Sunday, April 20, 2025 – It’s BOTH Easter Sunday and the last day of Passover.
YAY, says 8-year-old me. Because in those days, only Easter got talked about in pop culture. The best we Jewish kids got was maybe a mention at the end of a local newscast but usually not. Meanwhile, that week in school there was the painting of Easter eggs and sometimes the appearance of a large bunny.
Needless to say, the significance of the eggs, the bunny and the holiday itself was never explained.
Of course, I did know a little about Passover. It was a holiday where you ate matzoh – a bland tasting flatbread – and celebrated (Note: Well, sort of…) because centuries ago the Angel of Death “passed over” the homes of Jews, who were once again fleeing their neighborhoods in terror because bad people were trying to kill us.
We were always fleeing somewhere and often we got caught. But not all the time. This day we got away with our lives and whatever it was we were being hunted down for, in this case the imagined crime of simply being ourselves.
Imagine being hunted down for no apparent reason other than something someone else makes up, or assumes, about who you really are. Hard to believe, right?
Meanwhile Christ, who was said to be a Jew (Note: I learned this to my great surprise a few years later) was, according to Christianity, literally resurrected on Easter Sunday, after being murdered by… well, let’s not get into that.
Anyway, so this year the confluence of both days means t’s a celebration for… both sides?
Oh, who knows because obviously there are more than those raised Jewish and Christian in the world. A lot more. I mean, even atheists count, right?
I’m not an observant Jew and my husband is certainly not an observant Catholic. At all. Yet when you’re raised with religion it somehow becomes a part of you culturally, no matter how much you try to ignore it. An imprint on your early soul that every so often surfaces in quite unexpected ways.
Recently, I realized that for both of us it will sometimes rear its head in…. kindness and understanding.
Isn’t that weird?
Perhaps not.
All those stories of suffering or being chased for no reason other than who you are – when I consider it the best I can say is that what we both took away from all that indoctrinating dogma was… empathy.
Not sure that was the plan.
And maybe being gay at a time when it wasn’t so cool to be, is what really helped with that.
On the other hand, God – or whatever you imagine her/him/they to be, works in mysterious ways, right?
Which is to say, on this rare day when two different religions simultaneously celebrate survival, it might be a good time to consider the value of understanding and empathy for those less fortunate than ourselves.
To honor those who live by that mantra.
And to be very, very, very suspect of anyone who does not.
John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band – “Imagine”
notes from a chair 