Pesach Time is Here, Happiness and Cheer

Happy Passover, y'all! That's right, it's everyone's third-favorite Jewish holiday (after the chocolate geld and dreidel spinning of Chanukah, and of course the drunken Deuteronomically sanctioned cross-dressing of Purim) once again. This means two things. First, Christian-y people will soon be nomming on ham, feasting non-ironically on mixed meat and dairy, coloring eggs, and exchanging rabbit inspired goodies to celebrate the pagan fertility rites that mark the coming of Spring the resurrection of their favorite lord and savior on Easter, Jesus H Christ! [JC's famed last supper was in fact a Passover seder, for those who've yet to make that connection.] Secondly, it means liberal-type goyim (Christians and other such non-Jews) are clamoring for their fill of seders, matzah, and anything Jewish.

See, within the liberal portions of American society, Judaism is probably the only religion deemed acceptable by the secular set. As much as fallen Catholics might pour scorn on the faith of their births, most would never dream of doing so to Judaism. This is probably because Judaism, as it is practised by the majority of its believers in the States (aka: Conservative and Reform Jews), is a relatively liberal, social justice minded, forward thinking faith in most ways. There just isn't that much there for anti-religious types to get all worked up about, foreskin slicing aside. Jews in American society have often been some of the country's brightest cultural lights in academia, the arts, business, science, and so on. And despite some notable outliers, Alan Greenspan and the anti-religious Ayn Rand being two examples, they have often been the sorts of people liberal minded Goys really really like. Plus, Jews can still be Jews without really practising Judaism, which makes them the post-modern secularist's dream come true.

Americans love an underdog. Scanning the last two-thousand years of Western history, one would be hard pressed to find a group more consistently and repetitively oppressed than the Jews. Across Europe they were subject to repeated expulsions, massacres, forced conversions, and a whole host of really atrocious shenanigans. Consider that Magna Carta, that first bloom of liberalism in England in 1215 CE, was followed only 75 years later by the expulsion of all Jews from English soil for 350 years. What a downer! No need to really explain the next thousand or so years of anti-Jewish treachery. Long story short, the Jews are history's underdog par excellence. This means all Americans who have shed the anti-semitism of their forebears can really appreciate the Jews, and love to try and identify with them. Hey, the SS would've gone after me, too, donchaknow? So, in wedding the underdog motif with the identity-victimization motif, there is just so much for non-Jewish liberals to really latch onto and try to claim as their own, that it proves very difficult for us/them not to try and do so!

Which is silly, for a lot of reasons. Much as we might admire Judaism and our Jewish pals, non-Jews can't really often become Jews. We've all seen that twit Charlotte trying to give up  Christmas presents Jesus for her hunk of brisket on Sex and the City, so most good goys now understand it is a club they'd have a hard time joining for the long haul. Which means, as the next best thing, the annual Seder that President Obama has now established as White House tradition will surely be the progressive gentile's dream social invite for many years to come. Hurrah, haroset!

Happy Passover, Jews, and to all you Christians out there: have an appropriately miserable Holy Week!