After Oct 7, Passover reminds us to outwardly perform being Jewish
“For here the day comes burning as a furnace” – Malachi 3:19
This Passover, many Jews will celebrate another seder with special intensity. Oct 7 sharpened the knowledge that we are in history. The Angel of Death still hovers on the threshold of the Hebrew home.
The slaughter on Oct 7 was atrocious enough. But Jew hatred erupted all over the world, stunning Jews and making many cower. On campuses, in the workplace, on the streets, Jews hid their kippahs, Stars of David and even mezuzahs. Maybe this was forgivable self-preservation. But there were other Jews who joined with those who outed themselves as Jew-haters, their old political allies who want the West and Israel to disappear. Their betrayal is hard to forgive.
The Bible tells us where they went wrong and gives us clear advice for how to survive our post-Oct 7 crisis when it tells us how to celebrate Passover.
The original command
As the Hebrews await the tenth plague of the Angel of Death, the Book of Exodus instructs them how to keep the Angel of Death away. Here’s a fairly literal translation:
Then take a bunch of hyssop and dip [it] in the blood collected in the basin,
and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with some of the blood which is in the basin, and don’t go out, any man from the entrance to his house, until daybreak. God will strike Egypt and see the blood on the lintels and on the two posts and God will pass over the entrance and will not allow The Destroyer to enter your homes and strike you. (Ex 12:23)[1]
It concludes by telling them this is not just for Egypt but for all time:
And you are to keep this thing as a statute for you and for your children, forever! (Ex 12:24)
What’s “this thing” we’re supposed to keep forever?[2] It should be obvious but the Sages see a problem: no one has smeared blood on their doorposts since Egypt. That cannot be the ritual which we observe for all time. Normally “this thing” simply refers to what just immediately preceded it. “This thing” must instead refer to something else. But what? The majority conclude it’s not marking the doorway to avert the Angel of Death, a one-time event, but to sacrificing the Paschal lamb, the enduring centerpiece of the seder. The trouble is, that was mentioned way back twenty-one verses earlier in the Bible, a really lost antecedent![3]
A solution
However, let’s take the Torah at its word and read “this thing” in its plain sense of referring to what came before. Then we see smearing the blood on the door is only the culmination of a continuous set of instructions about how to observe Passover. The Hebrews are told to identify the sacrificial lamb, to sacrifice it, to share it among households, and to eat it. They must also save the lamb’s blood in a basin and use it to mark their doorways.[4] In other words, it is all one piece, connected by the lamb and its blood.
So for all time, rather than choose between the eating of the paschal lamb, as the Sages would have it, or smearing of blood as a marker for God, as grammar and logic suggest, it should be both/and. But are we literally supposed to smear the blood on our doorway?
Message for today: Don’t bait the Angel of Death
A tradition they don’t tell you in Hebrew school is that 80% of the Hebrews died in Egypt. They preferred their miserable but tangible reality as slaves in Egypt to the intangible promise of an uncertain redemption promised by an abstract God. They were chained to a secular, materialistic vision of the world, unable to make a leap of faith despite the awesome display of plagues God performed for them. These Hebrews, like so many generations after them did, disappeared with the empires they assimilated to.
After Oct 7, some Jews have donned the keffiyah, literally or figuratively. Perhaps they think that placating the Hamasniks will preserve them, though weakness, denial and submission only incite the bloodthirsty to attack. Maybe they are genuinely reacting to Israel’s response in Gaza out of misplaced colonial guilt, or simply following the crowd on social media, or naively following the lead of tv news, or joining the rallies on campus to be cool and skip classes. Maybe they are too committed to a progressive ideology to change their minds, or too lazy or ignorant to look at the evil of the terrorists and the horror of their acts. But these Jews are like those Hebrews lost for all time back in Egypt. They’re baiting the Angel of Death. They forfeit God’s protection. They’re abandoning their own and their descendants’ immortal identity.
Being a Jew Means Performing It
The Talmud says the seder is a performance for children, a night of elaborate stagecraft to get their attention so they will transmit it to their children.[5] Oct 7 teaches us that the transmission includes performing the outward sign of being Jewish, repeat the ritual of the lamb not just in the seder but always, openly, visibly, especially when it’s most scary out there.
It’s hard to believe that even in the 21st century, we should publicly display our Jewish identities for the Angel of Death to pass over us. The Nazis made Jews wear yellow stars to make them easier targets for round up, which contradicts this advice to go public. Jew haters attacked identifiable Jews in New York, Amsterdam and many other places after Oct 7, and Rabbi Meir Kogon was killed in the UAE. But the Passover command in Ex 12:23 suggests the need to be courageous anyway, make public signs of our faith (unless, of course, there is imminent danger to one’s life).
Three other Hebrew words suggest this in the our verse.
וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם אֶת־הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה לְחׇק־לְךָ וּלְבָנֶיךָ עַד־עוֹלָם׃
And you are to keep this thing as a statute for you and for your children, forever! (Ex 12:24)
Chok [חׇק], “statute,” refers to a special kind of commandment, one with an impenetrable rationale that transcends normal understanding, like the commandment of the Red Heifer.
The second is et [אֶת], a preposition that points to what comes next very particularly, in this case “this thing” we must observe. Rabbi Akiva tells us that this almost insignificant and often overlooked particle actually contains deep secrets, hidden intentions of God, and requires extra interpretation. We are on supernal ground here and should tread carefully before drawing conclusions about what God intended for all time.
The third is d-b-r [דבר], the “thing,” the “matter” we are to observe. But the Hebrew as it is written in the Torah scroll – without vowels – could also mean “plague” if we pronounce it dever instead of davar. So we could read the verse as
“Guard – give heed to, be on the outlook for – this plague for all your children forever. [שְׁמַרְתֶּם אֶת־הַדָּבָר].”
The world burns. The tenth plague returns. Jews again have to choose between Egypt and redemption. Now is the time for a courageous, affirmative public sign, We Here Are Jews! After all, what more powerful act could we to perform for our children this Passover?
ENDNOTES
Thanks to Marcos Frid for fixing a big error I made in the original draft. I’ll sure there’s more to find if he looks.
[1] My attempt at a literal translation.
[2] Called in grammar “the antecedent.”
[3] The Sages untangle the contradiction by noting other occasions in the Bible when a commandment and its reference were separated.
[4] In fact, the command in Ex 12:23 is first mentioned in Ex. 12:7 in the middle of these instructions. The repetition indicates the continuity of the Passover instructions.
[5] Pessachim 108-109. Thanks to R. Feldman for teaching me this.
Telepathy 
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