The festival of Passover, which begins this Monday evening and lasts for seven days, is known in Jewish tradition as z’man cheiruteinu, the time of our liberation.” As told in the biblical Book of Exodus, the story relates how the Israelites in ancient time were freed from slavery in Egypt, led by Moses on a 40-year trek through the wilderness on their journey to the promised land, and accompanied along the way by divine miracles and wonders.
Many people — both Jews and Christians — read this story as a more or less accurate account of historical events, but we now know that there is not a shred of evidence to support the historicity of the tale — no evidence of Israelites in Egypt, no evidence of an Egyptian defeat, no evidence of the parting of a sea, no evidence of a wilderness sojourn.
But to deny its historicity is not to deny its truth. The story is a myth — a literary form in which ancient people expressed the most profound truths they knew. A myth is true not because it happened — but because it happens all the time.
A line in the Passover Seder ceremony says, “In every single generation, each of us should see ourself as if we had gone forth from Egypt.” In other words, the myth is not about there and then — it’s about here and now. It’s not about them — it’s about us. It recognizes that we each have or had our own Egypt, that we each have or had a sea to cross, that we each worship the golden calf, that we all wander the wilderness and are willing to die in the wilderness if only our children can see the promised land. It’s up to each of us to ask ourselves: What is my Egypt? Which sea must I cross? Which golden calf do I worship? In what wilderness do I wander? What would be my promised land?
But Passover demands of us more than simply acknowledging our journey and being grateful for our liberation. It demands that we free ourselves from the slavery of not seeing, not hearing, not knowing, not wanting to know, not caring about the liberation of all of our brothers and sisters. For me, this Passover is fraught with mixed emotions. I lived in Jerusalem as a student in 1966-67 and have been back many times since. Having witnessed first-hand the 50-year Israeli occupation of Palestine, oppression of the Palestinian people and repression of Palestinian hopes for liberation, my celebration is tempered by what I know.
The traditional Seder liturgy concludes with the hope, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Both rabbinic sources and the New Testament Book of Revelation speak of two Jerusalems — the earthly Jerusalem and the celestial Jerusalem. The former is a geographical place that has been fought over for thousands of years. For traditional Jews, it’s where the Messiah will appear at the End of Days, rebuild the holy Temple, resurrect the dead and bring good news to the world. For Moslems, it’s the place from which Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven in a mystic night journey, and where they built an exquisite golden-domed shrine thirteen hundred years ago that still stands today. To Christians, Jerusalem is what one writer called “a giant walk-through reliquary of Jesus’ life and death, with every street, every stone, soaked in his aura.”
The celestial Jerusalem, however, isn’t a place — it’s a paradigm for how we ought to live and act toward one another. It exists whenever and wherever we treat one another as brothers and sisters created in the divine image.
At the end of the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer has the parson pray for the wisdom to show his traveling companions the deeper meaning of their journey. He says: “May Jesus, by his grace, send me the wit, To show you, while on this trip we engage, The way of that most glorious pilgrimage, Called Jerusalem celestial.” His pilgrims’ physical destination was Canterbury, but their spiritual destination was the heavenly Jerusalem.
This year my family and I will conclude our Seder not with “Next year in Jerusalem,” but with “Next year in Jerusalem celestial,” that is, “Next year in a more just world.”
Dov Taylor is rabbi at Chavurat Ki-tov: A Gathering for Jewish Life and Learning in Woodstock, and rabbi emeritus of Congregation Solel, Highland Park, Ill. He can be reached at chavuratki-tov@comcast.net.