Pass Over Passover

by R.Congress

Hold the charosis!
Lose the afikoman...Elijah is not coming!

Once again I get to harangue against Seder. It's not just another fictional religious observance (and as an equal opportunity atheist, I'm against all religious fairy tales). It is the core myth that Zionism hangs its hat on: the Jews were slaves in Egypt and then along came Moses & his traveling plagues to lead his people out of bondage into the promised land with a permit from god to kill everyone who made the mistake of living in the land that was promised to the Israelites.

While the founders of Zionism were secular and a large number of today's Zionist are the same, they hijacked religious tales from the Bible to try and give some legitimacy to their colonial project. However, the Bible and the stories of Moses, Queen Esther, Purim, et al are not historical; they are invented.

Not only is there no evidence to support the historicity of the Exodus, there exists evidence that refutes it. For example, the territory of Canaan to which the Jews allegedly fled was part of the Egyptian empire during the historical time frame in which this exodus could have happened. So they ran from Egypt into...Egypt!

So it's not literally true. Therefore, if you consider yourself a progressive Jew don't celebrate a bogus holiday that plays a key role in justifying Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Stop! Don't do it!

If you do, you are giving a “progressive” veneer to oppression. This “national liberation” story of the Jews fleeing bondage to achieve self-determination is false. It didn't happen and the tale is used to prove Jewish ownership of Palestine (this includes the blue-eyed, pale skinned Ashkanazi of Russian ancestry who just moved from Brooklyn to a west bank settlement. Upon arrival he's automatically a citizen and is returning “home” after a 2000 wait).

Not that I expect anyone to listen to me....everyone is free celebrate whatever they want. But as
an atheist who shed any and all Jewish self-identification as part of my reaching the age of reason, I think Jewish religion is just as wrong as all other religions and I'm just indicating my disapproval of religious practices (and Passover is not only religious, it's political).

And besides all of the above, the food at a Passover celebration is really crummy.