Search Library

Some of Us Are Still in Exodus
Contributed by Sofia Gardenswartz

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

As we begin the Exodus story, we read that the oppression and enslavement of the Israelites in the land of ancient Egypt resulted from Pharaoh’s fear that the growth of the Israelites would overwhelm the Egyptian nation. We are all too familiar with a reading of the Haggadah that tells a transhistorical story of Jewish liberation that involves fleeing Arab lands, Arab rule, and Arab culture. This reading of the story confirms that anything or anyone Arab is, and always has been, the “natural enemy” of the Jewish people. At many of our families’ Seders, the story of Passover is used as an ideological justification for modern-day violence and enslavement against anyone who is deemed the “enemy” of the Jewish people and the Jewish state – namely, Palestinians and Arab Muslims.

The Palestinian exodus, also known as Al-Nakba, displaced 700,000 Palestinians from their indigenous land with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. As a result, over 4,000,000 Palestinian refugees now yearn to return to their homes, many of whom live under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Many of our parents and grandparents were forced to flee their countries, and some of us are still in exodus, unable to return to the lands our families lived in for centuries, because of the harsh effects of colonialism and imperialism. Even in the State of Israel, Mizrahi Jews have faced systemic and interpersonal oppression for over 60 years. The Arab Jews from Yemen, Iraq, and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa were placed in transit camps upon their arrival, denied access to education, treated as second-class citizens, and relegated to blue collar jobs.1 This oppression is in relationship with, though incredibly different from, the displacement, colonization, and occupation that Palestinians have and continue to face.

Just as we are taught, through the story of Exodus, that anything and anyone Arab is and always will be the enemy of the Jewish people, we have been taught that anything Arab inside of us, is, too, the enemy. We have been told that European Ashkenazi Jews “saved” us from “harsh” Arab rule, lives of primitivism and barbarianism, and perpetual antiSemitism. Mizrahi Jews have been forced to choose between an Arabness that is “anti-Zionist,” and a Jewishness that is “inherently” pro-Israel (at risk of being “Anti-Semitic”). We have been taught that Arabness and Jewishness are antonyms. Our identities carry that tension. Some of us are still in exodus, still trying to find the history that has been erased, pick up the parts of ourselves that were lost, the parts of ourselves we were told were different or “not the right kind of Jewish,” the parts of ourselves that we’ve been taught to hate, that we’ve struggled to love for all the years of hatred.

Together, we can identify and confront the intersections between anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia, anti-Jewish oppression, and Christian hegemony; hold onto and reproduce our shared history, experiences of Mizrahi diaspora/s, and culture; and continue to work toward our liberation, and the liberation of all people.
haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story
Source: Ora Batashvili, Yasmin Safdie, Emma Shakarshy, and Keren Soffer Sharon of Jewish for Racial and Economic Justice

Featured clips


More clips from Sofia Gardenswartz