Many Jews who come to this site are struggling with how to reconcile the majestic liberation story of Passover with Jewish sovereignty in Israel and Palestine and its blind consecration by American Jewish organizations. As someone who has strived, in my own little way, to reconcile living religious ritual with devotion to the human rights of those now condemned to bondage, Palestinians, I’d offer these two readings, provided to me by Jewish friends.
First, from Laurie Arbeiter and the other creative folks at We Will Not Be Silent, a variation on the central teaching of the Passover, the Four Questions:
Four questions
And last night at my Seder, I was privileged to read aloud from the late poet Adrienne Rich, her poem Collaborations, Stanza III (published in 2006), addressed to Israeli poets:
Do you understand why I want your voice?
At the seder table it’s said
you reclined and said nothing
now in the month of Elul is your throat so dryyour dreams so stony
you wake with their grit in your mouth?[italic] There was a beautiful life here once
Our enemies poisoned it? [end italic]
Make a list of what’s lost but don’t
call it a poemthat’s for the scriptors of nostalgia
bent to their copying-desksMake a list of what you love well
Twist it insert itinto a bottle of old Roman glass
go to the edge of the seaat Haifa where the refugee ships lurched in
and the ships of deportation wrenched away
I learned that Rich’s poem was a source of controversy and anguish among Israelis. And when she died last year, Electronic Intifada honored her. Ben Doherty:
During her activist career, Adrienne Rich was involved with New Jewish Agenda which broke Zionist taboos around Palestinian existence and right to speak. In 2009, she endorsed the Palestinian call for academic and cultural boycott of Israel despite having reservations…
Dear Phil,
You brought up a good question:
Can you say that your own experience has been a kind of spiritual “Passing-over” from one ideology into an understanding of the situation and a new way of life where you help redeem others from bondage?
The song Amazing Grace was written by a white man on a slave ship who had a spiritual awakening and rejected slavery. He saw his change of heart to abolitionism as a part of his salvation.
Rather than being a slave to the ideology you are overcoming it and are now free to change others too. Break, chains!
Add Ben and Jerry’s to your list of spiritually unclean foods.
March 26, 2013
Peace, Love & Occupation
Time to Freeze Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Profits in Israel
by MARK HAGE
Most people know that Ben & Jerry’s, headquartered in South Burlington, Vermont, makes premium ice cream and champions “Peace” and “Love.” What they don’t know is that this iconic leader of the socially responsible business community and supporter of Occupy Wall Street is commercially complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Progressive Except for Palestine
Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission commits it to
…meet human needs and eliminate injustices in our local, national and international communities by integrating these concerns into our day-to-day business activities.
…seek and support nonviolent ways to achieve peace and justice.
…show a deep respect for human beings inside and outside our company and for the communities in which they live.
Sadly, that Social Mission does not apply to Occupied Palestine at present. Based on an investigation in 2011, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine Israel learned that the company is making ice cream in Israel and selling it in Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and is planning to increase the number of scoop shops in Israel. The company and its Israeli licensee also run an ice cream factory near Kiryat Malachi—like virtually all Israeli towns and cities, it’s built on the former lands of a Palestinian village forcibly de-populated in the War of 1948, which culminated with the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians. This horrific crime is what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, the “Catastrophe.”
Today, Israeli trucks distributing Ben & Jerry’s ice cream travel seamlessly from the factory, down the forgotten roads of the Nakba, then on super highways that have systematically eviscerated the “Green Line” (Israel’s 1967 border with the West Bank and East Jerusalem), circumventing military checkpoints and roadblocks that torment Palestinians, to arrive at markets in Jewish settlements entrenched on stolen Palestinian land—places like Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ma’ale Admumim and Mishor Adumim. One of our activists visited markets in these settlements and found Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for sale. With assistance from a Jewish-Israeli compatriot, we also discovered that Jewish settlers can order a party cart with catering services from the factory.
Ending Ben & Jerry’s Complicity with Israel’s Occupation
Ben & Jerry’s is not the most egregious corporate offender in Palestine. But unlike those that are, it has a Social Mission that cannot be reconciled with Israel’s occupation and settlement regime. On March 14, after nearly two years of unsuccessful engagement with the company, VTJP launched a campaign calling on Ben & Jerry’s to take the following measures until Israel terminates its occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands in compliance with international law:
1. End the marketing, sales and catering of Ben & Jerry’s products in Israel and Jewish-only settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
2. Stop manufacturing ice cream in Israel.
3. Issue a statement calling (a) for an end to Israel’s occupation and settlement enterprise and (b) appealing directly to other socially responsible companies to do likewise and to end business operations in Israel and its illegal settlements.
Since VTJP went public, 3,200 people have signed our petition to Ben & Jerry’s and over 500 have sent an e-mail of protest to its CEO. The company has refused media interviews and continues to insist, without elaboration, that its franchise’s business in Israel and Occupied Palestine is aligned with its Social Mission.
On April 9, VTJP activists will be leafleting outside Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops on “Free Cone Day” to remind the company that its ice cream may be free on that day, but Palestine is not. We invite you to join us at a scoop shop of your choice.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/26/time-to-freeze-ben-jerrys-ice-cream-profits-in-israel/
$3 billion per annum from the US for weapons to defend the occupation and 890,000 Israeli kids are hungry this Passover . 442,200 families live below the poverty line. Most of them are Jewish.
https://www.meirpanim.org/campaign/2013/pesach/
The thing that has always bothered me about the Passover story is what happened to the Egyptians. Even the Pharaoh only acted as he did because God had hardened his heart.
I usually conduct a traditional Seder, but one can always add to the text, especially when it comes to what is -in my view – the central message.
The central theme is to remember : that we were slaves in Egypt , and were liberated, and the memory should be very up-close and personal – we should all consider ourselves as having been liberated from bondage. And yet…something is missing here: In the Bible itself we are told repeatedly to remember the oppression in Egypt for a purpose- so as not to do the same to others. In Exodus (22:20):” And you shall not mistreat a stranger, nor shall you oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And again: (Exodus 23:9): “And you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, since you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Also in Deuteronomy (10:19): “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. Admirable sentiments – yet absent from the Hagaddah!
The traditional Haggadah is a product of the Diaspora, at a time when Jews were sometimes persecuted and often lived in fear. The traditional text says that “now we are here (in the Diaspora), next year in Israel, now we are enslaved , next year we’ll be free”.
So what I do is add emphasis on the universal message of liberation and, in line with the references above, Hillel’s dictum: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah”.( Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a)