Beyond Oppression: Passover Lessons

The Exodus story is not an obvious tale of oppressed and oppressor peoples learning to jointly create a more equal society. Instead the Israelites leave Egypt, taking Egyptian riches with them, and are chastised by their leader whenever they look back; the Egyptians suffer many plagues before Pharaoh lets the Hebrews go, and they endure further disaster when Pharaoh’s army is drowned in the Sea of Reeds. How can we use this violent and permanent parting as a model for overcoming a history of oppression and division to learn respectful coexistence?

I posed a Facebook query to this effect and was impressed at the range and depth of ideas in the off-the-cuff responses I received. I thought many seder tables might benefit from these suggestions for learning and discussion, and I wanted to post this before Passover in a way that others could access. Apologies for lack of citation and other sketchiness. All errors or failure to communicate friends’ brilliant thoughts are mine.

Failure to Dehumanize
Vision and Action
Crossers-Over
From Privilege, Activism
Maybe We’re All Riff Raff
Rabbis, Rome and Slaves
“School for Freedom”

Failure to Dehumanize

One idea, based on a study session of Kol Isha at Temple Micah (Washington, DC): The opening of Exodus suggests a network, however small, of women who were not defined by edicts intended to dehumanize either class.

The midwives, Shifra and Puah, resist the order to kill babies, thus failing to participate in Pharaoh’s plan to dehumanize the Hebrews. Moreover, the very existence of Egyptian women who help at Hebrew births would indicate some degree of mixing across class lines. (The expression introducing Shifra and Puah is ambiguous but is often interpreted to mean “[Egyptian] midwives to the Hebrew.”) This mixing, however limited, could have

• promoted among Egyptians the view of Hebrews as individuals suffering enslavement rather than a faceless class of “slaves”
• suggested to Hebrews that Egyptians were not all a faceless class of “oppressors”
• offered Egyptian and Hebrew women — and through them, men and children — views of the other contrary to whatever was coming from the palace.

Vision and Action

At least one Hebrew, Yocheved, launches her child into the Nile to evade the death-order for male babies. This evinces some degree of faith — or hope — in her Egyptian neighbors, assuming that someone will rescue the child.

At least one Egyptian, Pharaoh’s daughter (named Batya, in midrash), does in fact rescue a child from the Nile. This, too, is an act that refuses to dehumanize the other — recognizing the humanity of the baby and his family.

Perhaps there were more Hebrews launching babies into the river and more Egyptians rescuing them. But even if these two women were unique in their world, their example teaches that some on either side of a class-divide or conflict can see humanity in the other…. and that such vision is necessary for the overturning of oppression.

In contrast, Moses’ killing of the Egyptian taskmaster did nothing to overturn oppression in the long run and instead illustrates one danger of dehumanizing of oppressors.

Crossers-Over

As mentioned above, the grammar introducing Shifra and Puah is ambiguous: m’yalleldot [midwives] ha-ivriyot [Hebrew] could be Hebrews who are midwives or non-Hebrew, presumably Egyptian, midwives helping the Hebrews. Both possibilities have been followed in midrashic threads. Judy Klitsner argues that there is an important lesson here, no matter how the phrase is parsed.

The word “ivrit,” Klitsner notes, probably comes from the root for “crossing over,” and the midwives, whatever their background, live up to that name:

…it might be said that no matter their origins, they were in their essence Ivriyot. These courageous women were at odds with their surroundings much as Abraham and other Ivrim in the Bible were at odds with theirs. As we have seen, the prevailing culture in Egypt imposes its conformity among oppressors and oppressed alike. The oppressed are cowed into a state of silent suffering, and the oppressors become gradually inured to the degradation and ultimately to to the murder of unwanted foreigners. The midwives stand as Ivriyot, steadfastly resisting the corrupt conventions that have taken hold of their society. p. 58, Subversive Sequels in the Bible.

In contrast, Moses’ killing of the Egyptian taskmaster did nothing to overturn oppression in the long run and instead illustrates one danger of dehumanizing of oppressors.

From Privilege, Activism

Here is a lesson from organizer/educator Marshall Ganz, which comes via Joelle Novey. Joelle says she, while still in college, asked Ganz how people raised in privilege could hope to be good activists. The response: “Wasn’t Moses raised in Pharaoh’s house?”

Maybe We’re All Riff Raff

Another DC-area friend suggests that the “mixed multitude” (AKA “riff raff” or “erav rav”) who leave with the Israelites present another model: Were the Egyptians in this group “former oppressors” or fellow oppressed folk seizing this opportunity for escape? Among the few people identified in midrash as part of this group is pharaoh’s daughter Batya, who obviously comes from privilege but chose to throw in her lot with the former slaves.

In addition, Rebecca Boggs notes, we get out of the ban on Ammonites and Moabites becoming part of the people of Israel by declaring that we no longer know, with any certainty, who’s an Ammonite or a Moabite. Therefore, she says: “at least over time, the fixity of group identities of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ need not be a permanent barrier…”

Exploring these two ideas together might yield a sort of theology of the riff-raff: In some cases, we don’t know anymore whose ancestors benefited from acts of oppression and whose ancestors suffered harm — probably most of us come from both realities. In other cases, even where the oppression is a fresh memory and the harm obvious, maybe we need to learn to treat everyone as though they’re part of the riff-raff — a sort of desert version of “We may have come over on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.”

Rabbis, Rome, Slaves and Moses

Rabbi Alana Suskin suggested that it would be helpful to explore Talmudic views of friendship between Romans and rabbis. Christian friends add that Jesus often spoke of issues related to power and slavery.

“School for Freedom”

My study partner, Amy Brookman, suggests viewing Passover as a kind of fire drill, so that we are always “ready for lifesaving actions.”

I’ve been playing with a similar idea, treating Passover as something akin to Myles Horton’s Highlander Folk School: We take time to gather with others to explore “Leaving Egypt.” We consider possibilities and pitfalls in the story, in preparation for our own organizing. The “Leaving Egypt” model may not fit the exact circumstances outside the “School for Freedom,” but going through it helps refine our thinking, hone our skills… and equally importantly, it gives us a community similarly committed to the essential, perhaps dangerous, work ahead.

Now we are all slaves. Soon may we all be free.