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A Passover Unlike Any Other

(Wall Street Journal) Adam Kirsch - How is this night different from all other nights? That question, which Jews ask every year as part of the Passover celebration, will get a new answer in 2020. According to a 2013 Pew Research Center poll, the Seder is the most widely practiced Jewish tradition in the U.S.: Only 23% of American Jews regularly attend a synagogue, but 70% go to a Seder. In the age of Covid-19, however, bringing together old and young people in a small space to share food is simply too dangerous. In Israel, the Health Ministry has urged Jews to limit their Seders to their nuclear family. This advice is in keeping with the traditional Jewish principle that the preservation of life overrides almost any other duty. Covid-19 also gives new concreteness to the section of the Seder dealing with the ten plagues. For most people alive today, the idea of a plague that strikes a whole nation was until recently hard to imagine. For the Jews of Europe, times of plague were doubly dangerous, since they were often blamed by their Christian neighbors. During the Black Death of 1348, hundreds of Jewish communities in Western Europe were attacked, despite the intervention of Pope Clement VI, who pointed out that Jews were dying from the plague just like everyone else. The writer is on the seminar faculty of Columbia University's Center for American Studies.
2020-04-06 00:00:00
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