No holiday embodies the essential tension at the heart of Jewishness like Passover does. The story of Passover is the story of a particular people moving from a specific land of slavery to a particular land of freedom (President Obama, on his trip last week to Israel, seemed to understand very well the -- you should pardon the expression -- Zionism at the heart of the Exodus story). Passover is also the most universal of Jewish holidays. It provided the world with what long-ago became its most important, and metaphor-ready, story of human liberation. It also inculcated in Jews a restless and eternal urge to upset the status quo. The tug between the universal and the particular plays out in Jewish life in all sorts of ways, most notably on the Middle Eastern stage. I'm in the camp that still holds that Israel can have its particularlity while still becoming a light unto the nations. We're not there yet, but that's one point of Passover, to remind us of the work we still have to do.
The Goldblogs are getting on a plane for the other Jewish homeland, Miami (the homeland in which two peoples, the Jews and the Cubans, have figured out a way to co-exist peacably) so I must cut short this Passover post. Chag kasher v'sameach, happy Passover, and a Happy Easter as well.
Collected from :http://www.theatlantic.com
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