Sacred Pain and Chicken Soup

 

Sacred Pain and Chicken Soup

I’ve mentioned before on this bimah, I think, that since October 7, I’ve been meeting semi-regularly with a small group of Jewish and Muslim leadership. We’ve mostly been speaking about what’s happening within our communities and how our communities relate, or don’t relate, to one another. A few weeks ago, I joined some of those friends at a local mosque. It was our first time meeting outside of a living room, which always felt a little quiet and maybe even secretive - but there were no issues with inviting us into their sacred space. Some weeks before that, I invited a group of Muslim student imams and future leaders from Indonesia into New London Synagogue for a tour and some learning, too. I don’t want to shy away from it - there were some awkward questions. But there was also meaningful conversation and I think we all left understanding each other better. 

The truth is, I don’t do enough interfaith work. There’s always too many other things to do. But it is important, and it is the kind of work that makes a difference. I have long believed that the more inclined we are to see one another as people first, the less inclined we will be toward stereotypes or extremism. 

The opposite side of that has presented itself to me twice in recent weeks. 

Last month, when Rabbi Jeremy and I were travelling and learning about what’s happening in and around Israel, we spent some time in Hevron. Hevron is, as you may know, very heavily segregated. It is tense there in a way that is palpable. We witnessed some of that tension and some of the awfully distinct animosity that comes with it. We stood, also, at the grave of the terrorist Baruch Goldstein - who murdered 29 Muslim worshippers at prayer in 1994 - and whose grave is still honoured and declares him to have died al kiddush Hashem, sanctifying the name of God. I don’t want to dwell there. But it is telling, as one walks around Hevron, that there are all these memorials saying things like “Rabbi So-and-so was murdered here”. That unmistakable distrust and simmering anger comes from somewhere unfortunate and real.

The other piece that’s on my mind, though, is not sourced in some kind of deep-seated and identifiable pain. You may have seen that David Miller is back in the news. David Miller is a disgraced academic who keeps finding himself in the news because of increasingly absurd and antisemitic statements. This week, it was a request that people seek out and target Zionists.

I’m not bringing him up to compare him directly to Hevron - but because it reminded me of something he said a few years ago: “Chicken soup is a Zionist plot.” He was mocked for this - for good reason - but doubled down on it. What he was referring to was an interfaith event, between Jews and Muslims, making chicken soup for the homeless. His theory is that we, the evil Zionists, use interfaith relationships in order to normalise Zionism in the Muslim community. 

It’s clearly antisemitic and ridiculous, but it’s on my mind, because - well, we do use interfaith relationships in order to normalise existing together. That’s kind of the point I made a moment ago, when I said: “The more inclined we are to see one another as people first, the less inclined we will be toward stereotypes or extremism.” The problem is that people like David Miller don’t really want us to be less inclined toward stereotypes or extremism. Separating ourselves from the community we hold distrust for helps ferment that distrust. That’s not a flaw in Miller’s perspective; it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

It is, I must say, a complicated world to become Bar Mitzvah in. A complicated world to raise children in, to live in as a Jew. But fortunately for us, our tradition has much to say about what it means to exist in this world, the world as it is with all its faults, because it is not new to us. 

We are now officially in the period of time that leads us from Purim to Pesach. Both holidays are no strangers to the experience of being strangers. 

The easy version of my earlier point is that we must try to interact with the outside in healthy ways to work against extremism (internally within us, and externally within others). I stand by that. But Pesach actually tells us that the opposite can also be true: that we can experience the outside world in a way that is truly, deeply painful, and alarming, and gives us every reason and right to close doors - and we can come away from that experience as more caring and open people, as people who want to change the world so that nobody has to experience what we experienced. 

It goes like this:

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. God brought us out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. And then God tells us, time and time again throughout the Torah, that the lesson of Pesach is that we must treat the stranger better than we were treated. 

Exodus 22:20: “And you must not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.”

Leviticus 19:33-34: “When strangers reside with you in your land, you shall not wrong them … you shall love each one as yourself, because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.” 

Deuteronomy 10:19: וַאֲהַבְתֶּם ׃ - “And you must love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Time and time again, as if there is an underlying anxiety that we might forget, we keep being reminded: the lesson of Passover is that we will not be like the Egyptians. I hope it feels like a natural lesson to us, but I think it’s worth pointing out that it is not a given. The natural, automatic human response to pain is, I think, protection of what has been hurt. And yet our tradition - Torah, liturgy, festival - keeps pulling at us to say: this hurt, the fundamental narrative of pain that solidified our peoplehood and led us to Sinai, carries with it a lesson. We are capable of responding to pain by not wanting other people to be hurt. 

That is a sacred response. 

It is not, of course, the only response in our tradition. Yossi Klein HaLevi famously uses the framework of Pesach Jews and Purim Jews. The Pesach Jew is prophetic; the Purim Jew is protective. The Purim story, the Book of Esther, is a story about protecting ourselves. It’s a story about defensiveness, and violence begetting violence, and the “happy ending” is difficult to stomach. 

But let us not forget that the rabbis of our tradition are not comfortable with this book, either. Our encounter with this story is important, but so very limited, where the story of Passover is inescapable. 

For what it’s worth, I’ve met Pesach Muslims, too. They might not recognise that terminology. But the best of our allies are those who’ve taken experiences of being othered and hurt and responded with: I don’t want other people to feel this. 

It is impressive. It is an impressive feat of an individual, to take experiences of pain and use them to build a better world. It is, I must say, an incredible move of our tradition, to take the story of a genocidal Pharaoh and a redeeming God and use it to say: be better at loving the people who are difficult to love. You’ve been those people. You’ve been the stranger, the Other, the one who can’t quite be understood. 

Extremism breeds well in response to pain. It breeds best when people don’t see one another. Black-and-white thinking is attractive and extremist leaders will offer seemingly-easy solutions to complex, emotional problems.

But they won’t work. Extremism is not a solution; it is itself a problem. 

What our tradition offers is not so easy. 

Pesach asks us to take memory of pain and turn it into a wish for there to be no more pain. Not just for me, but for everyone; not just for Jews, but for any stranger we find at our gates. 

And I, for one, have hope in our ability to fulfil that mitzvah. 

I’ve met too many people who’ve given me hope not to have it.