After writing and sending out my early morning thoughts on the ”Fighting Season”, we went to our Ruach (Bible Study) class and later to the morning service where Carol gave a Devar Torah presentation which served as the Saturday sermon. Her subject was daughter Karenne’s account of her contribution to Tikkun Olam that Carol read. Karenne is moving to South Africa to teach “her” children in a school she helped found in Kwazulu Natal.  In a sense, during this Passover which memorializes the Jews leaving Africa, Karenne is helping to heal the world by going to Africa to do what she can to make people’s lives better.

I was trying to recall all the Seders I attended and all the services on Passover and pondered the injunction given to Jews never to neglect an opportunity to teach about slavery which underpins the creation of a Jewish State in ancient times and which has spoken loudly to many peoples all over the world.  Despite being heavily laden with matzo it is not hard for me to accept this task to make it an interesting and compelling story each year.  The necessity is seen in history of not only the Jews but of all heavily laden peoples of all religions and all colors. I wonder if it is worth our while to ask for the right to return to Egypt and for reparations for centuries of slavery. The following millennia of Diaspora helped to mould the Jews into a force to be reckoned with in the twenty-first century despite their being few in number. The main point of Passover is freedom from slavery – but this imagery is hard for some people to personalize.

I have a story of how I learned about the Akeda or how Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac only for God to tell him to spare his son and sacrifice a ram that conveniently appeared on the scene.  The story of Abraham loading his son down with wood that would make the sacrificial fire and then at the last moment a reprieve arrives, was imagery burned into my psyche at a very young age.  I was at camp at about age 8 when on a Friday night we were called to a service and the counselors put on a play-let about the Akeda – the Sacrifice.  I arrived late or was woolgathering as usual and woke up to see Abraham lifting up a big knife which he was going to plunge into the chest of a little kid like me. I made such a fuss that I was removed and finally quieted down.  The imagery was quite vivid.  It is hard to make Exodus and receiving the Law as dramatic and personal as this.

You would think that teaching about freedom from slavery would translate into Arabic. I understand that many Muslim countries still use slavery as they also accept the idea of plural wives. Islam acknowledges Abraham as the father of the Arabs and Muslim peoples but their memory stops there because Abraham listened to Sarah and he drove Hagar and Ishmael (her non-Jewish son) into the wilderness.