On Passover, the Jewish holiday commemorating the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the youngest member at the Seder celebration is called to introduce the service.
The prayer, known as the Four Questions, is meant to symbolize the transmission of the Passover story to the next generation, with the traditions of the Seder plate used to illuminate key aspects of the story.
“Why is this night different from all other nights,” the child begins, “That on all other nights we eat both chametz and matzah, on this night we only eat matzah?”
You come to learn throughout the ceremony the answers to the Four Questions. Matzah because in their Exodus the Israelites had no yeast to leaven their bread. The bitter herb, maror in Hebrew, to invoke the bitterness of Egyptian slavery.
We dip twice to remind ourselves of the misgivings that led to our enslavement and, in the same vein, the unity that led to our redemption.
While we make praise for the fact that we have endured, Judaism teaches us to constantly return to the stories of our struggle — in the spirit of celebrating our triumphs, yes, but also because they remind us of that which our status as God’s chosen people cannot immunize us against: antisemitism.
It is the only constant. No matter the circumstances of the world outside our practice of Judaism, the struggle of Jews against antisemitism comprises a certain inevitability. Perhaps more than any lesson that can be learned from the Holocaust and our persecution throughout history is that Judaism is less like a religion by choice than it is a race by proxy.
I rarely attend synagogue. There is a joke in my family that I have become “disconnected” from my congregation. But alongside them, I would be ripped from my home, smashed into a cattle car and sent to Auschwitz. My mother is not Jewish. I’m tall, white, blond-haired and blue-eyed. But I cannot help the fact that Judaism is in my blood — I was born a “Klineman.”
Jewish tradition is constantly instructing us to question our surroundings — the conditions, circumstances and at times our own apathy — that lead to our suffering. This is why, as the Israeli Prime Minister grinned at the notion of creating a “Riviera of the Middle East,” I felt exposed — struggling to reconcile my support for the Jewish state with the recklessness of its leaders’ rhetoric and, God forbid, the potential execution of this proposal.
If you cheered this proposition, you have become so distracted by the mind-boggling irrationality and brutality of antisemitism — the rhetoric espoused by Hamas and its supporters, the hundreds of rockets intercepted by the Iron Dome every month and the horrific atrocities of Oct. 7 — that you have decidedly overridden the lessons we religionize over.
You are asking only one question, about what convinces antisemites of that particular worldview. Perhaps you comfort yourself by musing about how they were raised to hate Jews and deny the Holocaust. That they’re confused and uninformed about the enduring conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and the Zionist ethos. These things might even be true. But in terms of our fight against hatred, the answer to this question matters not.
Today, drivers of Israeli-Palestinian relations — members of the Israeli and American governments and their allies in this conflict — have ceased to ask questions. They have ceased to acknowledge the suffering of others, the context of our state and the plight of the defenseless. And they do so under the guise of fighting a certain root cause of antisemitism that they may never uncover.
When we are cyclically called to question our history — to remember the suffering of our ancestors that have earned us our existence — it is not the antisemitism itself that makes these stories important. It is about being reminded that we have been defenseless before. In the face of an ancient Pharaoh and, indeed, Adolf Hitler.
We are called to acknowledge, not proselytize, the irrationality and intemperance of antisemitism — we know that proprietors of it have no basis in reality. We know that if only they knew more about how beautiful our religion, its people and culture are that they could never in good conscience be antisemites.
In engaging in good faith with history and the Jewish tradition, you get to the throughline of our suffering. We must carry on because, fundamentally, our oppressors pick on us to avoid picking on someone their own size.
Hamas had no justification to carry out the atrocities of Oct. 7 and condemn hundreds of men, women and children — mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends — to starvation and captivity as “negotiation tactics.” Many of us are close to this particular suffering in Israel and Gaza today. But part of compartmentalizing the immense, and at times unbearable, pain of antisemitism and the evil of bigotry everywhere is the inherently Jewish understanding that the unnecessary suffering of others only makes ours greater.
The Gaza Strip is roughly the size of Manhattan, the Bronx and Hoboken, New Jersey. Last week, the leader of the most powerful nation in the world threatened to erase its Palestinian history and replace it with a Mediterranean resort town for the world’s leisure. Where will the Palestinians go? He’s not quite sure.
But politically, he is certain it is easy for supporters of the Jewish state to feel comforted by the fact that they don’t appear to be featherweights in this conflict. It is much harder, as Judaism teaches us, to overcome apathy and stay vigilant of all collective suffering, wherever it may be occurring and especially if by our own volition.
If the careless rhetoric with which this conflict has unfolded continues, I fear we are headed toward a future where antisemitism is not only acceptable in our private discourse but justified in the mainstream.
Throughout my life, I have never shied away from my Jewish identity. I am so immensely proud to be Jewish. But today, like many others, I find myself thinking twice before revealing it. When history threatens to repeat itself, I imagine it will first condemn us to this kind of shameful overthought.
“How is this night different from all other nights,” the child continues, “That on all other nights, we eat either sitting upright or reclining. Why on this night do we all recline?”
The answer is revealed as the spoils of our Exodus. We recline, because by virtue of being alive and Jewish and with one another in this moment, we must no longer be slaves in Egypt.
But coming together throughout the year to tell the same stories and to ask the same questions, this is our responsibility in freedom. Because when we do so we find Judaism’s most valuable asset: a potent empathy for those whose struggle is like ours.
An empathy not for terrorists and hostage-takers but for the defenseless men, women and children who stand to lose their homes, culture and dreams of a Palestinian state to a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
People who, like us, have no choice but to keep a hope for their deliverance alive and endure.
Aidan Klineman is a Medill sophomore. He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
