anyway, so. matzah. the bread of our affliction, poor man's bread.

growing up, Pesach was our big family holiday. Thanksgiving came in a close second, but Thanksgiving dinner was at my parents' house and had only semi-immediate family; Pesach was at my paternal grandparents' house and had a lot of people. twenty easily, maybe more.

one of the things that has, frankly, always bothered me about Pesach is that matzah, this dry awful cracker stuff, is supposed to be the bread that the Israelites baked in a hurry on their way out of the land of Egypt. like, that's a joke, right?

(please don't argue with me about the merits of matzah here; I'm allowed to dislike it and you're allowed to like it but this is my wall and my thread.)

really though, even bread that they didn't allow to rise wouldn't end up this terrible.

eating matzah is supposed to (as I grew up being told) teach us humility. quite frankly, and unfortunately, humility isn't the sort of thing that affluent white Jews can learn by sitting around a table and talking, although it didn't stop my grandparents from trying.

I'm inclined to think the bread the Israelites baked, if they did not have time to let it rise, was probably closer to the flatbread that I made earlier this afternoon. smaller than the regular loaves so it would cook quicker, hand-sized so they could eat it on the go.

humility is, instead, making do with what we have available to us.

humility is not, however, having to grin and bear something that you find intolerable. it's not swallowing and saying thank you may I have some more afterwards. that's subservience, which was often expected of children and teenagers when I was growing up.

(yes, Judaism encourages questioning and arguing, and we were allowed to do so but only at the right time if we asked the right questions, and much of that is a rant for another thread because if I go down this rabbit hole I will be here all night.)

anyway, back to where I was. there's a couple of other things that have always bothered me about Pesach. when I was growing up, there was no acknowledgement of this country's dirty history of slavery at the seder table.

we have this entire story entwined about the narrative of once we were slaves in the land of Egypt, and yet many of my relatives were and are constitutionally incapable of talking about modern day slavery, farm work, human trafficking.

during the seder, we say, כל דכפין ייתי ויכל, let all who are hungry come and eat. and yet, this was years before the community I grew up in started regularly having food drives leading up to Pesach.

not once was anyone in the neighbourhood who might have been experiencing food insecurity actually invited to come, and be a part of.

I know that this ain't the part of scriptures that I'm supposed to be quoting from, but well. even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. James 2:17 is, quite honestly, a foundational bit of my beliefs. a part of what I have read that guides my actions.

and to be quite clear, I think that if you are simply distributing food that's good, but if you do not invite and allow those of different circumstance than your own to be a part of and participate, it's not enough. it falls short.

and of course, no discussion of grievances about Pesach would be complete without mention of Israel. if you follow me, you're already familiar with my stance on Zionism. at the end of the passover seder, we sing, לשנה הבאה בירושלים. next year in Jerusalem.

rather than rehash all of my teenage years here, I'd like to end this thread by sharing a song that I happen to particularly like, and challenge folks to maybe think about it a bit.

think back through your family seders. did they talk about slavery in the Americas? have you, if you could, invited others less fortunate than yourselves to your seder? what can we do to carry the works we discuss during Pesach through with us into the rest of the year?

the aforementioned song is They're Building A Wall, by David Rovics.

they're building a wall
between water and land
so we can eat fruit
and they can eat sand

chag Pesach sameach, a ziessen Pesach. none of us are free until all of us are free.