The Ten Plagues in the Time of Plague | Passover haggadah by Noraa Kaplan

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Pesach is a joyful holiday for the Jewish people, a time to recount the many miracles that set us free. But even as we celebrate, we acknowledge that countless Egyptians had to die in order for B’ney Yisra’el to be liberated. A well-known midrash (traditional story that fills in the gaps of the Tanach) tells that as the Red Sea crashed over the Egyptians, the angels started joyfully singing. Hashem rebuked them: “My creations are drowning, and you are singing before me?”

In a ritual similar to ‘pouring one out’ to commemorate friends who’ve passed away, we traditionally spill a little wine from our glasses as each plague is read, to diminish from our joy. This reminds us that we can celebrate victory, even violent victory, over our oppressors and mourn the loss of human life at the same time.

דָם
dahm — blood

צְפַרְדֵעַ
tz’fardeya — frogs

כִּנִים
keeneem — lice

עָרוֹב
arov — beasts

דֶבֶר
dever — pestilence

שְׁחִין
sh’cheen — boils

בָּרָד
barad — hail

אַרְבֶּה
arbeh — locusts

חשֶׁךְ
choshech — darkness

מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת
makat bechorot
slaying of the firstborn

This year, many of us will have a more personal relationship with the ten plagues than ever before. For many, the concept of a “plague” was fairly abstract before the pandemic. It’s easy enough to conjure up images of corpses piling up during the Black Death, with plague doctors wearing those sick bird masks, but before COVID struck, most Americans struggled to imagine what living in plague times would really be like.

One group of people who did not have to imagine what a plague would be like was the community of gay and trans people who lived through the AIDS crisis. This new and unknown disease decimated the US population of queer people, claiming over 300,000 lives and infecting one in every nine gay men. Because the people getting infected were primarily queers and drug users, Christians and conservatives considered HIV to be a divine punishment for moral failings, going so far as to label it “the gay plague” and refusing to use government resources to find a cure. Consequently, the United States did next to nothing to curb this public health crisis.

Someone said he asked for it.
Asked for it—
when all he did was go down

into the salt tide
of wanting as much as he wanted

— Mark Doty, from “Tiara”

To this day, the World Health Organization considers AIDS to be a global pandemic. Fortunately, treatments have been developed that allow HIV+ people to live relatively normal lives, but due to grossly inadequate healthcare, many Americans can’t afford these lifesaving drugs, and despite decades of tireless activism, much of the stigma around AIDS remains. In the majority of US states, sexual transmission of HIV is a crime. Hundreds of queer people have been successfully prosecuted and incarcerated for knowingly or unknowingly infecting sexual partners with the AIDS virus. HIV transmission laws are a prime example of the state’s criminalization of health and illness.

During COVID, our bodies have been moralized, pathologized, and criminalized in unprecedented ways. Potential COVID-spreading behavior like hosting gatherings and shirking shelter-in-place orders have been made punishable by fines and jail time. Instead of being treated with leniency and compassion, housing insecure people have been met with increasingly draconian laws and unprecedented shows of force in a misguided attempt to slow COVID’s transmission. Police have used pandemic regulations as a pretext for racist harassment and violence.

Worst of all, the US government has allowed COVID to run rampant through jails, prisons, and concentration camps. One in five American prisoners has tested positive for coronavirus. In some states, upwards of 50% of incarcerated people have contracted COVID. Facilities are woefully unprepared to handle the virus, with most lacking even the most basic necessities, such as soap and facemasks. At least 2500 prisoners have died of COVID. Because of massive overcrowding, social distancing is virtually impossible in ICE detention centers. It is not known how many ICE detainees have contracted COVID, because a mere 17% of those who report symptoms have been tested.

Jewish activists have reminded the world that one of the Holocaust’s most famous victims, Anne Frank, did not die from the gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, but from an outbreak of typhus that spread rapidly due to the camp’s overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. When an epidemic of typhus spread through the Warsaw Ghetto, the Nazis did little to slow its spread, so the Jews took matters into their own hands. Despite cramped conditions and a starvation diet of 200 calories per day, the Jews organized highly effective autonomous public health campaigns, including courses on public hygiene attended by 900 people at a time, large-scale sanitization efforts, and an underground school that secretly trained medical students and conducted research on the epidemic. Through these mutual aid efforts the Jews of Warsaw were able to bring the typhus outbreak to a stop.

As this current plague unfolds, let us learn from history. Casting moral judgment on those who spread the virus due to their living situation is unhelpful carceral thinking. We need to fight the criminalization of disease and work to free everyone we can from prisons and detention centers. Through mutual aid, we can bring COVID to a halt.

haggadah Section: -- Ten Plagues