All Pharaohs Must Fall: Some Thoughts About the Passover Holiday
By Rabbi Brant Rosen
[In light of the convergence this past month between the Easter, Ramadan, and Passover holidays, we are deeply honored to share with you the following reflection from our dear friend Rabbi Brant Rosen of Tzedek Chicago. May we all take to heart his message for us.]
This Passover, I thought a great deal about the exceedingly radical message at the heart of the story we tell and retell around the seder table every year.
In particular, I thought about what the story tells us about power, about the ways the powerful wield their power against the less powerful, and about the inevitability of corrupt power’s eventual fall. And I’m thinking about what is possibly the most radical message of all: that there is a Power greater, yes even greater than human power.
Empires, of course, have perennially failed to heed this message. Powerful empires have come and gone, but the Power that Makes for Liberation still manages to live to fight another day. Will the Pharaohs among us ever learn?
There’s no getting around the fact that the Passover story is not a neat, tidy or particularly pleasant story. That’s because – as we all know too well – the powerful never give up their power without a fight. No one ever made this point better or more eloquently than Frederick Douglass when he said in 1857:
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
A century later, Dr. Martin Luther King said much the same thing in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Passover thus poses a special challenge to those who wield power and privilege. What would it mean if the powerful truly took to heart our tradition’s most challenging teachings: that God hears the cries of the enslaved, that God is a God of Liberation, that God stands with the oppressed, not the oppressor and demands that we do as well?
As well: are those who benefit from Empire prepared to confront the ways this power is wielded in any number of oppressive ways at home and abroad? Might we possibly be willing to contemplate this truth: that even the mightiest Empire will eventually, inevitably go the way of history?
Indeed, if there is any message we learn from Passover, it’s that, to paraphrase the words of poet Kevin Coval, all Pharaohs must eventually fall:
Wake in this new day
we will all die soon
let us live while we have the chance
while we have this day
to build and plot and devise
to create and make the world
just
this time for us
this time for all
this time the pharaohs must fall
May the Passover story inspire us all to be bearers of that vision in our lives and in our world.
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Our friends at AJP Action and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) urge Secretary Blinken to ensure Israel no longer discriminates against American citizens. New Israeli rules represent a clear intention to restrict, track, and trace the travel of foreign nationals to the occupied Palestinian territories, control Palestinian population growth, and keep data on the land claims of Palestinians holding foreign nationality. They blatantly differentiate between Americans of Palestinian origin, those with roots in the occupied Palestinian territories, and other Americans.
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Religious freedom is under attack in the Holy Land. Images coming out of Jerusalem these past weeks have been shocking, both at Al-Aqsa and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Palestinian Christian worshippers were denied access, often violently, to the old city and church to celebrate Easter. Israel is continually trying to restrict and violently disrupt worship for Muslims and Christians in the Holy City of Jerusalem. We are reaching out to you today on behalf of Sabeel Jerusalem, urging you to sign and share the Freedom of Worship below:
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“The Easter season is the time in which we remember that God in Christ conquered the powers of evil and death. As followers of the living Christ, we continue to challenge the powers of domination and oppression that humiliate and suppress our people and replace them with justice, peace, and reconciliation. I appeal to you, our friends, to give to FOSNA’s ministry so that its voice for advocacy and its action for justice and liberation would be strengthened and multiplied.”
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FOSNA invites you to join us in the following events and activities:
April 28: Christians in the Holy Land: Palestinian Youth. The Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP) is sponsoring a webinar series on Christians in the Holy Land. FOSNA is honored to be co-hosting today's session focusing on the daily lives of Palestinian Christians living under occupation with a special focus on the challenges Palestinian youth face, their hopes for the future, and how the Church in the USA can respond in solidarity. Hosted by Sir Jeffery Abood and FOSNA's Marie-Claire Klassen.
April 28: Arab American Heritage Month Celebration. Hosted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Association of Lutheran of Arab and Middle Eastern Heritage (ALAMEH), join the FOSNA's Jonathan Kuttab and Samer Kalaf, president of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), for a webinar celebrating Arab American Heritage Month.
May 3: Israel/Palestine: Is this Apartheid? A Conversation with Human Rights Experts. Join Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, Professor Michael Lynk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, and FOSNA's Jonathan Kuttab for an important webinar sponsored by the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness, Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations, Presbyterian World Mission, and the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the PC(USA).
May 4: JNP Webinar with Attorney Jonathan Kuttab: Please join Jewish Network for Palestine's forthcoming webinar with Human Rights lawyer Jonathan Kuttab, the co-founder of Al-Haq, about his recent book Beyond the Two-State Solution.
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Week 17: Nation-State Law. On May 1, 2018, the Knesset passed the Nation-State law (officially Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People) in its first reading. As we approach the anniversary of this passage, we as a Kumi Community want to analyze this law and what it means for Palestinians and other minorities in Israel. Here’s what you need to know and what you can do so that together we can rise up.
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