A Seder for Two: Textual Version

Ashton Macklin – A Seder for two: me and Eliyahu
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Above Judaism’s "front door" sits community as its keystone.

The brick that keeps the arch structurally grounded, exerting pressure on all other bricks, which themselves exert their own forces back in a balancing act.

It’s perhaps the most critical stone – its absence would not only cause the frame to collapse, but put the entire structure surrounding it at risk.

The whole building is millennia-weathered:

some bricks split and the mortar between them erodes away,

but that keystone – community – keeps the arch secure.

Even if the keystone can bear the heaviest of loads,

it remains the case that, eventually,

all brick crumbles

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Black Jews like myself can often have a double consciousness about how they may be seen in one space or another, and hold serious reservations about entering predominantly-White Jewish spaces.

For me, when I do enter those spaces, I am often seen as a Black (comma) Jew – not as a Black Jew. I am at the whims of whatever connotations that label brings, and all the presumptions they lead people to make about me. "Passing" as Jewish in Jewish spaces is a privilege because "passing" outside of Jewish spaces can be an invitation to harm in the eyes of those who seek to exact harm.

If we are to embody the spirit of liberation on Passover, we must first identify that which holds us down: our own personal and collective "Egypt"s. 

Since it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to pull together entire Seders of

Jews with unbound/marginalized identities (though we'd encourage it if you're able to organize one!),

it’s important that we consider other avenues of Passover observance:

Avenues that transcend the model of a classic Seder, at a house, with a family of Jews.

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For many converts, Jews of Colour, Jews from interfaith families, and other unbound Jews, that keystone  – community – is fragile enough that entering the structure it upholds feels unsafe.

The stonemasons and architects who keep that keystone in check learn their best from within:

 l’dor vador (from generation to generation).

It is a cycle of inaccessibility from resources

promised to every Jew on Mount Sinai:

Torah.

Pesach (Passover) is one of many Jewish holidays intended to build bonds of communal connection, which but fail to do so because of how the evolution of our society and our rituatls rituals race each other neck-to-neck.

Pesach sits amongst what I call Judaism’s “House Holidays,” where its modern practice often revolves around a family, or family-like/adjacent gathering in a house. When we take as a given that all Jews have networks of family members who are themselves also Jewish, we unintentionally exclude all Jews who do not – making their relationship to Pesach isolating and fraught.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with celebrating Passover through a gathering with beloved family members, but when this form of holiday observance becomes an all-encompassing image of what a “real” Passover is, it needlessly limits the potential of the holiday. It sends a message to those whose celebrations are less conventional, that they aren’t do the “real thing.”

Must we embody the Passover story, one of liberation and the birth of a people – a night not like other nights – as only a bigger-than-normal dinner? I don’t think so.

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A Pesach of  liberation proscribes grounding ourselves  like a parent would their child.

A Pesach of liberation asks us to look at the mistake that got them grounded and ask:

 "...was this a mitzvah in disguise? "

We even extend this to the holy,

lamenting that Torah  that grounds us,

neglecting the Torah that raises us.

Moses was our advocate in Mizrayim, if only so we can now say:

 "I am of my people, let us go!"

Ask, who are your people? Who is us?

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In Mishnah Pesachim 10 we find that Passover's now-classic Four Questions are really but one question with purposefully unbound answers:

"What makes this night different than all the other nights?"

Our traditional "four" were intended only as  prompts for "those without the intelligence" to ask, be they unable to make even one of their own.

Just about every Jew I know is asking questions about the world around them.

There is room for these questions on Pesach, whether 4, 40, or 400, to become a pickaxe to liberate one's self : physically, mentally, and spiritually. 

Not to mention liberating ourselves fom the low expecations of an antiquated sage.

--- Section 6 ---

In the visual, bolded text is a response to the primary question posed in the previous section: "What makes this night different than all the other nights?"

Question 1:

Image description: Accompanying an image to the right of the text: It features me laying on my left side with a cup of Kedem Light Grape Juice. A background featuring a Sea-blue and seafoam-white striped wallpaper, silt-coloured floor, and burgundy sofa. I am wearing a burgundy kippah, blue pants, socks, and a very light pastel-green shirt, sitting upon the sofa with a green pillow with gold tassles under my back.

Response to the main question: On Pesach, we are commanded to recline on our left sides (relax) and drink prior to eating. We are also commanded to make this accessible for the "poorest of the poor".

Complimentary Question: Why do we require justification for the poor to relax?

Question 2:

Image description: Accompanying an image to the left of the text:  It features a tan hand pushing forth from two waves parting like the Red Sea. The background is a slow, phased gradient from a black bottom to a gray top.

Response to the main question: We are to internalize the pain and poverty of the escapees of slavery. Yet our people were ambivalent to it for centuries.

Complimentary Question: What is something you see that you think others may, but shouldn't overlook?

Question 3:

For this question, the response to the primary question, bolded in the visual, follows the complimentary question, rather than the opposite order in the other questions. Here, they are listed in the opposite order for continuity of reference.

Image description: Accompanying an image to the left of the text: Two hands of a darker tan floating out of still water, holding snapped pieces of shmurah matzah. Whether or not the matzah was broken by the hands or were given to the hands broken is up to the interpretation of the viewer. The person, beneath the water, cannot eat it regardless.

Response to the main question: These may be the only days we police what we eat, beyond for the sake of health.

Complimentary Question: Food insecurity is all around us. For whom amongst are foods for Passover just-like-all-other nights?

Question 4:

Image description: Accompanying an image to the right of the text: Standing on the seabed path made dry by the splitting of two halves of the Red Sea, a queue of Jews – modern, of different clothing, hair, and interpretively, background – all face away from the viewer, while I, also in the queue, face slightly away to the left, with my body facing in the direction of the viewer. I am holding a wooden Sephardic sefer torah, wearing a blue long-sleeve shirt over a collared button-down, gray pants, and a purple kippah.

Response to the main question: Just as every human is the only one of their kind that has and will ever exist, this is the only night exactly like it is now.

Complimentary Question: There are only so many pesachim in a lifetime; who are you spending this one with and what are you doing?

--- Section 7 ---

Jonah Gelfand, co-editor of Gashimus Magazine, remarked to me that it can be good to interpret our existences as not just as having torah within them, but as bearing *the* Torah.

The exile is within us — escaping through the narrow pass  —  out of Mitzrayim (Egypt).

It is on Pesach that we are reminded: Torah has been given continually since Sinai.

There is too much Torah — too much Life, for there to be too few questions.

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On the left, a quote: "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?"

On the right: This piece was made by Ashton Macklin for Judaism Unbound

finalized Thursday, 18 April 2024