over and over again in the Torah to “know” and “love” because we were once strangers in Egypt – and yet the Jewish tradition is at war with itself on this, in contradiction with itself in our contradictory world So, yes, as you write: what do we choose now?