“As I sit to write this postcard for the 10th anniversary of openDemocracy, Jews round the world prepare for the Seder, the Jewish Passover ceremony and celebration. The Seder is a remarkable event in its radical postmodern nature: it stretches from the most abstract to the most concrete, from the celebration of the liberation of both group and individual, to the minute specification of menus and modes of preparation of the various foods of the feast, and a feast it is. At the center of the Seder is a text that is being read, in fact, re-read, always already: The Hagadah. And the Hagadah is a fantastic collection of fragments from diverse sources and different epochs: prayers, poems, stories, philosophical aphorisms originating in older and newer times. In the Seder, the Hagadah is both read and discussed, pondered upon, elaborated in a manner that aspires for novelty and renewal.
The turn of events in the Middle East from over a century of gradually increasing violence and brutality to an unbelievable example of Ta’ayush- living together in Arabic- has been achieved due to the return of Jews worldwide to the values of the Hagadah, the embracing of the whole range of human emotions and experiences around the motif of liberation, together with a return to cultural Judaism. This one change in the pursuit of Judaism has transformed it from a nationalistic power, ready to sacrifice those on its way to imperial glamor, an outpost of the West in its strife for supremacy, into an inspiring movement for turning Israel-Palestine into the most remarkable experiment in multi-ethnic revival”.
Postcard image info
Passover/Flickr
Author: Uri Hadar
