You Shall Tell Your Children: Holocaust Memory in American Passover Ritual

Introduction: Listening to Voices from the Killing Ground

1 Introduction Listening to Voices from the Killing Ground
Be very, very careful, for we are prone to forgetting fast. That which our ancestors suffered in Egypt today has become only a few minutes’ hasty reading of the Hagada in anticipation that the matzos dumplings are to appear on the table as soon as possible.”1 More than a decade ago, these words from an anonymous survivor of the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele’s “experiments” inspired the book you have before you. In this message of warning, the survivor makes a comparison between remembering the horrors endured through the Holocaust and remembering the suffering of the ancient Israelites, the ancestors of present-day Jews, when they were slaves in Egypt. Memory of slavery is ritually performed by contemporary Jews during the holiday of Passover, when Jews use a text called the haggadah, literally “the telling,” to conduct a seder, the ritual meal traditionally held on the first and second nights of Passover. The intent of the holiday is to remember, but the survivor notes that often the telling of the story is forgotten as participants focus attention upon the special foods that accompany the celebratory meal. Reading the survivor’s words, I was reminded of a Jewish joke that regularly circulates through the Internet : “A short summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.” I was also reminded of A Passover Haggadah, the haggadah of my childhood. Reading the idealistic words of Anne Frank during the seder every year forged an indelible link in my mind between the ancient slavery and the recent genocide as sites of remembrance. When I looked back at the haggadah , I discovered that the excerpt from Anne Frank’s diary was one of six texts memorializing the Holocaust, and all six texts were marked “optional.” I was stunned (and horrified) by the discovery. How could remembrance of the Holocaust be voluntary? Of course, no malice is intended by the label. All additions to the traditional text of the haggadah are marked as optional in 2 You Shall Tell Your Children A Passover Haggadah so that “variant readings and interpretations are distinguishable from the basic text.”2 Still, I was struck by the contrast between the power of the survivor’s words, “we are prone to forgetting fast,” and the force of “optional” memory. During the course of my research, I discovered many other haggadot (plural of haggadah) published in the United States that enfolded the Holocaust into the narrative of slavery and redemption. I focused my attention on how the two events were brought together. Whose voices were included? Whose voices were missing? Where in the haggadah did the Holocaust appear? When were the Holocaust passages read during the seder? What kinds of remembrance were enabled by the conjunction of the Holocaust and the Exodus from Egypt? What forms of remembrance were foreclosed? My reading of haggadot and the Holocaust texts within them constitutes a textual embrace, a term used by Laura Levitt to describe a Jewish feminist reading practice whereby one self-critically reads others as oneself.3 I enact this methodological turn, which expresses the desire for the text, and yet maintains the distinct voices of author and text, self and other, in the chapters that follow. To embrace is to hold on to in a gesture of affection. The term embrace suggests bodily action—to wrap one’s arms around another. In a mutual embrace, one finds comfort and security. An embrace may express affection, but one may also hold too tightly. A textual embrace is also about acknowledging one’s disappointments with that which one loves. For me, as for many other Jews, Passover is a site of emotional attachment to Judaism and family, and the haggadah evokes these childhood memories. I love these texts: they surprise me; they teach me; they tie me to my past. And, sometimes, they disappoint me. The textual embrace is simultaneously a gesture of affection and of letting go. Sara Horowitz, following the warning from the anonymous survivor, asks, “What will help them [contemporary participants in the seder] to tell and absorb stories about the Holocaust in a manner that will defeat forgetfulness?”4 You Shall Tell Your Children: Holocaust Memory in American Passover Ritual is my attempt to suggest some answers to this crucial question. In Every Generation: Passover and the Haggadah Passover remains one of the most popular holidays for American Jews. The 1990 National...