Campus protesters holding a communal Seder on campus for the beninning of Passover
In this time when Israel and Zionism have become the representation of Judaism, Jewish people, especially Black Jews, should reflect on what it means to observe Passover during an ongoing genocide.
As a semi-practicing Black Jew, the observance of Passover has always held a special meaning for me for reasons that should be obvious. The story of emancipation from slavery is one that is ensconced in the consciousness of all African people who reside in present day United States; and of course the sobriquet of one of the greatest Black revolutionaries in U.S. herstory, the prophet warrior Harriet Tubman, was “Moses”: paying homage to her legendary campaign of delivering the enslaved from the clutches of chattel slavery and thereby representing one of the first Black people to directly confront and reject the concept of U.S. empire and the white “supremacy” apparatus it’s built upon. In fact, I actually believed in my younger days that Sister Harriet was Moses as she certainly looked and acted way more the part than the former National Rifle Association spokesperson and zealot, actor Charlton Heston.
So the question becomes, how can a Black Jew, or any Jew for that matter, observe Passover this year while also knowing that our so-called homeland, the Anglo settler experiment known as the State of Israel is in the midst of committing genocide in real time for all the world to see? How can we sit at Seder tables filled with some of the most delicious food and sing songs like “Go Down Moses” that commemorate liberation when our so-called homeland is facilitating the starvation of the same Plalestinians it has subjected to relative slavery for the last 75 years? Can we, in good faith (pun intended) decry the actions of Pharaoh when it can be argued with irrefutable warrant that the State of Israel is the new Pharaoh? I believe we cannot, and it’s why I have made the decision that I cannot,in good conscience s as a Jew, as a Black man, and as a student of the Black Radical Tradition. Here I am reminded of the sage words of the great Ella Baker: “Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.”
Of all the verses of the Torah, the one that has always spoken to me the most (I can literally still hear my mother who transitioned over 20 years ago uttering it to me when I fucked up), can be found in the book of Dueteronomy (Devarim), Chapter 16, Verse 20, “Tzedek, Tzedek, Tirdof - Justice, Justice you shall pursue.” There are many Rabbinical Sages who have offered commentary on this verse for over 5,000 years. I believe the one most germane in this moment comes from Haim Yosef David Azulai ben Yitzhak Zerachia, commonly known as Hida, a 17th and 18th Century rabbinical scholar who, of this verse, noted, “With justice you shall pursue justice. Even if the pursuit of justice must employ only just means, not falsehood.”
Hida’s assertion that the pursuit of justice must not include falsehood is extremely salient at a time when we are seeing far too many zionist zealots from Jonathan Greenblatt of the ignominious Anti Defamation League, Donny Deutsch, a frequent guest on the comical, more than journalistic, daily program Morning Joe on MSNBC (aka MSDNC), and myriad members of the derelict Democratic Party, including Joe Biden, who have instituted a body of lies to describe one of the more valiant confrontations of genocide and anglo settler colonialism on college campuses across the country as “antisemitism,” and “violent.” Many even refer to these young warriors as “terrorists.” Lashon Harah, a Hebrew term that can be literally translated as “evil tongue” but more commonly refers to the practice of gossip/lying about someone, is viewed by some Jewish scholars as one of the greatest sins one can commit. Ironically, it is in the book of Exodus that we as Jews first learn of the prohibition of bearing false witness. So put that in your zionist pipe and smoke it.
But it’s not just talking heads we’re observing commiting Lashon Harah, which includes denying the fact that the State of Israel has instituted a progrom of apartheid and is commiting a genocide .Everyday Jewish people and their acolytes are doing the same - and their efforts are becoming more frequent and desperate as the State of Israel rightfully becomes more isolated and it’s ever more clear that it has lost the narrative as the people of the world’s moral majority are standing in solidarity with Palestine.
This brings me to the fact that, on Passover, we as Jews ask a series of questions at the Seder table including two associated with a choice of the food we do and don’t eat:
- On all other nights, we eat chametz (leavened foods) and matzah. Why on this night, only matzah?
- On all other nights, we eat all vegetables. Why, on this night, maror (bitter herbs)?; and
This year these questions are especially salient as we know full well that far too many in Gaza do not have the privilege to choose what they eat, or if they can even eat at all in the midst of a famine that’s forcing many to resort to eating grass.
In addition to these questions, in the days leading up to Passover, I’ve witnessed many Jewish people, including former teachers of mine, asking extremely one-sided questions that deny the humanity of Palestinian people. And to these folk questioning how we can observe Passover when there are prisoners being held by the Palestine Resistance, I ask why is your question so incomplete? Why don’t you also ask how can we observe Passover when our “homeland” is not upholding Jewish values contained in numerous chapters and verses of the Tanakh including:
Exodus 23:9 - You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourself been a stranger in the land of Egypt.
Exodus 22:22-24 - You must not mistreat any widow or orphan. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to Me in distress, I will surely hear their cry. My anger will be kindled, and I will kill you with the sword; then your wives will become widows and your children will be fatherless.
Furthermore, why are you not asking how can we observe Passover when our “homeland” is committing acts of genocide and carrying out an illegal occupation that is perniciously similar to the conditions Jewish people reportedly faced under Pharaoh, and more recently, absolutely faced under Nazi Germany?
The fact that many of these questions are not being asked by far too many ordained rabbis makes me wonder when the last time they actually read the Torah as opposed to using select verses to transmit toxic propaganda. It’s true that Hashem gave us the Torah, but Hashem did not give us the Torah to be adulterated. The Torah was given to serve as a perpetual moral compass – especially now when it appears that far too many Jewish people beguiled and ensorcelled by the zionist industrial complex have lost their way.
So the questions I have for these folk are associated with the location of their humanity, their moral consistency, and, to this end, their overarching Jewishness, which must no longer be conflated with white “supremacy ideology that forms the foundation of contemporary zionism.
If we can pray for the release of one prisoner of war and not the other, we are exercising part-time Judaism at a time when we need full-time solidarity. We must not make strangers of people imprisoned or subjected to Israeli kangaroo courts without due process, fueled by fait accompli verdicts. This is neither Jewish nor democratic and it’s antithetical to the commitment to universal human rights we in part swear to uphold when we become Bar, Bat, and XMitzvot - Children of the Commandments.
Based on all that we are witnessing, the question I am struggling with the most is: what is the point of a so-called Jewish state that doesn’t uphold Jewish values? This question is ever more ubiquitous when, just last weekend, the duopoly voted to pillage $25 billion of the people’s money and send it to the State of Israel to continue its wonton pogrom of genocide and occupation in the name of Judaism right before one of the holiest days on our calendar. Yet somehow the U.S. government still can’t find any money for reparations to recompense and atone for slavery nor any money to compensate our Indigenous siblings for the genocide and brutal land theft they continue to experience via broken treaty after broken treaty, nor numerous social programs that emancipate people from the economic slavery of poverty.
Passover while the world is witnessing a genocide and brutal occupation in real time? I can’t do it, and I won’t do it.
Therefore, in solidarity with the undeniable valor of students and young people on campuses across the nation (Incidentally, I am looking forward to seeing the participation of HBCU students who have a duty to uphold the legacies of Assata Shakur, Kwame Ture, James Baldwin, Zora Neal Hurston, and, more recently, Ruha Benjamin), in solidarity with Jewish people of conscience who, ironically, have been described as “terrorists” by officials representing the State of Israel and the United States alike, and, most importantly, in solidarity with my Palestinian comrades, here and abroad, I will not be observing Passover. I will instead sit Shiva as we are commanded to do following a death in the family for the nearly 40,000 Palestinian souls stolen from us by the sword of colonial zionism and their western colonial accomplices.
In this season of propaganda and flat-out fabrications it’s become more clear that as much as we must exercise principled and confrontational struggle to end this genocide as part of the large journey to liberate the Palestinian people, we must contemporaneously liberate Judaism from zionism - a central thesis of Jewish formations of conscience, including our comrades at Not in Our Name and Jewish Voice for Peace.
NO Compromise ללא פשרה
NO Retreat אין נסיגה.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is a national racial and climate justice advocate. He is a proud member of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and is blessed to be the father of his eight-year-old son, Zahir Cielo. The opinions expressed in this piece are his own.
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