Happy Passover!

[gamblore99]

wow Spamuell,
Your family does suck.

[spamuell]

Well they're usually OK, they're just drunk at the time.

[chesspain]

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I usually get the whole, "and if you continue acting like you are - we know what you do with those non-Jewish girls - then your children will be the ones who are unable to ask."

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Just say, "Don't worry, Mom--I'm not mixing the meat with the dairy."

[bisonbison]

"Don't worry, Mom--I'm not mixing the meat with the dairy."

Ha.

There's also a shiksa/dicks joke here that I can't seem to find.

[LittleOldLady]

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I loosely keep it. Do you know if you're allowed to eat rice?

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according to tradition, Ashkenazi (european) don't eat rice, sephardi (spain, middle east, africa) do.

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American rabbis (of Ashkenazic background) are beginning to use the Sephardic traditions as to what is and is not kosher for Passover, because the Israeli rabbinate is increasingly Sephardic in its practices. So now American Ashkenazic congregations are starting to allow corn and rice and legumes. Here's a NYTimes article on the subject: Passover regulations

Last year there was a big hoo-ha because Viagra is not kosher for Passover (I think because it is made with a cornstarch binder, common in many types of medicinal tablets). Medications necessary for the maintenance of life/health (like my blood pressure pills) can be used at Passover even if they do contain cornstarch. But "discretionary" pills like vitamins and Viagra are forbidden during the holiday if they contain proscribed ingredients. So someone developed a little "jacket" of acceptable material into which the Viagra can be placed, thus avoiding bodily contact with the "chometz" (food forbidden at Passover). I guess once the pill hits the stomach acid, the chometz is irrelevant. Necessity being the mother of invention, now the most Orthodox 'alte kackers' can fulfill their duty of pleasing their wives in bed during the entire eight days of Passover. And it IS the duty of a Jewish husband to satisfy his wife's sexual needs and please her in bed--two weeks out of every month. So you can see why an alte kacker wouldn't want to miss a whole eight days out of his precious two weeks.

[BongRips]

I'm not Jewish but my friend is, and I love any holiday where they encourage you to drink wine, so I am going for the seder dinner this year, as I did last year. Last time I got so drunk by the time we got to a club I was drinking out of my flask in the middle of the place, and when they took it away as I was leaving, I started calling the bouncers [censored] and the like. So, in summation, hooray for Passover!

[Gamblor]

back in the day, probably due to the high rate of child mortality, i'd imagine that children weren't considered full fledged people yet, only potential people. that's just the way it was.

so i'd imagine such a plague would be viewed, at the time, as a punishment against the egyptians for enslaving the hebrews, not as a punishment against innocent children

it should also be noted, that all jewish first born sons are required to fast today out of respect for the egyptian first born children killed and to thank god for saving them.

Ta'anit b'horim

[APithyOne]

Its always a good day to be a jew.

[LittleOldLady]

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back in the day, probably due to the high rate of child mortality, i'd imagine that children weren't considered full fledged people yet, only potential people. that's just the way it was.

so i'd imagine such a plague would be viewed, at the time, as a punishment against the egyptians for enslaving the hebrews, not as a punishment against innocent children

it should also be noted, that all jewish first born sons are required to fast today out of respect for the egyptian first born children killed and to thank god for saving them.

Ta'anit b'horim

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I think it's actually a whole lot more complicated and nuanced than that. Child sacrifice is one of the important issues considered in the Torah. The authors of the Hebrew scriptures lived in a world where their neighbors practiced child sacrifice as a means of worshipping their gods. See references to the Ammonites passing their children through the fire in Leviticus and Jeremiah. The story of the sacrifice of Isaac (in Genesis) marks the rejection of human/child sacrifice by the Hebrews who are depicted in the Bible as abhorring the child sacrifice practices of their neighbors.

In Exodus we once again see the theme of the sacrifice of children. Pharoah orders the death of the infant sons of the Hebrews--and Moses is saved from this evil decree by the combined actions of his mother, his sister, and Pharoah's daughter. Eventually through the will of God, Pharoah is punished for this evil deed and for his obdurate refusal to release the Hebrews from slavery (he had numerous previous chances, and those chances will be remembered tonight by the pouring out of 10 drops of wine which symbolize the 10 plagues). Then and only then, God slays the first-born sons of Egypt, including the first-born of Pharoah. This is nothing more or less than an eye for an eye, the so-called lex talionis, a principle which prevailed in the ancient Middle East and was enunciated in both Hammurabi's code and Exodus. This principle is later modified in Leviticus, where individuals are forbidden to take this kind of retributive justice on their own initiative--only duly appointed judges can take "an eye for an eye." In the case of the Egyptians it is of course God who acts as the judge decreeing retribution, not the Hebrews taking matters into their own hands. (Later in the Talmud an eye for an eye is reinterpreted to mean monetary damages--similar to the Germanic wergeld and modern concepts of civil damages for torts.)

This theme reappears in a parallel episode in the Greek scriptures. Herod orders the slaughter of the innocents, and Mary and Joseph reverse the exodus by taking their infant son Jesus into Eqypt to escape this evil decree, thus drawing an explicit parallel with Moses, the partner with God in the Old Covenant as Jesus will be in the New Covenant. The theme of child sacrifice continues with the Crucifixion which again explicitly parallels the sacrifice of Isaac. In the Greek scriptures God once again demands the sacrifice of a son, in this case His own son. Just as at the last moment Isaac is spared and a ram substituted, thus marking the end of human/child sacrifice in Hebrew culture, so the sacrifice of the Crucifixion is negated by the redeeming act of the Resurrection, and as the Hebrews were freed from bondage in Egypt, so too humanity is freed from the bondage of sin. Thus the story comes full circle.

In any case, through the millennia Jews have not taken the deaths of the first-born of Egypt lightly or triumphantly. Not only do the first-born sons fast the day before Passover in the memory of the lost children (well, adults too, any first-born)of Egypt, but all male children who are the first of their mothers' wombs (except for the sons of priestly families) are dedicated to the service of God also in memory of the first-born of Egypt. To this day such male infants must be redeemed from servitude by a ceremony called pidyan ha-ben (redemption of the son). Since my father was a priest I remember him performing such a ceremony on several occasions.

We can't really project our own values backwards onto people of the past who lived their lives in a very different context. After all, once upon a time and not so long ago, chattel slavery was considered normal and a good idea (as it still is in parts of Africa, for example), and so was polygamy (which is still OK in Islam and other cultures throughout the world).