6. Rochtza — Wash | Passover haggadah by Miriam Pinon

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Ready to eat, the hands are washed before the meal, as is required at any meal. It is similar to the previous

washing, but now all wash with the usual benediction as the hands are dried.

Rachtza

A second hand washing —t his time with the blessing: Brucha at Yah Shechina, ru’ach ha’olam, asher kidshanu be’mitzvoteha veh’tzivanu al neh’tee’lat yada’yim

Blessed are you, the feminine energy of the universe, that brought us insights for individual and public health through washing our hands!

As we wash our hands, we imagine washing away all cynicism and despair. We allow ourselves to be filled with the hope that the world can be transformed in accord with our highest vision of the good. We wash away our own sense of powerlessness – because powerlessness corrupts.

The irony of systems of oppression in the contemporary world is that they usually depend upon the participation of the oppressed in their own oppression. Rather than challenging the system, people accept their place within it, understanding that they may lose their jobs or worse should they become known to the powerful as “disloyal” or “dissidents.” In capitalist society it is not just external coercion but also the internalization of frameworks of the powerful that make the oppressed willing participants in the system. As we do the Ur’chatz on Passover, we symbolically wash our hands of this participation in our own oppression.

Here are some ideas that keep us oppressed:

*** The mythology of upward mobility and meritocracy (“You can make it if you really try and if you deserve to make it”) leads people to blame themselves for not having achieved more economic security – a self-blame that often leads to emotional depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, and also to quiet acquiescence of existing class divisions. The realization that only a small minority of people will ever rise significantly above the class position into which they were born rarely permeates mass consciousness, because each person has been led to believe that she or he is the one who is going to make it.

*** The belief that democracy levels the playing field between the powerful and the powerless also pervades our society. We celebrate the victories of democracy for good reason – what true democracy does exist is the product of long struggles of ordinary working people against oligarchy. But in the twenty-first-century world, democracy is severely limited by the power of corporations and the rich to shape public opinion through their ownership of the media and their ability to pour huge sums of money into the coffers of “viable” candidates (namely, those who support their interests).

*** The belief that racism has died out because more people of color have entered the middle class, received college, university, and professional school educations, or even acquired positions in the media, politics, and some corporate board rooms. Yet for large parts of minority communities, these victories have been very partial, not impacting the disproportionate number of minorities that can’t get employment, health care, quality education, or affordable housing. There are also many forces seeking to reverse what gains have been accomplished (e.g. making it more difficult for African Americans and Latinos to vote). Tonight we stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in all of the minority communities in America, in solidarity with those fighting against racism and the way police often single out minorities for special levels of brutality on the streets and in our prisons, with those who rightly try to remind everyone that Black Lives Matter, and with those who are championing the rights and needs of the homeless, the undocumented, and all the refugees both in the U.S. and around the world.

Can we commit ourselves to a different path that includes demanding that our political representatives challenge, rather than glorify, the values and ethos of global capitalism, embrace the demand for a living wage (not just a minimum wage) for all working people, and embrace the Global Marshall Plan www.tikkun.org/gmpand the ESRA and even create a public discussion of what democratic control of the economy might look like? As we wash our hands, let us wash away all the parts of us that collaborate with or remain silent in the face of systems of oppression or are cynical of the possibility of fundamental change!

(Hand washing without a blessing — pass around a bowl and a pitcher of water and pour the water on each hand.)

https://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/passover2016

haggadah Section: Rachtzah