On Passover - 4/21/2024

Today marks the 197th day of genocide in Gaza. Over 34,000 Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza, and hundreds more have been killed in the West Bank by government supported Settler pogroms. Close to 77,000 have been injured and over 1 million have been displaced. This is likely an undercount as so many health officials, the people who would be doing the counting, have been murdered. We do not know the full scope of the devastation, but we do know that all of these people matter, and they are so much more than numbers.

I work in public health, and this week, my lab group brought in Zeina Jamaluddine who works with a research group that has used mass amount of data and statics to project the toll of the current genocide on the people of Gaza. It broke down how many could die from communicable disease, how much water is left, how many people will die unnecessarily, a statistic known as excess mortality. The researchers also break out how these statistics would change under three scenarios: if there is a ceasefire now, if things remain the same, and if there is even further escalation. From a methods and research perspective, I was in complete awe of this work. As a person, I was horrified at how deep the devastation has permeated into every facet of life and the lengths that the Israeli military, supplied by US weapons, has gone to annihilate so much of the Gazan public health system and greater society. When we watch the news, we see snippets of the ongoing atrocities and I find it hard to wrap my head around the extend of the devastation. And there is something about seeing numbers that show that up to 259,680 people could die unnecessarily in Gaza in the worst case scenarios, that is unfathomable, both in the fact that my brain cannot imagine a number that big and the fact that this is acceptable to literally anyone. Every death is a tragedy. 

All of this has been weighing on me, like I imagine that it has weighed on all of you. I get to walk around and look at the flowers, and watch the rain from my couch, and I do not have to worry about my immediate safety. I send my emails, and go to meetings, and in the back of my mind, I can’t stop thinking about how Gazans do not have clean water to drink or food to eat, their houses have been destroyed and there is a constant barrage of bombs, and guns. Meanwhile, we carry on with our lives in ways that feel too normal.

And in a normal year, this part of the calendar is a joyous one for Jewish people. Having celebrated Purim just a few weeks ago, many Jews have started deep cleaning their houses and are frantically cooking for Passover - a holiday that celebrates the Israelites exodus from Egypt. This holiday is marked with elaborate meals and story telling of Jewish liberation from Egypt and the search for freedom. This is a time to gather with our families and loved ones and sing, laugh, and recite the text. 

During the seder, which is the ritual gathering for Passover, we read the line: in every generation, a person is obligated to regard themselves as if they had come out of Egypt - as in we are commanded to think of ourselves as having been enslaved and now freed. I am grappling with what that means for me when I know that myths of Jewish suppression and false claims of antisemitism are being used a central  justification for Palestinian genocide. 

In trying to find words to say, and in trying to find meaning to any of this at all, I came across this line from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, he wrote: ”As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others, those who have lost the right to speak.” I think that this line, more than anything else I have read puts into high relief what the commandment of retelling the Passover and imagining my own enslavement means.

So many have lost the right to speak. Protesters have been beaten and jailed around the world. Just this week, the US Supreme Court decided not to hear a free speech case, and as a result, a lower court ruling stands. Simply put, the ruling says that protest leaders can be held responsible for anything that happens in a protest, even if the leader was not responsible for it. This kind of ruling will be used for mass speech repression, and will make up the basis for escalating charges against movement leaders. On college campuses, administrations are using every lever they have to suppress their students including arrest, and expulsion.  We must also center on the fact that the world has taken the right to speech away from Palestinians. The media and politicians have completely delegitimize or ignored Palestinian suffering, despite the fact that Palestinians have documented Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.

Darwish’s suggestion that we use our privilege to speak out for others who have lost the right to speech is also baked into Jewish text in a way that has great synchronicity in the Jewish text for Passover - let me explain. The second book of the Torah is Exodus - this is where we find the story of Moses and the struggle for liberation from Egypt. After they are freed from captivity, the Israelites roam the desert for 40 years. In Chapter 22 of Exodus, which comes pretty quickly after the liberation fable, the Israelites start to discuss the laws with which they will govern themselves. In verse 23, the Torah tells us not to oppress orphans and widows. A biblical commentator Ibn Ezra comments on the verse and explains that: anyone who sees a person oppressing an orphan or a widow and does not come to their aid, they will also be considered oppressors. In this commentary, we learn that we are all obligated to advocate and act when we see oppression. We cannot be bystanders to suffering.

Now going back to our current moment, I am not suggesting that we act in ways that are patronizing or speak over Palestinian voices, Palestinians are resilient and have shown courage and have fought for generations. However, it is also our responsibility to bear witness to the current genocide. It our responsibility to use our voices as Jewish people to counter the narratives that we see. We must refute claims that anti-Zionism is anti semitic, and support the fact that all people deserve safety and autonomy. We have the duty to call our representatives and demand that they stop this genocide. We have the duty to take it to the streets and take bold action. We have to do more than think about liberation as a metaphor, we have to think of those who have lost the right to speak. To end with a quote from Pirkei Avot, the book on Jewish ethics: It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it.