The Jewish holiday of Passover (in Hebrew פסח, pesach) starts this week: at sundown on Wednesday 8 April in the 'Gregorian' calendar, or more precisely on 15 Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. The timing comes from the holiday's ancient link to the coming of spring, centered on a ritual offering from the 'first fruits' of the season. Hence Passover usually starts, as it does this year, with the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
Of course there's much more to the history, including the holiday's likely prehistoric role as an apotropaic ritual, 'turning away' (Ancient Greek, apo-tropein) evil by ritual sacrifice, and how that eventually overlapped with, and since antiquity has been overshadowed by, the far more famous story of the Exodus.
(Excerpt from Leningrad Codex showing Book of Exodus 15:21f.)
The Exodus story reaches a climax in symbolically paired sacrifices. First, a lamb or goat (קרבן פסח, 'korban pesach'), whose blood then marks the Hebrews' doorposts, sparing the inhabitants from destruction. And second, the first-born children of Egypt, who all together become a kind of substitute sacrifice or 'scapegoat' (Ancient Greek pharmakon), destroyed by an angel of Yahweh that 'passes over' the Hebrews: the Tenth and final Plague.
Although the history is complex, it's important to be clear about this: Passover centers on a retelling--and on a symbolic reenactment--of the Exodus story. The retelling itself, called maggid (מגיד) is a chief part of the ceremony; indeed the text used to guide the ceremony is also called 'the telling' (הַגָּדָה, haggadah); and the ritual meal features a plate (קערה, ke'ara) with six foods symbolizing aspects of the story.
(Seder plate, Wikipedia. 1 is zeroa, the shankbone, a metonym for the ancient animal sacrifice; 2 is beitza, a hard-boiled egg, representing the pre-holiday offering and symbolizing new life as in spring; 3 are chazeret or maror, bitter herbs, often horseradish, recalling bitterness of experience, as in the story of Pharaonic slavery; 4 is additional bitter herbs, here onion; 5 is charoset, an apple paste that can recall the mortar mixed in the Pharaonic story; and 6 is karpas, vegetable, here parsley.)
It's important to be clear, too, though, that Passover is not about delight in others' suffering. Rather the opposite: a people whose history has much to do with darkness and loss, with separation from home and family--longstanding diaspora and, in living memory still, shoah--such a people can rather sympathize with others in their own hard times.
And so many in the community have been thinking about what it means to celebrate Passover now, in a hard time indeed, a time of global pandemic. There is a wide range of answers, as well as recommendations for people suddenly having to hold their own Seders.
What I'd like to add are just a couple of small thoughts that come from my--admittedly, pretty specific!--practice of thinking about 'ancient receptions.' Each is an example of how 'the ancient' is, in ways, always _not_ ancient, a matter of present performance of history.
The main example will come in a post later this week or next, after I've held a virtual Seder with my Film students, who will be watching The Prince of Egypt (Chapman, Wells, and Hickner 1998) on Thursday and reading parts of Genesis and Exodus for next week.
(Still from The Prince of Egypt [Chapman, Wells, and Hickner 1998].)
Here, a smaller example of 'ancient receptions' involving Passover and, I think, nicely illustrating the possibility of approaching even serious subject-matter--even in hard times--with a sense of intellectual and artistic play. That approach is certainly among the traditions of my people ...
... and my sense is that it's not meant to be disrespectful. Again, rather the opposite. The Passover ceremony retells a story of hardest times, including horrible losses, in a spirit of hope for the future, and therefore with a present feeling of joy. Comedic retellings, like the one that follows and the other to come next week, can work in a similar way.
Pictured here is a "Passover Satyr" [sic] by artist Nina Paley. It's a great pun: Ancient Greek 'Satyr' for Hebrew 'Seder', which can sound the same in, at least, contemporary American English. I can attest that it has occurred to many a student of the ancient languages! And this Satyr is clearly looking forward to Passover, proudly sporting a 'Star of David' ('shield of David,' מָגֵן דָּוִד) and holding both some matzo (the afikoman?) and a glass of Manischewitz.
But as Paley herself notes on her blog, the image may require discussing the long history of art seeking to dehumanize Jewish people by depicting them with, among other features, cloven hooves and horns à la beasts or devils.
Horns may be found in some depictions of Moses, e.g., Michelangelo’s (pictured below). This may come from a misreading of Hebrew קרן, karan, as ‘grew horns,’ instead of rightly ‘radiated, sent forth rays’: thus ‘cornuta,’ ‘horned,’ in Jerome’s Latin translation of Exodus.
That's not to imply that Michelangelo meant to malign Moses—indeed, he seems to have considered this statue his finest. And other art including such horns is also not necessarily hateful, like Paley’s image above
But in other contexts, attributes like horns and hooves are intended to dehumanize, literalizing the hateful idea that Jewish people are like animals or demons. I won’t share examples here, but such malignant representations are depressingly easy to find.
If we're aware, though, of undesirable traditions in which images have purposefully negative connotations, we can enjoy other retellings, like Paley's, in full cognizance of their happily humorous punning crossover between ancient cultures.* In other words, there's an opportunity for retelling ancient stories comedically, not 'making' but 'having fun' and with an eye on future 'happy ending': as is characteristic of Passover, in a spirit of hopefulness for the future and therefore with a feeling of present joy.
More on that in the next post, looking at The Prince of Egypt and, close to it, other ancient comedic myths.
*E.g., it’s fun for students of ancient worlds and Seder participants alike—often one and the same!—to learn that Hebrew כַּרְפַּס (karpas), meaning the 'vegetable' on the Seder plate, comes from Ancient Greek καρπός (karpós), an uncooked vegetable!
Comments