Can we Turn Shame into Honor?

We can never justify evil and cruelty

Passover is about to end and with it we commemorate the parting of the Red Sea.

 

On the seventh day of Passover, according to tradition, Moses led the people of Israel to the Red Sea which stood in front of them like as a barrier to freedom.  With Pharoah’s army closing in on them to either bring return them to slavery or slaughter them, one brave soul, Nachson son of Aminadav from the tribe of Judah, jumped into the sea, showing faith in God and caused the sea to split.

The people of Israel made it across and Pharoah’s army was in the middle as the sea returned to its natural state, causing the death and destruction of the army that was out to annihilate the runaway slaves.   The tradition of singing the “Song of the Sea” (Exodus 15) is done twice on seventh day of Passover – once from the prayer book and a second time from a Torah scroll.  But that is just the end of the commemoration of the splitting of the sea. 

Jewish tradition celebrates the crossing and mourns the death of Pharoah’s army.  The mourning starts on the second day of Passover as the Rabbis of old decreed that what is the Law for all holidays shall not stand on Passover, after the first day.

There is a prayer, where Psalms 113-118 are sung in the synagogue.  It is preceded by a blessing and ends with a blessing.   This is called the “Hallel” prayer and it was decreed that on all holidays the Hallel shall be added to the regular prayers.  However, on Passover, from the second to the last day, two Psalms (Psalm 115 verses 1-11 and Psalm 116) are omitted so as to show God that our celebration is marred by the death of our enemies at God’s hand.

There are many legends (midrashim) in Jewish tradition relating that God criticized Moses for celebrating with the Song of the Sea when God’s creatures drowned. 

So, on the Seventh day of Passover, as we celebrate the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea with the singing of the Song of the Sea, Jewish tradition forces each congregation to mourn its enemies who died, allowing our freedom.

Traditions are meant to be timeless and we continue with them in order to create an unbroken chain from generations past to generations future.  

Yet, we are in a decidedly non-traditional age where reason on the one hand and the anti-rational on the other press us to break this chain and instead of celebrating and telling the stories of old we are supposed to condemn the past and celebrate our virtuous present.  We listen to contemporary narratives instead of ancient stories and we ignore the common sense that has been passed on from our grandmothers who received it from their grandmothers who received it from their grandmothers.   We celebrate the rape of those who the narrative tells us ought to be raped.  We celebrate child sacrifice that we thought ended millennia ago as we all return to our pagan roots with Dionysian rapture and praise cruelty in a liberating celebration of bloodthirstiness.

There are few events in history that are black and white.  The Holocaust was one such event.  Pol Pot’s genocide was another.  The Rwandan massacre and the Maoist and Stalinist slaughters were others.  

The Hamas attack against Jews on October 7 was the latest.   

The behavior of some of America’s youth is proof enough that their parent’s, teachers and religious leaders have failed miserably in their moral education.    These children are the personification of evil as they, like their pagan ancestors of old celebrate and encourage cruelty for the sake of cruelty, using a cause they don’t and can’t understand, as an excuse.  

The youth that celebrate cruelty at America’s elite universities are evil.   There is no good in them.  There is no “idealism” in them.   There is no “other” side to the argument.   The President of the United States and all too many other politicians, let alone University faculty and administrators are participants in this evil.   Their condemnations, if they come at all, are conditional.  But fighting evil is not conditional.

The same goes for those who are willing to let Hamas live and rule whether those people are in Israel, the United States, Europe or elsewhere.   They are participants in this evil and the use of Gazan children or Israeli hostages as an excuse not to eradicate Hamas is cowardice and surrender to evil, plain and simple. 

This generation – these generations -are turning into the most shameful generations.

It takes a lot to break a tradition, but maybe the time has come to sing the full Hallel on all 7 days of Passover and to celebrate the splitting of the Red Sea for what it was – the defeat of evil and the birth of a moral order that condemns evil and cruelty unconditionally.

There is still time for these generations to turn shame into honor.