Yesterday I realised that it was actually the Passover dinner that pushed me to depart the tribe and never to look back. 32 years ago I decided never again to attend the Passover dinner or any Jewish religious or cultural gathering and this was actually the moment I stopped being a Jew.
From an early age I was puzzled by the strange family gathering and the bizarre celebration of the Jewish God inflicting collective punishment on the ancient Egyptian people, punishing them heavily for the alleged crimes committed by their leader (Pharaoh). I guess that this sound familiar to many of you in the light of the Gaza germicide. Netanyahu and his government didn’t happen in a vacuum, they didn’t invent collective punishment. They have been totally consistent with the Passover’s message. They basically took the role of the Old Testament God. After all, Jews own their God, they invented him, they can easily become him if they reckon this is good for the volk.
But there was one line from the Passover Hagada that remained with me because it has always emphasised to me how little I have to do with the tribe I was born into.
In the most epic moment of the Passover dinner the entire gathering burst into a song repeating this line:
‘How is it that in every generation they rise up against us to annihilate us, but the almighty God always saves us from them”
This line made it into the most memorable Passover song and maybe summarises the core fundamental Jewish cultural and spiritual DNA.
First it expresses a bewilderment (“how is it that” ) in regard to that which makes the so called ' goyim' rise. Israelis still can’t figure out what is it that made the Hamas raids its south on 7 October. They are shocked by the fact that every country around them wants them out of the region. Similarly, diaspora Jews in Britain, Germany, the USA etc. can’t figure out what is it that ignites such a rapid antagonism towards Israel, Zionism and also Jewish culture and politics.
My explanation for the Jewish bewilderment is pretty easy to grasp. For various reasons to do with the nature of the Judaic belief, Rabbinical Jews didn’t invest in historical thinking. Astonishingly enough Jews didn’t produce a single historical text in between Flavius Josephus (AD 37 - 100) and Heinrich Graetz 1817 –1891. Jews didn’t write History because rabbinical Judaism replaced historical thinking with the teaching of the Bible and the Talmud ie remember Amelek. There was no reason to create a chronicle of events because events has repeated itself. "Amalek stood up against us, and God was there to save us."
As such, modern Jewry only starts to produce a ‘historical account’ when Jewish suffering is detected. Accordingly the history of the holocaust starts in 1933, this saves the attempt to dig into that which made Hitler and his views popular in Germany. Similarly, the Jewish history of the East European pogroms starts at the moment of anti Jewish violence detected. As mentioned above, the 7 October event also happened in a vaccum. at least this is how the Israelis see it.
In Jewish culture, as the Haggada line suggests, there is always an astonishment by the neighbour becoming upset . But instead of looking in the mirror, instead of drawing the necessary conclusion, God always intervenes and saves his people.
I indeed, don’t have any doubt in my mind that the way things are in the Middle East, only divine intervention can save the Jewish State. Yet. as far as I can remember, that same God didn’t appear to save its favourite children in Auschwitz in 1944. He was so lazy on 7 October that the IDF was left with no other option but to retake the Gaza Ring's Kibbutzim.
My metaphysical take home message is that God might have forsaken his favourite children a while back for the same reason that I also want noting to do with the tribe. Another possibility is that may be the Old Testament God never existed. Cont’…
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