Our Names and Our Story


Dear All,

Pesach swiftly approaches, as does our excitement for the Holiday.

I want to share one thought about our story, and our names and our story. You may have heard of a popular book by Canadian author Lawrence Hill, called The Book of Negroes in Canada, but by a much more striking title in the U.S.: Someone Knows My Name. Nancy Kline summarized the novel's central theme beautifully in a New York Times Book Review:


"The power of language to undermine slavery is crucial to every aspect of Hill's novel, starting with its title, which echoes James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name. To have a name is to have an identity, one reason slaves were renamed by their captors. But Aminata refuses to be called Mary, just as years later she refuses to cooperate with abolitionist ghostwriters: 'I am Aminata Diallo, daughter of Mamadu Diallo and Sira Kulibali, born in the village of Bayo, three moons by foot from the Grain Coast in West Africa. I am a Bamana. And a Fula. I am both. ... I suspect that I was born in 1745, or close to it. And I am writing this account. All of it.' Even when old and ill, she insists that 'nobody but me' is 'writing my life story.' Indeed, what frames the novel is her act of writing, in Wilberforce's London, just before the abolition of the British slave trade."

The theme of language and slavery is very germane to the Haggadah. The Midrash tells us that the Jews preserved their identity through three methods: they kept Hebrew names, they preserved their language, and they preserved the clothing of their ancestors.   

Names, language . . . .and yes, even their story. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik writes that the central movement from slave to free is the act of calling out to Hashem and of moving from the periphery of history to the center of it. The slave moves as a feather in the wind, subjected to the whim of his master, until such time as he/she chooses to resist such a fated existence and take command of his/her destiny. Instead of being part of another persons history, he or she begins to write his or her own.  Just as Hill's novel articulates, freedom begins from within, by rejecting the name the oppressor gives you, by refusing to be part of another person's story and insisting on writing your own.   This is the very act of the Haggadah -- and of the seder -- embracing, telling, and interpreting our own story and history, of not just Egypt but of every generation.

Cirelle and I wish you and your family a wonderful, happy, Kosher Pesach.

A Pesach addition-delicious and Kosher for Pesach:

Quinoa 

Truroots Quinoa sold in Cosco is kosher for Pesach. 

40 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup  pitted and sliced green olives
1 ( 6 ounce) can black olives, drained and sliced
2 green onions, minced
3 ounces almond slivers, toasted
1/2 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp white sugar
1 tsp dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups raw quinoa cooked

mix together and serve. 

Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt