The World to Come | Passover haggadah by Noraa Kaplan

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Leftist haggadot are nothing new. The ‘theme seder’ is something of a contemporary tradition. In a couple google searches you can find Pesach rituals themed around everything from Palestinian liberation to food justice, celebrating everything from labor unions to the Stonewall riots, catering to everyone from earthy-crunchy hippies to leatherdykes. Some Jews complain that leftist haggadot stray from traditional Jewish values by ‘politicizing’ Passover. Some people think 80’s feminist innovations like Miriam’s cup and an orange on the seder plate were the start of Pesach politics. Others see Arthur Waskow’s groundbreaking 1969 ‘Freedom Seder’ as the real culprit. Still others think the Bund’s 1919 socialist haggadah laid the groundwork for a century of lefty Pesach rituals. But the truth is, the seder has always been political.

Many traditionalists object to the juxtaposition of ancient stories with contemporary issues. They argue that through doing so we lose sight of the miracle of the Exodus itself. What they fail to realize is that the traditional Haggadah grew out of the exact same process of appropriating the ancient Exodus story for political ends. In the wake of our ancestors’ colonization and exile, a powerful new idea emerged in Jewish thought, one which dreamt of casting off the yoke of oppression: the Moshiach.

References to the Moshiach were late additions to the Hebrew Bible, and they don’t particularly resemble the Christian idea of the Messiah. The Tanach doesn’t describe the Moshiach as a meek god who will die for our sins, but as a righteous human, a fierce political leader who with Hashem’s help will lead our people to freedom—a new Moses. Our ancestors developed the seder as we know to compare their struggle for liberation with their ancestors’ liberation. Ancient traditions like saying “this year we are slaves, next year we will be free” on a night celebrating our freedom were subversive political statements. As new generations of Jews add their own experiences of oppression, loss, and hope to its telling, the seder only gets richer. Each year the story takes on a new meaning, but the hope stays the same: that a better world is possible.

For many of us, it can be difficult to talk about the Moshiach without rolling our eyes or feeling a bit uncomfortable. The term ‘Messiah’ has long been linked with Christianity, and the word messianic has mostly been ruined by, who else, those pesky Messianic ‘Jews.’ It’s practically impossible to search for Jews’ thoughts on the Moshiach without Christian proselytizing sites coming up. While belief in the Moshiach is standard in many forms of Judaism (it’s one of Maimonides’ thirteen articles of faith after all) and prayers for his arrival are ubiquitous in our people’s liturgy, in practice, most Jews are pretty ambivalent about, skeptical of, or downright hostile to the idea of a Moshiach.

For good reason too! While some of the traditional messianic prophecies are beautiful descriptions of “beating swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2:4) and a world free from war, death, and hunger, others speak of holy war, the return of a theocratic monarchy, the mass Jewish settlement of Palestine, and the reinstatement of animal sacrifice in Jerusalem. To left-leaning Jews, this world sounds less like paradise and more like a dystopia. Religious Zionists (Orthodox Jews who see the state of Israel as setting the stage for the fulfillment of messianic prophecies) and Evangelical Christians (who lobby for Zionism in hopes of bringing about the Second Coming) use the messianic narrative to justify genocidal violence in occupied Palestine.

But it would be a mistake to give up hope of the World to Come because conservatives have appropriated its vision for their own warped purposes. The belief that life does not have to be miserable, that the oppressors don’t always have to win has sustained generations of our ancestors through millennia of oppression and violence. It was this messianic hope that inspired 300,000 second-century Jews to fight and die alongside Shimon Bar Kochba in his failed revolution against Roman colonization. More recently, as Jews in the Treblinka concentration camp marched into the gas chambers to die, many of them sang ani ma’amin, “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Moshiach, and though he may tarry, I wait for him every day.”

One thing that sets the Jewish vision of the Moshiach apart from the Christian concept of the Messiah is the idea of tikkun olam, the repair of the world. In Christian eschatology, Jesus will return to cast people into Hell when humanity is at its worst—our sinful nature guarantees that his coming is inevitable, so apart from seeking individual salvation, all we can do is sit back, relax, and wait for the world to end. Our tradition could not be more different. We believe the Moshiach will only come when we repair the world, through prayer, action, and struggle.

According to Jewish tradition, at any given moment in history there have been at least 36 hidden tzaddikim, righteous pursuers of justice, for the sake of whom Hashem preserves the world. Any of these people could become the Moshiach if the world is ready for them to reveal themself. No one knows who these hidden tzaddikim are, not even the tzaddikim themselves, so each one of us should act as if we are one of them, as if we are responsible for the fate of the world. This idea can be expanded to our communities as a whole: instead of trusting that future generations will bring about the changes we want to see in the world, we must fight for the world we deserve now. As the historian and prophet Walter Benjamin wrote, “like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power.” We have the potential to bring about the World to Come through revolution.

Though our generation has boundless revolutionary potential, we are in no way guaranteed to succeed. In reality, the odds are against us, and the powers that be will always have the upper hand. But this does not excuse us from our obligation to fight. As Rabbi Tarfon once said, “you do not need to finish the task, but you are not free to give it up.”

Judaism is a spiritual system based in the here and now. There is no consensus among Jews about what comes after death—some believe in reincarnation, some believe in bodily resurrection in the World to Come, some think nothing is waiting for us on the other side. Judaism isn’t particularly concerned with these questions. It is interested in figuring out how to make the most of our short, precious lives on Earth. One thing our tradition is sure about the World to Come is that it will be on Earth, not in the heavens. This means we already have all the raw materials we need to make the World to Come a reality, physically and spiritually. There is nothing stopping us from igniting a revolution in the present.

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai taught that if we happen to be holding a sapling in our hand when someone announces that the Moshiach has arrived, “first plant the sapling and then go out and greet the Moshiach.” Some have interpreted this to mean we should be skeptical of messianic claims and revolutionary hopes. But perhaps planting saplings is our way of greeting the Moshiach. Perhaps by building a better and more beautiful world, we welcome our own revolutionary potential.

haggadah Section: Introduction

Source: Min Ha-Meitzar: An Abolitionist Haggadah from the Narrow Place by Noraa Kaplan