By Shir Dimensha, Professor of Comparative Literature
New York, April 17 - The quantity of self-identifying progressives in our society has grown steadily in recent decades, in volume if not absolute numbers, but the best way to demonstrate one's seriousness in the progressive realm remains to take an ancient Jewish text about individual and national liberation, and reinterpret it to divorce it from its original meaning and replace the Jews of the original with the marginalized group of your choice.
You may have attended all the right BDS rallies and signed all the cool petitions calling for the impeachment of that racist in the White House; you may have submitted a paper exploring the various ways in which beloved children's books actually convey sinister, fascist messages; you may fall to your knees every time you encounter a person of color, and ask how you can atone for the atrocities your ancestors most certainly perpetrated against theirs. None of those, however, reach the same rarefied stratum of progressive credentials as the de-Judaification of the Passover Haggadah.
The specific choice of marginalized population with which to replace Jews in your Haggadah matters less than the very fact of replacement. By removing Jews from the Haggadah, you declare you have arrived at the sine qua non of progressivism: subordinating Jewish concerns, rights, and culture to those of other groups.
Understandably, many observers of this practice elect to replace Jews with groups among whom they count themselves, but many progressives, through no fault of their own, have at least one Jewish parent, and thus, as determined by the high priests of the progressive movement, can never attain pure membership in any such group. The only choice these unfortunate Jews, far removed as they might be from their heritage and traditions, have, remains abject surrender to a culture infused with hate for the Jew. We therefore are witness to the blessed phenomenon of progressive Jews replacing their ancestral people with Palestinians, or Muslims in general, in the Haggadah narrative, the better to prove they belong in the movement.
But whether one composes a Muslim Haggadah, a trans Haggadah, an undocumented immigrant Haggadah, or the anti-Trump Resistance Haggadah, that step provides its creator with impeccable woke credentials: it represents a real-life manifestation of the demonstrator who punched the Nazi who smirked at an indigenous activist who shouted down a right-wing speaker who committed microaggressions against people of color that your ancestors bought as slaves for two zuzim.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Why Jewish Unity Is Israel’s Strongest Defense
-
[image: Why Jewish Unity Is Israel’s Strongest Defense]
As lies and antisemitism spread worldwide, Israel’s true strength may not
lie only in military powe...
See No Evil, Broadcast No Evil
-
A wise person once said that there “are none so blind who will not see”.
If ever there was evidence of this, it has been the press coverage during
Israel’...
What did 'colonization' mean in the 1920s?
-
One of the sleights-of-language employed by pro-Arab propagandists to
"prove" that Zionism is colonialism is that the Zionist themselves used
that term. ...
Syrian Jew sues Al-Jazeera for defamation
-
Readers of Point of No Return may be familiar with Abraham Hamra, the
Jewish refugee and activist from Syria. Hamra has over 80,000 followers on
Instagram...
The Flesh-Eating Screwworm Will Enrich America
-
In a stunning milestone for diversity, the first flesh-eating screwworm
infested human entered the United States from either Guatemala, El Salvador
or s...
The Book-"Dry Bones Fights Back"
-
Dry Bones Golden Oldies in the fond memory of Yaakov Kirschen (Dry Bones).
Brought to you by Sali, the LSW.
This cartoon is from 1994 and is one of man...
Now What?
-
Today, Jews cannot walk down the street in North America, Europe, or even
Australia without the possibility of being spat on, beaten, or even
murdered. Cou...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
-
With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
-
Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...