On to another holiday: Passover, which started at sundown yesterday. An op-ed in today's
Washington Post by Claire Simmons highlights the significance of Passover in a post-Holocaust world. Abstracts:
This year, the celebration of Passover coincides with the 45th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 19, 1943.
In 1940, Nazi forces herded more than 400,000 Jews, nearly 40% of the population of occupied Warsaw, into an area of only 1.3 square miles, surrounded by 10-foot-high walls topped with barbed wire. By the spring of 1943, one tenth of this population had died from starvation or disease.
On April 19, occupying German troops and police stormed this ghetto to deport its survivors to the Treblinka death camp. A handful of resistors--probably around 750 teenagers and young adults--held off this assault by a far more powerful force for more than three weeks.
The heroism of the fighters is enshrined in history, but what is less well-known is a different type of resistance by ordinary men, women and children who refused to despair and die anonymously. Their bravery is part of a legacy of spiritual resistance and freedom that is often misunderstood, yet is the central theme of freedom in Passover.
It must be understood that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was never about achieving
freedom from oppression, because the outcome was never in doubt. (The Jews expected the Nazis to be the brave warriors of their own propaganda, who would take casualties in order to end the uprising in a few days, rather than being held at bay by some starving kids with a few light weapons for almost a month.) The revolt was about denying their German (and Polish) oppressors some part of their humanity, and about sending a message to future generations regarding the true meaning of "freedom."
Throughout the sequestration of the ghetto behind a morbid curtain of death, there was never a hope of escape or mercy. Public prayer was punished by execution. Yet prayer services were held in clandestine locations, secret factories fabricated matzos, and children confirmed their freedom to be human by studying the Torah in underground schools. Even secular cultural activities fluorished, with theatrical productions in Yiddish, Russian and Hebrew.
Why did these people use their last vestige of freedom in this way? Consider historian Emmanuel Ringelblum, who chose to use his freedom to document the Nazi atrocities and the refusal of the Jewish people to surrender their religious, cultural and political life to tyranny. He buried his records in large milk cans, which were discovered and preserved after the war ended.
The actions of these people teach us that "Passover" is not a "passive" celebration of historical events, nor of laissez-faire libertarianism, nor even the freedom to be left alone.
It is a celebration of the freedom to repair the world, to light a candle for posterity, to continue to perform the many small prosaic acts of solidarity and sacrifice--for friend and stranger alike--in the shadow of totalitarianism, and even under circumstances calculated to make us assume these acts will be meaningless.
According to Jewish tradition, the prophet Elijah waged a struggle to deliver freedom from oppression. On Passover, Jews open their doors to Elijah and his promise of redemption from tyranny. It is a freedom that armed freedom fighters may, in some circumstances, secure, but not one that they can maintain.
Simmons closes this piece with words that everyone--Jew and Gentile--should hear. (And yes, words that many of us--Jew and Gentile--would like to say to the leaders of Israel and other nations.)
"The true meaning of Passover, as those in the Warsaw Ghetto understood, is the freedom to engage the world, to fulfill our responsibilities as citizens, and to reject the seductions of spiritual and political retreat. As the martyrs of the Ghetto knew all too well, the work of Elijah must inevitably be our own."
