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Day 6
What Would a Decent Person Do?
As Passover ends and those of us who observe the holiday allow hametz – leavened foods – back into our homes and our lives, it is worth reflecting on what all the fuss is over, and whether we should make such a fuss at all.
Philosophers have recently begun to consider the responsibilities of those who benefit from injustices for which they are not responsible. As a white citizen of both Canada and the United States, I benefit from the history of colonialism, genocide, enslavement, and segregation. I am not culpable; I am not even complicit in the historical (as opposed to ongoing) aspects of these crimes. Yet together with other innocent beneficiaries, I owe something to somebody by way of rectification or repair. Celebrating Passover, being cheerful about our freedom, may then seem to be like celebrating Columbus Day: a decent person doesn’t do it.
Let us ask the question bluntly: if you could go back in time to just before the 10th plague, before it was carried out, and you could choose to accept your freedom at the cost of the lives of every firstborn, or refuse your freedom to spare them, which would you choose? Perhaps we can be forgiven a moment of weakness or rage after decades of harsh enslavement. But now that the rage has subsided, should we still celebrate our freedom? Should we instead atone for it?
The link between the new ethic that universalizes our emancipatory politics – the olive on the Seder plate – and the older tradition that grapples with the cost to the Egyptians may then be closer than it seems. It is through the former that we can have a hope of redeeming the latter.
--Avery Kolers, The price of freedom, blog.oup.com
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