The Kind of Piece We All Wish We’d Written

A family member or three said that they wished they’d written this essay. I did too. I can only hope that the majority of the human species feels the same but at the moment I see little to no evidence that we do:

In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God

April 15, 2022

By Shalom Auslander

Mr. Auslander was born and raised in the town of Monsey, New York. He is the author of “Foreskin’s Lament” and “Hope: A Tragedy.” His most recent novel is “Mother For Dinner.”

This weekend, Jews around the world will celebrate the holiday of Passover, the name of which comes from the story of God “passing over” the homes of our distant ancestors on his way to slaughter the first born sons of evil Egyptians. Our forefathers, the story goes, marked their doorposts with lamb’s blood in order to spare their own sons the awful fate of their enemies.

In this time of war and violence, of oppression and suffering, I propose we pass over something else: God.

Two aspects of the Passover story have troubled me since I was first taught them long ago in an Orthodox yeshiva in Monsey, N.Y. I was 8 years old, and as the holiday approached, our rabbi commanded us to open our chumashim, or Old Testaments, to the Book of Exodus. To get us in the holiday spirit, he told us gruesome tales of torture and persecution.