Friday, April 5, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
OP-ED
HOW TO MAKE EASTER
SUNDAY DURING PASSOVER
MORE TOLERABLE:
The Exodus
Continued from Page 4
1. SKIP THE MATZOH 2. RENT MOVIES & EAT BARTON'S TV MUNCH
3., SHOP AT GAYNORS
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Have a happy and healthy
Passover.
same root experience. Islamic
legal methodologies of perfection
strongly parallel (with mutual
influence) the Halachah, the
Jewish way through history. Be-
tween Christianity and Islam,
almost half the world is pro-
foundly shaped by the after effects
of the Exodus event.
In modern times, the image of
redemption has proven to be the
most powerful of all. The growth
of technology, science, and the
conceptions of human freedom
have been like kerosene soaking
the wood of human hope and ex-
pectation. So suffused are humans
with the vision of their own right
to freedom and improved condi-
tions, that any revolutionary
spark sets off huge conflagrations.
In a way, Marxism is a secularized
version of the Exodus's final
triumph. Here the liberator is
dialectical materialism and the
slaves are the proletariat — but
the model and the end goal are the
same. Indeed, directly revived
images of the Exodus play as pow-
erful a role as Marxism does in the
worldwide revolutionary expecta-
tions. In South America, the
theology of liberation directly
touches hundreds of millions who
strive to overcome their immemo-
rial poverty.
The secret of the impact of the
Exodus is that it does not present
itself as ancient history, a one-
time event. The key Jewish way to
remember the Exodus is re-
enactment. Thus, the event offers
itself as an ongoing experience in
human history. Every generation,
in every geographic area, is able
to experience it again. In the
words of the Haggadah: In every
generation, a person is required to
see him/herself as come out of
Egypt. The event is not just pre-
sent in memory. Through re-
enactment, people talk about
Exodus and tell the tale again.
The individual "eats" the event,
"sings" it and enters into it to-
tally.
The Exodus event is re-told and
re-enacted as a family. Freedom is
best mediated in the family. It is
the mark of freedom that one can
have a family and eat with it and
protect it and look out for it.
A slave is unable to have a fam-
ily. His wife is available to the
master; his children's paternity is
doubtful. He cannot protect the
children from being sold, or worse.
The very ability to sit as a family
and sing the story of freedom is in
itself the most powerful state-
ment of the presence of freedom.
In the initial phase, the slave
often longs to go back to slavery.
The taste of freedom is designed to
communicate the permanence of
freedom and the pleasure of it. In
the initial phase, particularly in
Freedom means
accepting the ethics of
responsibility.
transition, the slave often thinks
of freedom as the right to abuse
others and to lord it over them, as
was done to the slaves.
Freedom means accepting the
ethics of responsibility. Family is
the great symbol of that commit-
ment. Freedom does not mean
avoiding involvement or playing
the field. Freedom means freely
chosen commitment and obliga-
tions that give me my humanity
as against dictation by others,
carrying out orders which leave
me more impoverished and more
degraded than before.
The family also is the carrier of
memory. Parents tell the story to
children. The past is not cut off
but a living part of the lives of the
individuals. At the same time, the
children are not merely depen-
dent. They ask the questions; they
participate in the discussion.
Thus, by the magic of shared
values and shared story, the
Exodus is not some ancient event,
however Influential. It is the
ever-recurring redemption; it is
the event from 1250 B.C.E. which
is occurring tonight; it is the once
and futur*redemption of human-
ity. The Exodus is the most inf-
luential historical event of all
time, because it happened not
once; it re-occurs whenever people
open up and enter into the event
again.
Copyright 1985, the National Jewish
Resource Center.
From Everyone at United Savings & Loan.
tAszfaa
i
Alfred L. Deutsch
Chairman of the Board
Dennis B. Deutsch
President
Religious News Service
40
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An Israeli soldier wearing a yarmulke and tefillin takes a moment to
pray in the turrent of his tank prior to an Israeli patrol in the southern
part of Lebanon.