For Passover: 3 thoughts about liberation


I. One of the interesting though less well known customs of Passover is to leave the doors of one’s house unlocked all night. The custom is tied to the fact that the night of the liberation is referred to as leil shimurim/night of vigil or watch in Exodus (12:42): “It is a night of watch [leil shimurim] for the Lord, for taking them out of the land of Egypt, this night is the Lord’s, a watch [shimurim] for all the Israelites through their generations.” (Robert Alter’s translation.) The word shimurim, whose only biblical appearance is in this verse, can be understood in the sense of preserving, or waiting for; or in the sense of guarding or being guarded. The custom of leaving the doors unlocked is tied to this latter sense of being guarded. The night of Passover is a night that is guarded or protected for all the children of Israel, and therefore the security of a locked door is superfluous.

This custom reflects and ties together some of the major themes of the holiday. 

The final plague which God inflicted upon the Egyptians was the killing of the first born sons. Prior to this plague, God had ordered the Israelites: “None of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning.” (Exodus 12:22) Then “in the middle of the night” God killed all the Egyptian first borns. Why were the Israelites forbidden to leave their houses during the hour of destruction? Rabbi Aharon Shmuel Tamares (1869-1931) says that the reason is so that the Israelites would not be involved in the cycle of violence. Only God, Godself would put an end to the structures of an oppressive society. God would extract vengeance but Israel would not. The cycle of violence—first oppression and then vengeance—would be disrupted. Israel would be free to live outside of this cycle, with no need of vengeance. This was the dream.

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Purim, Proximity, and Radical Love

Purim is hard. The way we usually deal with that is by making it into a children’s holiday and then a frat party for the adults. That way we don’t have to deal with the Purim story and its implications.

If we don’t want to go the children’s party/frat party route there are two adult choices.

On the one hand, the Purim story itself is a dark tale of dubious redemption. As the story ends, Mordecai and Esther have gained the upper hand and slaughtered all their enemies. However, they have only done this at the pleasure of the manipulative and manipulated King Aheuserus. While at the beginning of the story the king gave his ring to Haman with permission to wipe out the Jews, the story ends with the king giving the ring to Mordecai and Esther with permission to wipe out those who might harm the Jews. The rub is that the ring still belongs to the king. It is obvious that sometime in the not too distant future, a new Haman will arise who will seek to destroy the Jews and the king will give him the ring.

The rabbis of the Talmud characterized the Purim story as happening just after the Jews were supposed to be redeemed. Purim is the reckoning with the lack of redemption. For this reason the fourth century Babylonian Rabbi Rava says that one of the obligations of Purim is to get drunk to the point of being unable to distinguish between Mordechai and Haman. In the long arc of history there is no difference as long as Ahaseurus is in charge. We all dance to the same fiddler. We are all caught up in the same system of oppression.

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