Passover and Liberation

So now as we’re heading into the seventh day of Passover, I can’t help but think of the events of the past week in the so-called “blogosphere”: the fallout from arguments about appropriation continued, and ramped up in the last couple of days when pictures from the book leaked to the rest of us and there was silence.

Anyway, if I’m going to mention this, I should mention Amanda’s apology and I’m not interested in rehashing this entire debate at this time, because I’m not sure that’s any of my business. The entire sordid affair is here, for the curious. Those pictures were pretty jarring, but it turns out they’ll hopefully be omitted from the next printing.

What this is about is the lessons here and how Passover applies. Passover was meant to celebrate the liberation of Israel from bondage in Egypt, giving Jews a powerful reminder of God and God’s role in the freedom and dignity of mankind. The blowup that has ensued this past week shows us just how much still needs to be done. We as Jews need to show support and solidarity for all those oppressed people of the world. That things like this still happen is evidence of how far we have to go and how our work is never done, but neither can we shirk the responsibility.

So the question still remains, what can we do and how can we help? I don’t actually have an answer for that but we must start there. The answers lie with the oppressed people themselves - listen to them, not patronizingly, we can’t insist we have to take charge of these anti-racism movements because that’s not our job - our job is only to listen, assist, and allow them to speak for themselves, and not tell them to sit down and be patient while we take care of other problems, as though they’re not interrelated.