It's Passover Again

Seems like just last year.

Passover means that my wife is working too hard, and we are having too many people to two seders.

It's also why I have a grocery list (see previous post).

It is nice to see everyone (16 tonight, I think), and the food is always delicious (see previous post).

I figure I have been to 100 or so seders, so they have become a bit routine, and I still object to those portions of the Haggadah which talk about bad things happening to either good or bad people, and to those things which make it appear that the Jewish people are something special. That, of course, is a good portion of the Haggadah.

I particularly object to the plagues, and I don't like the drowning at the Red Sea much either. If I had it my way (which I don't), I would skip them.

I just don't think it is a very nice book, and if people really thought about it, I think they would for the most part agree with me, but most people do not spend much time thinking about such things, if you have not noticed. This is the Haggadah, it has been used for 1000 years or so, so what's your problem? is the more typical response.

Why should the entire Jewish world hold up a glass of wine on Passover and say: "For more than once have they risen against us to destroy us; in every generation they rise against us and seek our destruction."?

Why should God bring the Jews out of Egypt "with great terror"? Why should God himself say: "I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will smite all the first born in the land of Egypt from man to beast."?

Why should we recite the ten plagues?

Why, in singing the famous "Dayenu" should we include the verse: "Had he slain their first born and not given us their property, it would have been enough"? Or "Had he drown our oppressors and not helped us forty years in the desert, it would have been enough?"

Why should the following be said: "Pour out thy wrath upon the natons that know Thee not, and upon the kingdoms that call not upon Thy name.....Pour out Thy rage upon them and let Thy fury overtake them. Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the Etneral"?

Or how about: "To Him who smote Egypt through their first born; for His mercy endures forever.......who drowned Pharoah and his host in the Red Sea, for His mercy endures forever....to Him who smote great kings, for His mercy endures forever.."?

Or, "You struck down the first born of Egypt at midnight, and terrified Midian with a loaf of bread in a dream at night".

And there is more.

Sorry, I just do not understand why it is necessary or why it has lasted so long, but it is time for this book to be changed completely. Of course, many people and organizations have done just that, in all sorts of ways, but the traditional Haggadah remains for all "observant" Jews. It appears to me, however, that those who observe, are not necessarily observant.