SPECIAL COMMENTARY

Spilling the Wine

Mordechai and Esther sound a lot like
the pagan gods Marduk and Ishtar.)
he joyful holidays of Purim
The animated Prince of Egypt,
and Pesach are two of the
Dreamworks'
modern midrash on the
three festivals (Chanuka is the
Exodus story, gives us a politically cor-
other) that derive from
rect Moses who is ambivalent about
ancient stories of Jewish-gentile conflict.
the 10 plagues, especially when the
As the paradigmatic e-mail joke puts it:
,
first-born son of his childhood pal the
"They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat.'
Pharoah is stricken dead.
On closer inspection, though,
The traditional Passover
the familiar message of this
seder,
on the other hand, is
springtime holiday season
squarely
predicated on the
should give pause.
primal
mythology
of us ver-
"Oh, once there was a
sus them. "Pour out your
wicked, wicked man," goes the
wrath upon the nations who
familiar Sunday-school song,
do not know you," we recite
"and Haman was his name,
as we open the door for Eli-
sir." Haman gets strung up on
jah. "For they have devoured
the gallows he prepared for
Jacob and laid waste his
Mordechai, and "Oh, today,
STUART
dwelling place." We raise a
we'll merry, merry be/And
SCHOFFMAN
cup of wine and declare: "In
nosh some Hamentashen."
Special to
every generation they rise up
Please note that the cheerful
the Jewish News
against us to destroy us."
song does not mention that the
With liturgy like this
Jews slew 75,000 of their ene-
drummed into the Jewish
mies, women and children
consciousness, can Jews ever fully nor-
apparently included (Megillat Esther
malize their relations with the world at
8:11 and 9:16); nor does it list the 10
large? Can the State of Israel ever
sons of Haman who were summarily
achieve a truly peaceful state of being?
hanged along with their father.
The answer is a definite "maybe."
The Purim story is frightfully
For one thing, our tradition also
vengeful, let's face it. Some might call
famously teaches that Jews must deal
it downright un-Jewish. (It's interest-
fairly and justly with the Other, the
ing to note that God's name appears
stranger in our midst, for we were
nowhere in the Megillah, and that
strangers in the land of Egypt.
The rabbis also cautioned against
Stuart Schoffman, associate editor and
excessive
triumphalism. Our custom in
columnist of the Jerusalem Report, can
the
Passover
seder of spilling a drop of
be reached via e-mail at
wine
for
each
of the 10 plagues may be
steart@netvision.net.il

seen as a diminution of our sweet plea-
sure in recognition of those who died.
And according to the Talmud, the
reader of the Megilla must say the
names of all 10 of Haman's polysyllabic
sons in one breath. The Talmud says
that they all died at once; but certainly
the physical discomfort experienced by
the reader — and the speed with which
he or she recounts this grisly event —
also signifies that we ought not gloat
over the suffering of enemies.
Learning not to demonize tradi-
tional adversaries is no easy business.
The historic visit of Pope John Paul
II to Israel compelled many Israelis and
Jews around the world to finally pay
attention to the fact that the relationship
of the Catholic Church to the Jewish
people has enjoyed a steady process of
amelioration for several decades.
On the Israeli-Palestinian front,
there have been several edifying devel-
opments. The village of Katzir had
refused to allow Adel Ka'adan, an
Arab citizen of Israel (and a registered
nurse working in a Jewish hospital), to
buy a lot and build a home, on the
grounds that the town was on Jewish
Agency land and thus for Jews only.
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that
the government could not allocate
public land for such a purpose,
because ethnic discrimination against
Israeli citizens is against the law — a
landmark decision.
Ruby Rivlin, a leader of the Likud
party, declared that the ruling would
lead to "the end of Zionism and the

Noah (or, with the proper Lithuanian
pronunciation, Nayach). Since you
can't name a synagogue Beth Noah,
which has awkwardly universalistic
Torah connotations, Beth Isaac, or
Isaac's House, is what it became.
My late uncle Stanley Ellias, for
many years president of the congrega-
tion, directed its rebuilding effort. He
spoke for the community before all
three national television networks,
incidentally, and quite a few foreign
ones, too, in the aftermath of the des-
ecrating attack. of March 1967. He's
the one who made sure that everyone
who donated anything at all for the
restoration received a personal thank-
you letter from a congregation mem-
ber.
Your reporter got it right: Isadore
Mulias, who is my cousin, repeatedly
served as Trenton's mayor. He also

built the shul. But Isadore and Ben
Ellias had nothing to do with launch-
ing the Mulias & Ellias department
store. It was my grandfather, Meyer
Ellias, down from the family farm in
Bad Axe, Mich. (home of the Jewish
agricultural venture known as the New
Palestine colony) and his sister and
brother-in-law, Sadie and Meyer
Mulias (Isadore's parents), who found-
ed the store.
From 1906 — through fire, the
Great Depression and two world wars
— until 1987 — when the family
decided not to rebuild after a final,
ruinous fire, Mulias & Ellias was the
center of Trenton's central business
district, the heart of downtown Tren-
ton.

Jerusalem

T

events.
I'm for brotherly love and religious
accord; but I ask, "Where were you
when we needed you?"
This letter was not written to be
antagonistic, but to lend clarity to a
most deceptive and misleading film.
Martin B. Sharp

Farmington

Survival Story
A Family Story

Last week's cover story ("A Will To
Survive," April 7) about Trenton's
Beth Isaac congregation brings up a
lot of family histOry.
My great-uncle Ben gave the land
for the shul and they named it after
his father, Isaac Noah Ellias, who was
known to most of his many friends as

end of the Jewish State." But consider
this: Can it really be acceptable, that
after suffering so much discrimination
themselves — including restrictive
covenants in gentile-only American
suburbs — Jews should continue to
inflict such unfairness on fellow Israeli
citizens who happen to be Arab?
In late March, the Supreme Court
ruled that 700 Palestinians who had
been evicted by the army from the caves
they had been living in, south of
Hebron, should be allowed to return to
their makeshift homes. In addition,
Interior Minister Natan Sharansky
ordered that 150 acres that had been
confiscated by the government from the
Israeli Arab village of Kafr Kassem in the
aftermath of the Independence War
should, at last, be returned to the village.
Generosity of spirit is in the air, and
Jews everywhere should feel proud. And
what should we do this Passover, when
it's time to reiterate our perennial vic-
timhood? We'll recite the traditional
lines yet again, and won't stop till the
last antisemite takes down his shingle.
But let's complement them with the
liberating, visionary words of Martin
Buber, who wrote, "He who has been
reared in our Hebrew biblical humanism
is not taken in by the hoax of modern
national egoism, according to which
everything which can be of benefit to
one's people must be true and right. If
[the Zionist movement] decides in favor
of Hebrew humanism, it must have
something to say and to bring to
mankind."

❑

There's A Will
And A Way

Yes, Virginia, there really are Jews
downriver!
I know because I'm one of the sec-
ond (actually third) generation written
about in the wonderful article ("A
Will To Survive," April 7).
Unfortunately, I, like many others,
have moved out of Trenton and left
Beth Isaac Synagogue for the bigger
Jewish community in the northern
suburbs. Having grown up hearing so
many Jews in the larger community
tell me they didn't believe there could
possibly be Jews downriver or, going
even further, saying, "Where is .down-
river?" I wanted to thank the Jewish

Michael Ellias Dallen

Detroit

LETTERS on page 50

4/14

2000
49

