Starting tonight, millions of people will sit around Seder tables and memorialize the exodus of the Jews from Egypt.
We'll talk and talk and talk about the miracle of liberation, parse the details of its unfolding, and assert in words and song the gratitude we feel for being the lucky descendants of those who escaped from slavery.
One thing we do not generally discuss, however, are the Jews who didn’t leave.
We'll talk and talk and talk about the miracle of liberation, parse the details of its unfolding, and assert in words and song the gratitude we feel for being the lucky descendants of those who escaped from slavery.
One thing we do not generally discuss, however, are the Jews who didn’t leave.
“God led the people round about, by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds. Now the Israelites went up chamushim out of the land of Egypt.”
What does “chamushim” mean?
Torah commentator Rashi offers a shocking idea: “chamushim” relates to the Hebrew word for five, and the text should be understood to be saying that only one-fifth of the Jewish people chose to leave Egypt.
Why?
“There were sinners among the Jews who had Egyptian patrons, and they had wealth and honor there, [so] they didn’t want to leave.” Or, in the words of Rav Yehuda Henkin, they were “disinclined to trade flesh-pots for freedom.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about these Jews lately.
What does “chamushim” mean?
Torah commentator Rashi offers a shocking idea: “chamushim” relates to the Hebrew word for five, and the text should be understood to be saying that only one-fifth of the Jewish people chose to leave Egypt.
Why?
“There were sinners among the Jews who had Egyptian patrons, and they had wealth and honor there, [so] they didn’t want to leave.” Or, in the words of Rav Yehuda Henkin, they were “disinclined to trade flesh-pots for freedom.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about these Jews lately.
I think about the Jews who didn’t leave Egypt as I watch people refuse to accept that beloved blue-chip organizations—the ACLU, the ADL, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International—no longer fight for their own founding values.
I think about them when friends text me about obviously antisemitic actions by high profile people or institutions, asking how they can “educate” or “influence” them.
I think about them when I meet people who can’t imagine—literally cannot make their brains consider—their child (or mine!) not going to a prestigious American college or university.
I think about these people, about the confidence required to believe that it is you who makes a given institution or cause or idea legitimate and special, and not the other way around.
I think about them, and I understand how it could be that so many people—a vast majority, according to Rashi—chose to stay in Egypt.
I think about them when friends text me about obviously antisemitic actions by high profile people or institutions, asking how they can “educate” or “influence” them.
I think about them when I meet people who can’t imagine—literally cannot make their brains consider—their child (or mine!) not going to a prestigious American college or university.
I think about these people, about the confidence required to believe that it is you who makes a given institution or cause or idea legitimate and special, and not the other way around.
I think about them, and I understand how it could be that so many people—a vast majority, according to Rashi—chose to stay in Egypt.
In the summer of 2020, Jewish groups tripped over each other to issue press releases supporting Black Lives Matter—the movement, not the idea. Every Jew of goodwill agreed that nothing could be more important than adopting this slogan wholesale, painting it on walls, adding it to websites, stamping it on children’s clothing, putting it on lawn signs and, of course, writing out large checks from personal and communal accounts, immediately. The fact that the checks hadn’t been written yesterday, or years ago, was already a scandal.
When well-meaning people inside of communal life asked whether those Jewish leaders knew anything about the organization that would be cashing these checks, the questioners were reflexively branded as racist enemies of progress. I believe that many of the people who said these things sincerely felt, in the moment, like they were on the right side of history, and that those asking questions were not.
When Tablet defended the Satmar community’s response to draconian COVID policies, including their insistence on sending their children to school or their commonsense inquiry into why one would close playgrounds—forcing people to stay indoors, often in close quarters, during an airborne pandemic—our writers were called medieval science-deniers. When people asked questions about mask mandates and vaccine passports, they were smeared as anti-vaxxers and right-wingers—even when they were obviously nothing of the sort.
When well-meaning people inside of communal life asked whether those Jewish leaders knew anything about the organization that would be cashing these checks, the questioners were reflexively branded as racist enemies of progress. I believe that many of the people who said these things sincerely felt, in the moment, like they were on the right side of history, and that those asking questions were not.
When Tablet defended the Satmar community’s response to draconian COVID policies, including their insistence on sending their children to school or their commonsense inquiry into why one would close playgrounds—forcing people to stay indoors, often in close quarters, during an airborne pandemic—our writers were called medieval science-deniers. When people asked questions about mask mandates and vaccine passports, they were smeared as anti-vaxxers and right-wingers—even when they were obviously nothing of the sort.
Ask yourself why BlackRock—a corporation making it impossible for middle-class Americans to own homes—is draping itself in the language of social justice. Ask yourself why, in fact, so many corporations now all support the same roster of causes. Ask yourself how all channels of discourse in America suddenly flow in the same direction, making local and institutional and communal distinctions that were once defining seem vanishingly trivial. Why do all universities have the same politics and curricula and trigger warnings and quotas? Why must all hospitals and schools have them too? At what point does one accept that all of these causes and crises are related, that the closeness of their relationship to each other is quite strange?
A new and decadent power center has been built, made up of the federal government and a constellation of corporations and nonprofits that operate as connected wings of the same sprawling complex. The people who control the key platforms and networks are aggregating power to themselves at the expense of everyone else.
These people and the institutions they dominate are not interested in social justice, or any other kind of justice, except to the extent that they can be used as shields.
They festoon their corporate headquarters with slogans about women’s rights, Black rights, and trans rights while hoovering up millions of jobs and billions of dollars that once belonged to small- and medium-sized American businesses and shipping it all to China.
Through their networks of foundations and NGOs, they have emptied out America’s free press and turned most of it into a quasi-governmental political propaganda apparatus that is remarkably empty of meaningful information about how power works in America and why the quality of so many people’s lives keeps getting worse.
A new and decadent power center has been built, made up of the federal government and a constellation of corporations and nonprofits that operate as connected wings of the same sprawling complex. The people who control the key platforms and networks are aggregating power to themselves at the expense of everyone else.
These people and the institutions they dominate are not interested in social justice, or any other kind of justice, except to the extent that they can be used as shields.
They festoon their corporate headquarters with slogans about women’s rights, Black rights, and trans rights while hoovering up millions of jobs and billions of dollars that once belonged to small- and medium-sized American businesses and shipping it all to China.
Through their networks of foundations and NGOs, they have emptied out America’s free press and turned most of it into a quasi-governmental political propaganda apparatus that is remarkably empty of meaningful information about how power works in America and why the quality of so many people’s lives keeps getting worse.
For American Jews, our addiction to being insiders is especially dangerous at this moment, because it means siding with people who don’t like Jews very much, and in some cases actively wish us harm. But it’s more than that, for everyone: When status becomes the reward for serving those in power, who in turn reduce the rest of the population to forms of abject powerlessness, then seeking it out becomes toxic. And it’s not simply that we shouldn’t be participating in this system; it’s that we—especially those of us who care about the less fortunate, who want to see more justice in the world, who want more safety and health and prosperity for greater numbers of people—should be leading the charge out of this Egypt, helping to build the institutions and communities and companies and cultural organizations of a new and better future.
Indeed, the operative distinction in American politics is not between left and right, but between insider and outsider; between those incapable of leaving their fleshpots and those who would willingly face uncertainty and risk for the chance at a better world. Between the majority that stays and is swallowed up by history, and the minority that leaves and makes the future.
Whoever you are, if you are sitting around a Seder table this weekend, your ancestors were among those who opted not to serve the people who built the pyramids. They were people who chose to pursue the spark of the divine that makes us human, even if it meant being pursued by Pharaoh’s chariots and then enduring 40 years of uncertainty wandering in the desert. If it’s no surprise that most Jews preferred to stay in Egypt, this Passover let us celebrate the ones who left—by following their example.
tabletmag.com/sections/news/…
Indeed, the operative distinction in American politics is not between left and right, but between insider and outsider; between those incapable of leaving their fleshpots and those who would willingly face uncertainty and risk for the chance at a better world. Between the majority that stays and is swallowed up by history, and the minority that leaves and makes the future.
Whoever you are, if you are sitting around a Seder table this weekend, your ancestors were among those who opted not to serve the people who built the pyramids. They were people who chose to pursue the spark of the divine that makes us human, even if it meant being pursued by Pharaoh’s chariots and then enduring 40 years of uncertainty wandering in the desert. If it’s no surprise that most Jews preferred to stay in Egypt, this Passover let us celebrate the ones who left—by following their example.
tabletmag.com/sections/news/…
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