opinion
Passover 2022: Are Jews Still
People of the Book?
BY SAMUEL J. ABRAMS
A pril 15 marked the beginning of Passover.

The centerpiece of this festival is the seder:
a festive meal designed to tell a narrative of God
helping remove an oppressed people from the
hand of the oppressors and making them a vibrant
nation. The seder meal often takes hours, involves
special food and wine, and includes various songs
and traditions.

These practices are done with the explicit inten-
tion of teaching Jewish children, as well as both the
Jewish and secular communities, about the story of
the Exodus, the core Jewish values of peace, liber-
ation, self-determination and the Jewish imperative
to work to make the world a better place for all. The
seder and the holiday of Passover itself are about
sharing stories with family and community.

And while Jews have long passed values and
traditions down through stories in countless books
like the Talmud, the familial and communal story-
telling of the seder is sadly no longer a norm today.

Jews in America are undeniably a people of the
book in terms of their strong and continued focus
on higher education, but the same cannot be said
in terms of their reading of religious texts or sharing
religious stories with family. Education has been a
top priority in the Jewish community for centuries.

In contemporary Jewish life, American Jews over-
whelmingly report, in numbers notably higher than
other faiths and cultures, that it is generally expected
that one will attend an institution of higher education.

However, Jews are far less likely to report engag-
ing with religious and philosophical texts or sharing
religious stories with family. Data from the Survey
Center on American Life’s new American National
BY JULIE PLATT
The Passover seder — during which communities
sit around the table, explicitly ask four questions,
and try to make sense of history and philosophy with
a special book, the Haggadah — epitomizes how
values are transmitted and better understood when
they are shared aloud with family and community.

By asking questions such as “Why is this night
different from all other nights?” and “On all other
nights, we eat chametz (leavened foods) and
matzah. Why on this night, only matzah?” partici-
pants in the seder have the chance to speak to oth-
ers and struggle to answer questions about life and
history. They also study, debate and ponder reli-
gious texts aloud, which in turn teach lessons and
contextualize the present from lessons in the past.

Sadly, at present, books and texts are not regu-
larly read in family settings nor are they central in
the lives of most Jews. The benefits of these prac-
tices to Jewish continuity are significant but will
be lost if only small numbers of Jews are actually
trying to share religious stories in family settings.

The efforts of the Grinspoon Foundation and its
PJ Library, which sends more than 220,000 books
that transmit varied cultural values and religious
ideas to families raising Jewish children each
month, could not come at a more important time,
but it may not be enough, especially when older
Jews have simply stopped the critical process of
storytelling and debating in recent times. So, this
Passover, perhaps we should ponder why we do
not read and discuss scripture, historic texts and
religious stories on a more regular basis. JE
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at
Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. This
op-ed was first published by the Jewish Journal.

Let’s Talk About the Freedom
to Live in Security
I t wasn’t until Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker heard the
click of the gun that he realized something terrible
was happening at Temple Beth Israel in Colleyville,
Texas. The seemingly homeless man who claimed he
14 Family Life Survey reveals that a little more than a
quarter (28%) of all Americans say they shared reli-
gious stories with their families at least a few times
a month while growing up. But just 12% of Jews say
they read scripture with their families this regularly
while growing up, compared to 41% of Protestants.

With barely one in 10 Jews reporting that they regu-
larly read scripture or religious stories with their families,
this is hardly strong evidence that religious books and
stories are central to their lives whatsoever. Instead, the
Pew Research Center has found that Seders and food
are much more central to Jewish life today.

In fact, when members of the Jewish commu-
nity were presented with a list of various Jewish
practices and activities in a large national survey,
sizable majorities of Jews note that they have held
or attended seder in the last year (62%) or cooked
traditional Jewish foods (72%). But rates for other
traditional activities, like attending religious ser-
vices on at least a monthly basis (20%) or observing
dietary laws at home (17%), are much lower. Jewish
religious services are, incidentally, where books
like the Torah are publicly read, scrutinized, ana-
lyzed and interpreted, and few Jews in America
regularly engage in those domains as well.

These data should be troubling for leaders and
thinkers both within the Jewish community and out-
side the Jewish world. Reading and engaging with
texts and stories is far more than just a religious act;
it is an act of communal identification and means
by which to promote continuity of values and tra-
ditions. As sociologist Samuel Heilman observed
in “The People of the Book,” families and individ-
uals study and learn stories to become part of the
Jewish people itself. In turn, these actions provide a
“sentimental education” in which Jews gain a deep
understanding of the values of their tradition.

APRIL 21, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
was seeking shelter in the synagogue that morning
was taking the congregation hostage at the moment
their backs were turned to face the holy ark in prayer.

It took 11 excruciating hours for the rabbi and his
congregants, with the aid of law enforcement, to free
themselves and avert an even greater disaster.

As we celebrate Passover — a holiday that
demands every generation to relive the Jewish exo-
dus from bondage — the experience at Colleyville
stands as a sharp reminder of how intricately secu-
rity and freedom are linked. They are two sides of
the same coin: We cannot have security without free-
dom, and we cannot have freedom without security.

This horrible hostage-taking was just the latest in
a growing series of such violent attacks on Jewish
facilities, beginning at the Tree of Life Synagogue in