It's Passover 5776 and Moses still isn't real

[edhopper]

but we've had that discussion. So I wonder what we think is the meaning Jewish people get from Passover?
Is it thanking God that he freed them from slavery, but the problem here is they were never slaves in Egypt. but even if they were, he let generations of Jews live and die in slavery, and of course there is the problem of all those innocent Egyptians he killed.
I think today the part about leading them to the "promised land" is more important, it gives a divine provenance to the Jewish claim to Israel.

[struggle4progress]

1. I think it's a lovely story: “A wandering Aramean was my father, who went down to Egypt

and lived there as a stranger, few in number, and there we became a nation, great and mighty. Then the Egyptians afflicted us with hard labor, and we cried out to the God of our ancestors, who heard our voice and saw our sorrow, our toil, and our oppression. But the Lord brought us from Egypt with a strong hand, with an outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders”

The tradition is filled with meaning: “This is how you shall eat it: your loins girt, sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it hurriedly: it is the passover of the Lord ... As a perpetual ordinance, throughout all your generations, you will remember this day as a festival to the Lord”

Others have understood it

[edhopper]

2. So God afflicting and killing all those innocent Egyptians

is lovely. A God so touchy that he codemns a whole generation to die in the desert for a moment of doubt is touching?

[struggle4progress]

5. ... One eighth of the .. population were .. slaves, not distributed generally over the Union

but localized in the Southern part... These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war ... Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained ... Each looked for an easier triumph ... Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully ... Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether" ...

A. Lincoln
April 10, 1865

[AtheistCrusader]

17. OP is about Egypt.

Missed it by that much.

[struggle4progress]

21. A system like slavery always has powerful interests behind it, and resistence

can be a messy process

[AtheistCrusader]

22. Assuming it ever hapened at all.

The claims of Hebrew slavery in Egypt, and the flight/exodus is not supported by any historical record or physical evidence outside the 'bible'.

If one wants to make a story about slavery, escape/overcoming it, one has plenty of real examples that can be used without making shit up.

[AtheistCrusader]

16. Except that, separating the US and Egypt, there's no historical basis for the latter.

There were Hebrews in northern Egypt around that time. They OWNED slaves, not the other way around.

[cloudbase]

3. At the end, participants say "Next year in Jerusalem."

Jerusalem is an idea that can be different things to different people.

[edhopper]

4. That is true

I think more people celebrate out of a sense of tradition and solidarity than perhaps fealty.

[rug]

6. What were you taught about it?

[edhopper]

7. That it was true,

that it proved the Jews were the chosen people and have a divine right to Israel.

[rug]

8. Literalism laced with politics leads to disillusionment which leads to rejection.

I have not lost my beliefs but sometimes it's like racing through rock-strewn rapids.

I remember when I was an altar boy there were prayers, in Latin, for the conversion of Russia at the end of every Mass. It didn't make me lose my faith (which was hardly dependent of the conditions of Russia) but it made me a communist.

[edhopper]

9. Heh-heh that will teach em.

I don't know if this or anything specific lead to my atheism. I wasn't turned off by Judaism as much as questioning the concepts lead me to where I am. I did not reject it, in the sense some former fundamentalist say they did. I don't feel I was harmed by it in that way. We were mainstream middle class Jews and this was the majority viewpoint. I don't even recall my Reform friends talking about Moses not existing. Not when Charlton Heston was right there to show us.

I probably stayed a Zionist longer than I stayed a practicing Jew.

[AtheistCrusader]

18. Unsupported by historians and archaeologists literalism.

Even worse.

[edhopper]

10. I just found out this OP was alerted

since this is not out of line with our usual discourse here, I assume it was not one of our regulars who did it.
Probably followed me from my "offensive" post that was hidden on GD.

[mr blur]

11. How can you say such a thing?!:

I assume it was not one of our regulars who did it.

[edhopper]

12. I don't think I have ever been alerted

in religion, maybe once from a legitimately personal attack. But this kind of post is de rigueur here, I don't think most of the usual crowd would find offense. I could be wrong.

[Act_of_Reparation]

13. I attended my first Seder this year.

This particular crowd believed in the Exodus story more or less completely.

[edhopper]

14. I have found that is common.

Even if they are not sure of the miracles, they believe in the slavery and Moses and the exodus, etc...
Which are all fictional.

[Act_of_Reparation]

15. Being an outsider, I can only speculate...

But with all the shit Jews have been put through over the years, it makes sense the central theme of the Exodus story -- deliverance from persecution -- would be an important facet of the cultural identity of many Jewish traditions.

[edhopper]

23. It is THE defining story

for Jewish people.
Like the Britain's have Camelot, but at least they know that is myth.

[AtheistCrusader]

19. The power of groupthink.

That's frightening.

Did not one raise their voice in objection?

[Act_of_Reparation]

20. Nope.

Being a polite guest, I kept my opinions to myself for the evening. But I got the impression the hosts' (husband and wife) respective families were not equally orthodox. It was reminiscent of family reunions, when the devout Catholics on my mother's side of the family got together with the lapsed Catholics on my father's side of the family. The devout dominated the conversation while everyone else just rolled their eyes, knowing it wasn't worth arguing about.

[villager]

27. I lead a seder this year. We always talk about the slavery as metaphor

...about it being the work of spring "rebirth," our own "becoming," etc. What is it that holds us back, still enslaves us?

I've often noted in the seders I've been asked to help with, that there is little archaeological evidence that any of it happened. But what does the story mean?

[Act_of_Reparation]

28. My wife and I talked about that on the way home.

We arrived at more or less the same conclusion: the story doesn't need to be true for it to have meaning. People gleam knowledge from fiction all the time. You can be intellectually honest and still celebrate Passover, no problem.

Our friends describe themselves as "falling on the orthodox side of conservative", so whatever my experience I don't for a minute think most American Jews take this story as literally as they do.

[villager]

29. Heck, I've taught Torah at a Sunday school for 20 years now...

When a student asks if the stories are "true," I always say that's my favorite question.

No, we can be pretty sure of most it didn't happen like it's been written (though there may have been an epochal "flood" in that region, we know that there were indeed Temples built, and then ruined, etc...)

But what is "true" is that the stories have been handed down to us. Why? What do they mean? Finding that out, I say, is what we're doing in the classroom.

Of course, as you've gathered, this isn't an Orthodox shul.

[Act_of_Reparation]

30. Well, for what it is worth, here's what I think:

The Babylonian captivity did happen, and it was during this time that the Torah as we know it came into being. For Jews essentially imprisoned in Babylon, the story of salvation from bondage and deliverance to the Promised Land would likely have been a wellspring of hope. It was probably never even intended to be considered literal truth.

[villager]

31. Not a bad guess at all....

And yeah, the Babylonian captivity did happen. And there were Romans in the Middle East.

Etc.

But yes, a myth-cycle, a story-cycle, any power or insight it has doesn't actually come from taking it literally....

[cleanhippie]

24. Believers care little for facts.

[Albertoo]

25. Moses = the Hebrews daydreaming of a savior in their Assyrian exile

Moses was probably invented during deportation to Ninevah starting in the 8th century BCE
the "One day my prince will come" song of the captive Hebrew priest.

The first major writing down of the Torah happened during that captivity
(no known Torah fragments before the 7th century BCE)

[edhopper]

26. I believe

there are BabylonianAssyrian tales they co-opted that parrellel the Moses tale.

I agree with this assessment.