A special Passover message

As Peisach festivities approach us this year, many of us will be preparing our homes, souls and yes, stomachs for a wonderful holiday with family and friends. One could say that all of this activity leaves our plates — let’s call it our Seder-plates — quite full. Yet, for many Americans this year, and specifically for those in the New York area, there is another game (or perhaps circus?) in town garnering our attention.

This year’s campaign cycle has been one of the most confounding — if also entertaining — of recent memory. There is a clear sense in the country that not only is change necessary but also that the very institution of party leadership has been compromised. While it is not clear what will result from this pushback of the people, there is what to be satisfied with in this movement, at least symbolically, though also new concerns as well.

One of the strangest political aspects of the Passover story is how the pharaoh got away with refusing God plague after plague, even with enormous pressure from his citizenry and advisors. The first answer is that Egyptian society held pharaoh to be a god. On some level, the Egyptians simply couldn’t conceive of acting against pharaoh’s will. On this score, perhaps the agitation we see being levied against certain political institutions is a healthy dose of average people stating that our leaders are emphatically not gods, and that our institutions should reflect that in attitude and action.

However, another explanation is that the people didn’t overthrow the pharaoh because it was he who fulfilled the people’s needs and desires. Egypt was by the far the longest lasting, and most successful civilization in the world up to that point — perhaps ever. The pharaohic system achieved a kind of divinization precisely because it was so successful!

People didn’t intervene with the pharaoh, in part, because they were afraid of losing all the goods they’d become accustomed to. Rebelling against the pharaoh would have risked the comforts and basic expectations of being the greatest power on earth. Here is where one must always beware of replacing the gods of our leadership with the gods of our desires.