There are Elephants in the Room

As I post this, we are two days away from hosting our annual Passover Seder at the other end of the hall. We will have a table full of family-by-birth, family-by-choice, dear friends, and new friends. My heart is full when I realize that I have been hosting these for over 40 years. It is doubly full because, for the first time, one of my sons will host his own Seder. Another Seder in our world is a wonderful thing.

At the Seder we will retell the story of the Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom to become Am Yisrael, the People of Israel. This Exodus story and the laws and morals that Moses taught during it underpin Judaism and, via it, Christianity. Moses is even a prophet for Muslims and those of the Bahai Faith. If you live in the west, your life marinates in this story.

The Torah, a/k/a the first five books of the Old Testament if your Bible has Old and New Testaments, instructs us many times to treat strangers well. For instance, Exodus 22:20 translates as “You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

But strangers and immigrants… in our country today… oy vey what a touchy subject! We are a nation of such possibility. We are people with so much love. So whether you will be sitting at a Seder this weekend or not, here is a reading from our Seder; from me to you.

There are elephants in the room that would like some attention and it’s time we give it to them, because it might literally be a matter of life and death. These elephants have been around as long as people, but they’ve gotten a lot meaner and scarier since last Passover. The elephants are hatred. There’s the familiar white supremacy movement that hates everyone who doesn’t look like them. There is the more subtle I-don’t-really-mean-it-when-I-talk-crap-about Jews kind. There is an insidious form of hostility directed at Israel which crosses the line to anti-Jewish hate far too often. And now we have violent political hatred right here in America: Left hating Right, Conservatives hating Liberals, They hating Us, We hating Them.

Hate is hate. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Republicans, Democrats… everyone is worse off for it. Are we going to end it? No. But that doesn’t give us permission to throw our hands up and accept it, make excuses, or discount it. It’s exactly the opposite. We must talk about it, write about it, learn about it, and call it out. This is a time for all of us, Jews and allies, to be extra courageous.

Now that we’ve acknowledged the elephants, let’s not let them plunder the table. If we do, we’ll never get to the Four Questions, the gefilte fish will get warm, and the matzah ball soup will get cold. Seders end with the phrase “Next Year in Jerusalem.” We may be going out on a limb here, but we’re guessing that most of us won’t be in Jerusalem next year. We’ll probably be sitting right here. But we can’t take that for granted. We’ve already learned the bitter lesson that true hate is never little, it is never unimportant, and it should never, ever be ignored.

Adapted from “There’s an elephant in the room” on JewBelong.com