Passover during war: Why is this Seder different from all other Seders?
| Published date | 22 April 2024 |
| Author | DAVID BREAKSTONE |
| Publication title | Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel) |
Still, for many in Israel with relatives overseas, there is a festering wound of another sort that the coming holiday will expose: Seder tables around which relatives will be gathering but barely speaking. Some won't be there at all, unwilling to congregate with those whose beliefs undermine their very survival. Others who plan to show up are imploring their hosts' reassurance that they will feel emotionally safe. I have no need for the many polls taken since Oct. 7 revealing the deep and bitter divisions that are threatening to tear Jewish families abroad apart: Mine is one of them.
Families divided during the Israel-Hamas war Passover Seder
We're not talking criticism of Israel as the source of tension; I've got plenty of that myself.
Rather, it's the out-and-out denial of Israel's right to exist that's the cause of the barely veiled enmity running rampant among cousins, aunts, uncles, children, and parents.
The unfortunate fact is that within my own clan, there are those unable to voice unequivocal support for Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, including one who has been participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and marching with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an organization unabashedly, even proudly, anti-Zionist.
In reference to October 7, its website proclaims, "an occupied people have a right to resist, including the use of force," and the 2024 version of its Haggadah, titled "Exodus from Zionism," explicitly calls to free Palestine from the river to the sea while repeatedly accusing Israel of practicing apartheid and perpetrating genocide (nine and 45 references, respectively). That's crossing a red line I cannot leave uncontested.
If this were only my problem, I'd deal with it privately. But it isn't.
Ardent supporters of Israel across the globe will find themselves marking Passover this year together with those convinced that Israel is an apartheid state guilty of perpetrating genocide. That such views have been accentuated by current events shouldn't obfuscate the fact that they have been taking root for at least a decade.
Already in 2013, a Pew report on American Jewry found that 20% of those aged 18-29 felt a sense of alienation from Israel, compared to only 3% of those over the age of 65. In 2017, a Bay Area Jewish community survey found that 43% of those between 18-34 were comfortable with the very idea of a Jewish state, never mind its policies, as compared to 73% of those over 65. Among this younger cohort, only 32% were more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians. And in 2021...
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