Recently there was an article that appeared in Forward, a now online only publication for liberal Jews . It questioned how to be a feminist and celebrate Passover. “Passover Prep as a Feminist Can Be Enraging.
https://forward.com/life/422378/passover-prep-feminist-rage/?fbclid=IwAR0fvSBAEitspBMm_x1vm5iUcEK208dh8JBOgR-dhR0w2FkW2XoeRRWGMZw
It challenges the unfair burden on women in the Passover preparation.
I disagree. As a feminist. It can be enraging. But it doesn’t have to be.
I posted the article to my Facebook page and set off a long discussion amongst women friends. Some agreed. Some disagreed with the article.
To be clear, some of the traditional preparation is hard work…perhaps it is designed to make us feel like slaves. The Haggadah itself says that our story begins in degradation and ends in glory. That each of us is to see ourselves as though we went forth from Egypt, out of Mitzrayim, out of the narrow places. Some see that narrow place as the birth canal. We are reborn at Passover, into freedom.
Each of us. Men, woman and children. All means all.
So Passover can be work. Hard work. Not just for women. For all of us. When I was in college, it was the men on the Hillel board who were the most “machmir” the most strict about the cleaning of our kosher kitchen. It was they who taught me how to clean out the schmutz in the refrigerator gasket, how to boil counters, how to clean the oven, how to tape sections of the cabinets closed. But they were right there with the women. Doing it themselves.
There is a difference between schmutz (dirt) and chametz (leavened food). As I often say, “don’t worry about the dust bunnies under the refrigerator; you weren’t planning to eat them anyway!” I know people who wash their walls with vinegar for Passover. That has never been part of my tradition. If that is too physically demanding for you, this year. Don’t. Let it go. It is the same principle as the dust bunnies. This year that extends to my carpet. We have vacuumed. I would have liked to steam clean or at least spot clean, but it is not going to happen.
While I joke that Passover cleaning is like New England Spring Cleaning on steroids, it doesn’t have to be. I usually think it is good for my house to be really, really clean at least once a year. I enjoyed polishing my grandmother’s candlesticks yesterday. They are shiny bright now. It is nostalgic. Passover should be nostalgic as we pass this story down, from one generation to another. As we create lifelong memories.
My issue as a woman rabbi, is that this holiday is my husband’s favorite. It is his job to lead the Passover seder because he compiled our version of the Haggadah and he is justifiable proud of it. He loves the words. This one night a year I practice tzimtzum, contraction. I give him the space he so rightly deserves. Like the candlesticks I just polished, I make him shine.
Here’s why this discussion is important. When the Israelites left Egypt, all of them, it included the women. The women played a central part in the story. That’s why I am proud to be doing a learning session on the Women of the Passover Story as my offering for the Fast of the First Born. It was the women who offered their husbands hope. It was the women, especially Shifrah and Puah, who rescued the baby boys. It was women who rescued Moses, himself. It was Miriam who watched her baby brother float down the Nile and Batya who plucked him out of the Nile. It was women who carried their tamborines with them because they knew, somehow, that they would need them to celebrate freedom. It was Miriam who led the women in song on the other side of the sea and who found the living waters. Even the unnamed bondswoman who experienced the parting of the sea had a direct experience of God, rather than the visions that Ezekiel and Isaiah experienced, so teaches Mekhilta.
Passover can be physically demanding. Schlepping dishes, cleaning, shopping, cooking, serving. Make sure that you have help. That the burden doesn’t fall unfairly on you as a woman. So when we sit town at the seders remember what Rabbi Y.M, Epstein, Poland 19th Century, “It is haughty and arrogant to order one’s wife to serve him wine. After all he is no more obligated to drink wine than she. Therefore we ask that everyone pour for him or herself. Then we all move from slavery to freedom, from degradation to glory, from oppression to joy.