“Different from all others”…unless you’re a UU?

Dear UUA and associated churches/congregations/fellowships, etc.,

Please stop conflating the Jewish Passover and African slavery in the United States. It hurts my head.

“Go Down Moses” is a fine song for a service concerning slavery in some form. It’s an African-American spiritual, meaning it was sung by Africans who were kidnapped, chained, sailed across an ocean, sold as property with no rights to other human beings, and made to convert to a religion that was not their own. So they took from that religion — Christianity, by the way, not Judaism — what they could to comfort themselves.

It is not a Jewish song. It is not typically associated with the Jewish religious celebration of Passover. Some might even find such a thing offensive. (What can I say? I grew up in a very Jewish suburb of a very Catholic city.) After all, the Hebrews in Egypt were not kidnapped. They were not forcibly taken from their homeland to live in Egypt. They went there in a crisis situation. They decided they liked it there. As the years passed, there were more of them, and they were abused, and overworked, but from everything I’ve read in Exodus, they weren’t sold as property. A new king came along and got pissed that they were multiplying like bunnies, but didn’t want to lose his cheap labor. The “cheap labor” bit is probably the only actual similarity between the two groups of people, since we don’t know if the Hebrew people received a wage. On the other hand, it does seem as though they at least had their own homes, which is more than the African slaves got. They were still allowed to practice their own religion.

I could go on, but I’ll stop here.

My point is, we as Unitarian Universalists are supposed to be about respecting other people’s faith, whatever they believe. I proudly confess to being a spiritual ecclectic, but I also try to make sure that I do so from an educated, respectful point of view. I don’t look at my Buddha and claim it’s a Hindu god. I don’t look at Serenity and pretend it’s the Virgin Mary.

I’ve been in UU churches that go to some effort during Hanukkah to have a Token Jew come up and light the menorah candles, reciting the correct prayers, and explaining what they are doing and why. Haunukkah is a relatively minor Jewish Holy Day. Why, then, can’t we get Passover right when it’s not only a much bigger deal as Holy Days go, but as I understand it, much more important to Jewish identity? Why must we be so disrespectful, deciding that Passover can’t stand alone, can’t be understood unless it is reinterpreted in an American context that is, quite frankly, much more horrific and embarassing to our nation’s history?

Come on guys. Let’s do this properly. I’d rather not advocate not doing it at all. So let’s try to get it right, shall we?

Sincerely and most respectfully,

Sophia Seeker