RABBI KOLKO Deeper truth about Passover

Last year, one of my colleagues, Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Congregation in Los Angeles, Calif., precipitated a huge controversy because of his sermon on the first day of Passover in which he called into question the historical accuracy of the Exodus from Egypt as depicted in the Bible.
The response to Rabbi Wolpe's sermon came from many quarters. It was divided between those who applauded his courage and intellectual integrity and those who criticized his public espousal of such a view in a way that might cause a crisis of faith on the part of his congregants.
It seems to me that the predictable responses to Rabbi Wolpe's sermon are a classic example of how people with disparate views often talk past each other in a manner more calculated to serve the ends of advocacy than the more subtle and elusive goal of clarification and enlightenment. In the process, it seems to me that an essential point was lost on everyone involved in this important and urgent discussion.
What's important: For Jews, the enduring meaning, relevance and power of the narrative of the Exodus from Egypt has never been a function of the historicity of the events as described in the Torah.
My ability, and even responsibility, to wrestle with the meaning of this saga for my life is not dependent on whether the events which we celebrate each year occurred exactly as depicted in our sacred texts. The creativity of my spiritual and intellectual imagination allows me to plumb the depths of this narrative for guidance and enlightenment irrespective of whether particular details as we have come to understand them can bear the scrutiny of the tools of modern, critical historical scholarship.
For Jews, and indeed the human family generally, the meaning of the Passover narrative is that the "founding myths" of one of the world's great religions teaches that its origins involve a people who struggled to overcome the degradation and humiliation of slavery.
The journey of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt to their arrival in the Promised Land is one capable of providing inspiration and courage to all people who find themselves in desperate situations, devoid of hope. It has historically served as a metaphor for the struggle waged by all peoples and individuals seeking to transform the circumstances of their lives.
Key theme: That God aligns Himself squarely with the oppressed in their struggle against their oppressors, and endows each of us with the tools needed to gain mastery over our lives, is the essential moral, spiritual and political message of the Exodus story. It is a message that is timeless, radical in its implications and capable of serving as the springboard for human activism geared toward sweeping down the mightiest walls of oppression.
The Torah contains no fewer than thirty-six reminders that the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt. These reminders are not an exercise in the kind of morbid thinking that causes people to wallow forever in past wrongs and grievances inflicted upon them. They are not meant to instill anger and mistrust of the stranger.
They are, rather, a reminder to transcend this aspect of our past by insisting that we are capable of breaking free of these cycles, and are not condemned to inflict on others the pain and suffering that was our burden several thousand years ago.
Springtime: It is also instructive that the Festival of Passover always takes place during the spring. Both Passover and springtime are replete with hope and possibility and offer examples of renewal, growth and transformation. The bleakness of winter is followed each year by the bursting forth of new life associated with the spring.
Similarly, the darkest days of the human condition conveyed by the saga of slavery in Egypt ultimately yield to our collective arrival in the Promised Land. It is a journey that is never-ending, requires ongoing courage and tenacity and calls on us to have the audacity to insist on a more hopeful vision even when the lens through which we currently view the world is capable of glimpsing only despair and foreboding.
May each of us, irrespective of the theological assumptions we bring to our reading of the Exodus narrative, continue to draw great inspiration and meaning from its description of the enduring human struggle to arrive in the Promised Land.
Warmly,
Rabbi Simeon Kolko
XSimeon Kolko is rabbi at Congregation Ohev Tzedek in Boardman.