No Passover seder is complete without the singing of Chad Gadya. Technically it is called a cumulative song, with each verse being added to all the previous verses. Beside being great fun—especially after 4 glasses of wine, and late until the evening—it also packs a wallop of a spiritual message. The one poor kid, getting eaten, time after time, is symbolic of Israel. The father (G-d) buys the kid (Israel) with two coins (the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, i.e., the Torah).
Israel is then subjected by the cat, the cat by the dog, the dog by the stick, etc., with each of these standing for an historic empire that conquered the empire before: Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome, Saracen (Arab), Crusader, and finally Ottoman. Only thereafter is Israel saved by the Holy One, Blessed be He.
It’s not hard to understand why our ancestors, militarily powerless and politically vulnerable, saw the world in such stark terms. Their position could best be described by the Swedish expression, “dancing with elephants.” One false step and you could get squished.
We do need to ask, however, how well we are served by this theology when we are stronger than our opponents. Yes, Jews are still getting murdered. None of us forget the horrors of October 7. But at the end of the day, we are the ones with a nuclear arsenal, and a military that could hold its own against virtually any opponent. To enjoy that kind of firepower advantage, and at the same time feel set upon like the poor little kid in the Chad Gadya, is incoherent, indeed virtually schizophrenic. That certainly does not mean we don’t have enemies. We do, and they represent varying levels of indecency. But weak and powerless we ain’t.
Chava Alberstein, one of Israel’s great singers, caused a serious cultural crisis during the first intifada when she rewrote the lyrics of Chad Gadya taking into account Israel’s new status as non-victim.
She wrote: “How long will the cycle of horror last/the pursuer and the pursued/the striker and the stricken/When will this madness end? And what has changed for you, what has changed?”
This is a question we should all be asking at our Passover seder.