Celebrating Freedom
Passover, which begins next Monday night, is the holiday best-loved and most widely celebrated by American Jews, and with good reason. It combines family, food and a readily understandable message — freedom and human dignity — to create a universal appeal that no other holiday can match. Hanukkah may get more media attention, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur may be more fraught with theological weight, but Passover is the festival that brings the folks home.
In many families, the debates around the Seder table will be more fraught than usual this year. It’s a deeply divisive time. Old signposts are disappearing, and many of us are torn between values that seem to be in conflict: Human rights and dignity on the home front versus defending our freedom from enemies around the world. The economy versus the war. Bush versus Kerry. It’s a debate that leaves not just the nation but most families and even individuals torn in half.
It’s the wisdom of the Jewish tradition to institutionalize even these family feuds, turning them into an annual ritual where discussing the meaning of freedom, past, present and future, is combined with drink, song and fellowship. Family becomes community and the struggles of the past live again. If we’re lucky, we leave the table a bit wiser about tomorrow’s struggles and a bit closer to the ones we love.
We wish all our readers a joyous holiday season.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
