I'm telling the Passover story at tonight's Seder, and I just finished my draft of how I want to tell it, and god I am emotional. That is a Story. That is a Story and a Half.

Also, uh... look, I know this is late in the Passover season, happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it, but I've spent two solid days thinking about this and I gotta get something off my chest.

If you aren't Jewish, don't appropriate the Passover story.

Can you enjoy it? Of course! Can you find meaning and resonance in it? Naturally! Can you draw parallels between it and modern experiences? Abso-freaking-lutely, that's what it's there for.

Can you claim it as your own if you don't celebrate the holiday? No.

It doesn't exist to prefigure something in your religion. It's not a half-assed foreshadowing. Its purpose is not to pave the way for something better. It is one of the great stories of redemption and divine wrath. And it is specific to *this* culture, *this* religion.

"But Christianity derives from Judaism, so it's our story too!" Nope. Please don't. See two tweets above. Judaism is more than the backstory for Christianity. If you don't put in the time and effort to understand *why* Passover matters to us, you don't get to dress up in it.

Because here's the thing: to my mind at least, the Passover story more than any other tells me what it means to be Jewish today. It means you learn to recognize others' suffering and work to alleviate it. It means you never presume on your own privilege to exempt you.

It means you *work,* every day, to be a better citizen of the world. The pyrotechnics are not the point. The escape from slavery is the point. The generations of agonizing, painful hope are the point. The fulfillment of that hope, at last, is the point.

That is not something you get to pull on like a sweater and take off at the end of the night. That's something you have to work at. If you want to talk about what the story means - if you want to do that work - please, yes. If you just wanna cosplay as Oppressed Person - miss me.

This thread brought to you by one too many "as a Christian, I really get this" comments on the Prince of Egypt soundtrack.

tl;dr: if it ain't yours, don't make a grab for it.