Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihuxj.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!ihnp4!ihuxj!martillo From: martillo@ihuxj.UUCP (Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo) Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish Subject: Re: Non-Jews at the seder Message-ID: <507@ihuxj.UUCP> Date: Sun, 20-May-84 13:00:59 EDT Article-I.D.: ihuxj.507 Posted: Sun May 20 13:00:59 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 22-May-84 07:05:47 EDT References: <884@eosp1.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL Lines: 106 According to Exodus (S:mot) 1, 10, Pharoah said, "Hey, let's con it [the Jews] (Habah, nitxakmah lo ...). According to the stories, the Jews were conned by a gradual enslavement and in fact were tricked into volunteering for labor to show their loyaly to Pharoah and the Egyptian state. Later, Exodus 21 (Mis:pat:im) describes the laws of a Hebrew slave who does not desire his freedom. If his master should give him a woman and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children would belong to his master and he [the Hebrew slave] would go free alone. But if the slave asserts -- I love my master, my wife, and my children, and will not go free -- his master will bring him to the judges and then to door or to the gatepost. His master will pierce his ear with an awl, and the slave will serve him forever. This punishment may seem disproportionate after all a man will naturally want to stay with his wife and with his children. But the generation of the Exodus as former slaves would have read this passage differently. They knew the slave mentality. Every time they ran into difficulty they would complain that Moses had lead them out of servitude. The statement of refusal of freedom is peculiar. A slave is much more likely to say -- I love my wife and my children. I love my master seems a weird addition. But the Jews were enslaved to Egypt and apparently many were in love with the attributes of Egyptian society. A lot were unwilling to give up this admiration of Egypt (their wives) and their ways and attitudes they had picked up from the Egyptians (their children). In view of the treatment Egyptians gave the Jews, a Jew who would refuse to become a free man because of his "wife" and his "children" deserved at least such an ear-piercing. The situation is similar to Westernized Jews who are now free and who know the history of the Holocaust and who know how the Nazis and the allies treated the Jews and who yet persist in self-induced (like S:mot 1, 10) mental enslavement to Western civilization. Bringing this type of mental enslavement to the celebration of Jewish freedom at the reading of the Hagadah (Sefardim do not use the word seder in this context) is particulary inappropriate. Those who actually make the metaphor incarnate and bring their non-Jewish wives or lovers achieve an even greater level of inappropriateness ('ulay midat hat:um'ah ha'axaronah). The attitudes brought to the Hagadah by American Jews are more of a problem than the non-Jews who might come. A few years ago while I was teaching at Harvard, I became acquainted with the great-granddaughter of Baron Takahashi through my cousin Nissim Falaji who was studying at MIT and whose family has lived in Japan since the beginning of the century (according to Christian calculation). Baron Takahashi was Minister of Finance during the Russo-Japanese War. Takahashi was favorably disposed toward Jews on the principle the enemy (Jews) of Japan's enemy (the Russians) is our friend. Also the Takahashis like many Japanese government figures believed antisemitic propaganda, but being Japanese and not irrational Westerners, they concluded that if the Jews were secretly so powerful and wanted to conquer the world, perhaps Japan should make friends with them. Baron Takahashi was assasinated by an anti-Modernist faction shortly after the defeat of Russia. But the family were a factor persuading the government of Japan not to deport Jews under Japanese rule during WWII. Setsuko (the great-granddaughter) is interested in Judaica like many of her family. She is fluent in Hebrew and knows Aramaic fairly decently (unfortunately unlike most American Jews). Because some of us speak Japanese, she showed up at my family's Hagadah (probably aware that Ashkenazim consider food which tastes good un-Jewish). Since Japanese look for authenticity and since Japanese probably have similar ways (I suspect) of discouraging conviviality, she warned us that we should have yayin mebus:al. She made an interesting contribution (which may be original or which she may have found in some source but which struck me as rather Japanese -- after all they are the people who introduced the world to kamikazes and seppuku). She pointed out the sequence: Ha s:ata' `abdey les:anah haba'ah bney xorim, * This year [the Jews] are slaves, next they will be free, Ma nis:tanah ..., * A request for explanation, `Abadim hayinu ..., * The slavery and how Jews would still be slaves without God's intervention, Ma`aseh berabi 'eli`ezer werabi yehos:ua`... * These scholars all perished during the Roman persecution. A person could never be more free than when he knows he is about to die (there would be nothing with which to threaten him). Before a Jew dies he should say s:ma`. There is nothing wrong in satisfying primate curiosity if a non-Jew shows up at the reading of the Hagadah; however, inviting non-Jews in order to demonstrate that there is no real difference between non-Jews and Jews is wrong and somewhat self-abasing. (Actually, traditional Jews are much more similar to religious Muslims than to Westerners. Even here the similarity is not very great.)