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April 19, 2006
Let my people go!
All Pesach entries here.
I was amiss in not mentioning before the Velveteen Rabbi's wonderful haggadah, in the fine tradition of activist haggadahs, marbled with contemporary poetry, which emphasize the theme of political liberation. Save a copy for next year.
Neo-neocon:
. . . . Passover is a religious holiday dedicated to an idea that's not really primarily religious: freedom. Yes, it's about a particular historical (or perhaps legendary) event: the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But the Seder ceremony makes clear that, important though that specific event may be, freedom itself is also being celebrated.Offhand, I can't think of another religious holiday that takes the trouble to celebrate freedom. Nations certainly do: there's our own Fourth of July, France's Bastille Day, and various other independence days around the world. But these are secular holidays rather than religious ones.
When I defend Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, I always point out that we were repeatedly ethnically cleansed from Israel and kept coming back. Among the perpetrators were the Babylonians, the Romans, and then a young rapacious Islam. Andrew Bostom has the gory details on the last, and how the State of Israel represents liberation from oppression by a dominant imperialist culture :
During Passover Jews celebrate their liberation from Egyptian servitude, an estimated 3300 years ago. And yet each Passover, I am struck by how this widely celebrated ancient narrative contrasts starkly with an equally important, but almost unrecognized historical phenomenon completed in full only by the creation of the State of Israel just 58 years ago—the liberation of the Jews from the oppressive system of jihad-imposed dhimmitude in their very homeland. These uniquely Islamic systems—jihad and its corollary institution, dhimmitude—have shaped events in historical Palestine—modern Israel, Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Jordan—from 634, through the present, setting in place archetypal patterns still quite evident today.Read the whole thing.
More on the attempted eradication of indigenous cultures by Islamist imperialism.
Judith | 04/19/06 at 10:18 PM | Categories: - Israel vs. the world
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