Passover

thanks to John Pratt for the picture

The religious scholar Karen Armstrong on Start the Week today recounted a trip to Senegal in which she visited a slave house once used to store slaves before they were shipped to America and Europe. The building, she noted, was built in 1776, the same year that America's Declaration of Independence was signed.

"Very often freedom for some means slavery and suffering for others," Karen says, "and this is a conundrum of human history. This is what the Haggadah [the passover text], every year, makes one confront."

Passover recounts and re-enacts the time that Jews fled enslavement in Egypt, and brings to mind the experience of all oppressed people and peoples, according to Jonathan Saffran Foer who was also on the panel. Passover highlights in our hearts oppression as a thing to oppose, to avoid participating in, and to try to prevent.

We realise, perhaps, looking then at the clothes we wear and the technologies we use and the inequalities in the countries we inhabit that to avoid participating in oppressive systems is difficult. 


Which may be one of many reasons why we need these weekly spaces to reflect on and explore meaning, values, and how we are to live as ourselves, with each other, in the world.

Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah

I asked my partner Michael about the period of retreat and reflection that Jewish people embark on at the time of Jewish new year. He replied thus:


"It is a ten day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom kippur. I don't know if it has a name. It is a very powerful and relevant time. Probably one of the most heart searching, tear jerking, fruitful, and fun opportunities to go into the depths that Judaism has to offer. I recommend it very much. Rosh Hashanah is a joyful, family-oriented celebration to share thanks for all the great experiences and people that have allowed us to grow, shed our old skins, continually arrive in new places and new depths, make new discoveries about the world and ourselves, work so hard for the world, and our great contributions however big or simple they may have been.


"Also we celebrate the blessedness of the coming year with all its suprises, all its discoveries, all its tears, connections and laughter, all its disconnections, deaths and births both of people and internal places, old selves that we are ready to let go of and new ones that are being born.


"Then comes that great time in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kipur where we go into the underworld, alone, and look at all the stuff! All the nooks and crannies where stuff got hidden, all the things we brushed under the carpet and hoped no one saw (including ourselves). "Maybe I'll just forget about it." Well guess what, it's all still there and now is the time to look at it. Oh, what a blessed time it is. On bended knee we go in front of God and face all of our lives, our shortcomings, our longcomings... And we face it all with tears in our eyes.


"Then comes Yom Kippur. Oh what a special time! We come together and face all of these hard places together. Not only do we bring all the difficult discoveries we made to the group to share, we also take on a collective burden to the world. "OUT LOUD WE CRY." We take full responsibility for all the horrendous pain and suffering that goes on in the world, all the oppression, all the pollution, all the violence, all the greed. We take it all on "as God is our witness." This is the only day where we do this; on no other day is it useful to take this much responsibility, but we do it so that we can truly come out of Yom Kippur ready and energized to play our part in the healing of the world (Tikun Olam), healing the brokeness of the world, taking part in what Joanna Macy calls 'The Great Turning'."