Rainbow Rumpus founder and publisher Laura Matanah
Order and Freedom: Reflections on Pesach and Identity
by Laura Matanah
“You’re lucky. You would have gotten to wear the star and the pink triangle,” Da’Jon said to me in March as I was making dinner. “Lucky?” I thought. “More likely dead.” Later, as we were talking about the upcoming Pesach (or Passover) celebration, he asked if he was Jewish. It’s understandably confusing, as Passover is the only Jewish holiday we observe. “If you want to be” was our answer.
Sometimes I think that’s an unfair answer to give a child. Children want to know where they belong. Seder means order. Through what we do day to day and how we do it, we establish an order that gives us identity. The Seder we follow during the Pesach celebration tells the story of attaining freedom and reminds us that it is a continual process. “In each generation, everyone must think of themselves as having personally left Egypt.”
I just heard a parent of biracial children say that one of her children identifies as African American and one as biracial. At a recent bisexuality conference people discussed their use of the terms “bi,” “bisexual,” “queer,” “fluid,” and “ambi.” They also talked about choosing to use no label at all but making their realities clear through whom they referred to in conversation.
I am continually fascinated by the interaction between how we define ourselves internally and how the world defines us externally. Other people often want us in boxes. (We, of course, never do that to them.) When I was a young woman sorting through my ethnic and religious identity, a number of people explained to me that Judaism is a genetic inheritance from one’s mother. The tone was often condescending. Having grown up with a Jewish atheist for a father, there was a lot I didn’t know about Judaism, but that much had been made clear.
I celebrated fewer Passovers as a child than my wife, who is not Jewish but whose mother had a Jewish boyfriend for much of her childhood. We choose to celebrate the Seder because of how the ritual feeds our family. It is a piece of Judaism that resonates for both Sarah and me. The story of the Jews’ suffering and exodus is one that gave strength to generations of African Americans when they were enslaved, and that story is an important part of our children’s heritage.
For me, part of what I celebrate each Pesach is the freedom to self-define a varied religious and ethnic identity. As my children grow older I hope it helps them develop identities based on both order and freedom, holding onto and adopting traditions that are meaningful to them.
