<p>I’m amazed each year by how difficult it is to find food without bread. As I wander around the city, I have choices like a salad or buying some meat but without the bread or rice or even corn that comes with it. Like a kebab by itself. </p>
<p>And it’s weird considering how much my diet relies on beans and other things I can’t eat for this time. Whole cuisines are essentially out. Makes me realize what the city must look like to my kid who is gluten-free; so much of the world is denied.</p>
<p>That makes me think about wheelchairs and how so much of the world is always denied to various people. And then of course about how so much of the worldh is denied because you’re born with a skin color. Denied is a strong word - perhaps “made less accessible” is better. Or you’re an outsider of some sort.</p>
<p>I was thinking about that at the Seder when it came to the moment of the Passover. It has never made complete sense. I can see part of the logic: the “Egyptians” - in quotes because they’re the fictional “other” not real Egyptians - killed the Hebrew first born so the limit of revenge/justice is the killing of their first born. But we treat the act as redemptive. That really, really bothers me (and I’ll avoid discussing how this matters in Christian belief). </p>
<p>We learn in Abraham that you shoudn’t kill your kid, your future, that child sacrifice to maintain place in the community, that sacrifice of a child to God is wrong. As written in Leviticus, don’t burn your child before the Molekh. Kids aren’t a crop. </p>
<p>But if there is redemptive power in the sacrifice of the “Egyptian” children, then what does that say about child sacrifice? </p>
<p>I can remove redemption from the story. God extracts revenge/justice on behalf of the Hebrews. OK. But that’s payback not redemption. The act of redemption is being freed and the vengeance is what it took to get that freedom. </p>
<p>I can’t remove that it happens in the story. If the Egyptians are like the ram sacrificed to Isaac, then we attribute that meaning, whatever it is. We can say Isaac is redeemed by the ram’s death or we can say that Abraham gives thanks to God for teaching him not to kill his son. I’m not sure how much those differ. </p>
<p>But there is no thanks for the “Egyptian” children dying, just thanks when the Hebrews reach safety. And the “Egyptian” children aren’t substitutes, like the ram is, because they are the cost of doing harm. The best I can do is say the act of child killing may cause God to kill your children. I can’t see any redemptive meaning in it beyond it being part of the process of the story which led to the actual redemption of freedom. To put it in more familiar terms, I don’t see that the “Egyptian” children died for the Israelites. They just died. They were innocent victims of the conduct of adults. </p>
<p>So much of the story is so great. I try to focus, for example, on the Afikommen. The 3 matzahs symbolize life: it passes into us and through us, as the list of who begat whom becomes the listing of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We eat the pieces of the middle matzah, after it has been found by the next generation, and so we partake of life, of the moment, of what we share now. I find it humorous that we are perpetually Isaac, being in this moment, and yet he is the patriarch ignored by the great narratives. </p>
<p>I’ve long thought that we are supposed to take what happened to Isaac literally: we should value life because it was almost taken from us by the stupidity of child sacrifice. But again, the ram is sacrificed in thanks for the lesson and thus for your life so what does that say about the “Egyptian” children? That they are a crop to be harvested? That they are ripe to be burnt before the Molekh? It’s kind of scary to think of the lesson as that specifically directed into one people that it treats other humans like cattle.</p>