This year at my Jewish family’s Passover Seder we will be reciting the poem “Red Sea” by Aurora Levins Morales. This poem recalls the crossing over of the Red Sea as part of the Exodus story of deliverance and freedom.
The poem echoes Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, observation, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We must continue to grapple with and embrace the truth that the only path forward is one of mutual liberation.
Red Sea: April 2002
This Passover, who reclines?
Only the dead, their cupped hands filling slowly
with the red wine of war. We are not free.
The blood on the doorposts does not protect anyone.
They say that other country over there
dim blue in the twilight
farther than the orange stars exploding over our roofs
is called peace.
The bread of affliction snaps in our hands like bones,
is dust in our mouths. This bitterness brings tears to our eyes.
The figs and apples are sour. We have many more
than four questions. We dip and dip,
salt stinging our fingers.
Unbearable griefs braided into a rope so tight
we can hardly breathe,
Whether we bless or curse,
this is captivity.
We would cross the water if we knew how.
Everyone blames everyone else for barring the way.
Listen, they say there is honey swelling in golden combs, over there,
dates as sweet and brown as lovers’ cheekbones,
bread as fragrant as rest,
but the turbulent water will not part for us.
We’ve lost the trick of it.
Back then, one man’s faith opened the way.
He stepped in, we were released, our enemies drowned.
This time we’re tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history’s wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.
This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it’s all of us or none.
“Red Sea” first appeared in Rimonim: Ritual Poetry of Jewish Liberation by Aurora Levins Morales, Copyright © November 2024. Published with permission of Ayin Press and Anderson Literary Management LLC.
Vanguard readers are being offered a poem that replaces Exodus with an alternative aspiration where everyone on every side lives, there are no enemies, just sentimentalized, conflict-free, Kumbaya Egyptians and a woke Pharoh. The poem then treats the new peaceful aspiration to head to the promised land as if it were a modern plan for solving the Middle East. In the ancient version of this plan the Jews don’t rebel or try to leave without taking everyone with them, and Pharaoh sees the Jews as equals, not as his slaves, and Pharaoh gets instantly enlightened. Everyone denounces the religious differences that separate them, and then everyone carries each other across the Red Sea without God’s help, because we’re all in this together, and who needs God anyhow? Apparently, we have “Science”!
But in the historical version of this scenario, only the Jews influenced by the future prophet Morales decided to get enlightened. Pharaoh didn’t simultaneously, miraculously undergo a simultaneous moral epiphany and become the Dalai Lama. And the Jews drowned in the Red Sea. The Jews die. That’s what really happens.
And in the modern version of the tale where all of Israel gets woke and follows the recent prophet Morales: the Ayatollah, Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas simaltaneously put down their arms, get enlightened in peace, and tear up their charter to destroy the Israel and the Jews. Except they don’t. And in this scenario Israel is destroyed. Another Holocaust. Nice try. Oops. The Jews die again. That’s what really happens.
The aspiration of Morales’ dream is familiar and as old as time. Most everyone prefers a world where no one drowns. Most everyone prefers a crossing that carries all people to safety. That seemingly-moral instinct is universally appealing for all the decent people of the world. But what is missing is a mechanism based on reality. The piece declares that “we cannot cross until we carry each other,” then provides no path by which all actors who openly reject coexistence suddenly adopt it in lockstep with the suddenly and simultaneously unilaterally disarmed Israel, tearing down its walls and denuclearizing. And somehow all those who vow to destroy them shout in unison: “Oh, hey, we should throw our weapons in the sea, too!”, and “Let’s carry a Jew across the Red Sea today in peace!” That omission of a mechanism that actually works with human reality is not stylistic. It is the entire problem.
The framing of the poem shifts the burden onto one side, the Jews, the tribe of identity, supposedly, of both the author of the poem and the poster of the poem. “If only WE . . . “, as if restraint on our side is solely our responsibility and simaltaneously and magically generates reciprocity on the other. History in this region runs the opposite direction, fast. Armed groups such as Hamas have a record of brutal murderous attacks on civilians and an ideological framework, in writing, that calls for Israel’s elimination. Hezbollah operates as another Iranian proxy on Israel’s northern border with a large rocket arsenal, aimed south at Israeli population centers. The sponsor is explicit. Iran has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map and funds and arms all those proxy militia groups. Those are not metaphors. Those are published positions, actual weapons stockpiles, and violent actions.
The regional context is not optional. The modern structure is not optional. The reality of human behavior is not optional. Israel has fought multiple wars against neighboring states, including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in the Six-Day War. Peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan followed victory due to decisive Israeli military strength, not unilateral disarmament. Where incentives and enforcement exist, agreements hold. Where they do not, violence resumes. And annihilation may follow.
A hard constraint is also being ignored. During locations and periods without the ability to defend themselves (i.e. the last few thousand years) ended in catastrophe for Jews, at numerous times and in numerous locations all over the world. Peacenik Jews were not spared. Ever. The Holocaust is the most extreme case, but in a way it shadows the multitude of other slaughters. The lesson drawn across Jewish history is not abstract. Survival requires capacity and will to defend against actors who state an intent to destroy and have demonstrated that fact for all to see. Over and over again.
The poetic presentation treats security measures as the cause rather than a response. The old “I’ll let the bully punch me and then he’ll see the light and we’ll be friends” theory. It doesn’t work on the playground and it doesn’t work in the Middle East. The theory treats adversaries as latent partners who simply need a moral invitation to unilaterally put down their arms and take down their borders. First Israel, then Gaza, then the West Bank, then Egypt, then Jordan, then Syria, then Iraq, then Iran. Hundreds of millions of people, singing “Kumbaya My Lord!” Except they are all “Suddenly Secular Scientists”, so they sing “Kumbaya my test tube! Kumbaya!” A world defined by and powered by the suddenly peaceful nations of the Middle East, all one, all secular, all carrying each other across the Red Sea like it was some bloody amusement park ride.
The Moralian concept presented treats “mutual liberation” as a switch that can be flipped by one side’s apparently newfound weapon-free virtue, and all the other peoples and governments of the Middle East will follow. 3000 years of violence suddenly stopped, because some far-left Jewish poet said so. Nice idea, but none of that explains how rockets stop, how militias disarm, how sponsors withdraw, or how governance emerges that protects minorities on all sides and within all borders. Those are the questions that determine whether anyone crosses any sea of any color.
There are models that can work in the world that are real, with players who deal with reality, not idealism. Reciprocal, verifiable steps. Deterrence paired with diplomacy. Third-party guarantees. Disarmament tied to incentives and enforcement. Clear consequences for violations. None of those appear here in this poem’s reality-free zone. The Moralian requirement for simultaneous universal empathy requires a strategy to magically convert actors who do not share her premise.
The result is a message that sounds humane but functions as a demand for unilateral risk in an environment where risk and weakness are exploited. The Morales poem praises an outcome without specifying any realistic method to make the outcome possible.
Nice idea. Utterly delusional.
And to those of you who are not delusional: Happy Pesach!
Mr Millers argument is an echo of real politic’ Henry Kissinger another Jew.
Do you, dear reader, emphatize with a traditional vulnerable Jew, a Fiddler on the roof who survived in diaspora for 1900 years as a minority when so many other minorities were exterminated or assimilated.
Or do you favor the new Jew ethos of Zionism.. rejecting faith in imperfect goodness of world, but believe only in safety protected by your formidable army & Air Force, hunkered down behind your synagogue’s cinder block wall.
Above are two choices of the master story of role Jews in world. Which has survival value- which will the next generation of Jews find meaning in and choose to continued instead of assimilate?
Is it really God’s plan that Jews are the eternal victims who to survive must be Spartans as Netanyahu suggests—continually make war and dominate its neighbors?
“continually make war and dominate its neighbors?”
Well a few of their neighbors, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, have historically made it their goal to destroy Israel.
“That’s the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us only to meet the terrible truth and be shattered. It’s really a wonder I haven’t dropped all my ideas because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out yet. I keep them because in spite of everything I still believe people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into wilderness. I hear the ever approaching thunder which will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions yet if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right that this cruelty too will end and peace and tranquility will return again.
In the meantime, I must hold my ideals for perhaps a time will come when I shall be able to carry them
Ann Frank
These enemies were organized decades after State of Israel was founded.
So? Their stated goal is still to destroy Israel.
Yeah, but in 2017 Hamas mellowed their charter a bit from total destruction of Israel. I mean there was this 10/7/23 thing that belies that, but details details.
Note: SARCASM ALERT!
Five other enemies — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq — tried to destroy Israel the day after it was founded. So there’s that.
Iran did not join them, ironically. Through much of history Persians and Jews have been relatively friendly (with exceptions of course, because the M.E. is complex AF).
Also, Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood which was founded long before Israel was established, I believe in 1928. One account I read described that some factions of the MB condemned Hamas for being ‘too violent’ !
Again—The two master stories about world:
1. Peace for your tribe/yourself thru dominance
Or
2. Peace thru negotiation and collaboration with other tribes.
Do you believe in good/God or a Hobbesian view?
Trumps rejection of UN and its aspiration by use of tariff and war power is a real world test of master story #1.
#1 should be written as, “do you defend yourself” and hope that you’re dominant-enough to successfully do so.
#2 is not precluded by #1.
No – I don’t believe in a God (good, or in the form of a Hobbit). The world would be far, far better-off and more advanced if we all acknowledged that blatant reality.
Evidence (such as beliefs in more than one deity across cultures and religions), along with the total/complete lack of any other type of evidence is proof that there is no God. Instead, the variety of religions is evidence that the entire subject was “made up” by people/cultures.
Also, the last time I checked – the crew of the Artemis wasn’t too worried about crashing into the invisible man in the sky.
AH still hasn’t answered a single point raised against his cliams. Not one. Instead, he repackages the same framing as “two master stories,” as if repetition upgrades it into argument. By reducing everything to “dominance vs. collaboration,” he avoids engaging any actual claim, any specific counterexample, any inconvenient fact. It’s a neat rhetorical escape hatch: declare the categories, crown one as moral, and never any work of defending his ideas. Why do so, when he believes he is so obviously correct?
Then he pivots to “good/God or a Hobbesian view,” which is just moral sorting. Disagree with him and you’re cast outside as a way to pre-label opponents so he never has to answer them. Even dragging in Donald Trump as a supposed “test” doesn’t help him; it just shows how quickly he reaches for unrelated analogies instead of addressing the argument in front of him.
And his “collaboration” story collapses the moment it touches history. The fate of Jews negotiating from weakness is not a theory, it is a long, documented pattern with repeatedly catastrophic results. Medieval expulsions from England and Spain came after periods of coexistence and accommodation. Entire communities in Eastern Europe navigated shifting alliances and local rulers for centuries, only to face waves of pogroms when conditions turned. The 20th century offers the clearest indictment: German Jews were among the most integrated minorities in Europe, deeply embedded in civic and professional life, and still annihilated under a regime that had no interest in “collaboration.” That is what his framework refuses to confront. It treats negotiation as a moral ideal detached from power, when history shows it is only as durable as the conditions that enforce it. And enforcement comes from having power, not breaking under the foot of another’s power.
Regarding 4/1 6:45pm post and the 4/2 8:58am post, plus one since-deleted post that pre-dated both, the poster with initials A.H. offers up a compact, anthology of recycled tropes, stitched together and aimed inward. Let’s look at a few of those tropes, culled from the above posted comments:
Start with the framing: “an echo of real politic’ Henry Kissinger another Jew.” This implies an unstated issue with Henry Kissinger and then slaps Kissinger as just “another Jew,” as if identity itself explains a worldview. That rhetorical move treats Jewishness as a suspect category tied to amoral power. It avoids engaging in an argument on my essay (comment) and instead gestures toward lineage and implication.
Then the binary: “a traditional vulnerable Jew… a Fiddler on the roof… or a new Jew… protected by your formidable army.” The pseudo-nostalgic reference to Fiddler on the Roof caricatures Jewish history only as passive suffering and presents only two options: a quaint victimhood or a militarized hardness. This is a dangerously simplified analogy and a false choice. Reducing Jewish existence (or lack thereof) to “shtetl victim” versus “Spartan aggressor” flattens our People – and our People are anything but flat!
This line from a deleted comment that I captured is the clearest tell: “protected by rich court Jews.” That phrase reaches directly for the “court Jew” trope, the idea of wealthy Jewish intermediaries manipulating power on behalf of rulers. It is a classic stereotype. The deletion does not change what was said; it confirms awareness that the phrase is indefensible.
The follow-up doubles down on the same structure: “two choices of the master story of role Jews in world… which will the next generation choose.” Again the forced dichotomy, again the insinuation that Jewish survival is either pathetic dependence or predatory dominance. Then: “Spartans as Netanyahu suggests—continually make war and dominate its neighbors.” Invoking Benjamin Netanyahu as a stand-in for an entire people collapses policy disagreement into civilizational accusation. Many Israelis on all sides of the political spectrum have issues with Netanyahu, just as many Americans have issues with Trump. And far-far-left antizionist Jews seem to purposefully forget, and most persons unfamiliar with Israelis and the Jewish people seem not to know, is that a majority Israeli and Diaspora Jews are both Zionist (meaning here they think Israel should exist) and politically liberal. That’s not how the antizionist media or influencers portray it because they are more interested in demonizing Israel to the entirety of the West that leans left.
These phrases used by the author do not exist in a vacuum. The pattern mirrors language that has circulated for decades in hostile rhetoric about Jews. This is today updated and recycled by the likes of Candace Owens who has used phrases like “globalist elites” and narratives about undue influence that map onto the same “court Jew” imagery. Tucker Carlson has promoted frameworks about shadowy networks and dual loyalties that rely on similar insinuations. Hamas, in its founding charter, describes Jews as controlling media and finance and portrays them as manipulative power brokers. The language differs in tone. The underlying imagery aligns: Jews as either weak dependents or cunning operators attached to magically-divine and suspect supernatural powers. Both are more ridiculous today than ever, but to the Owens, Carlsons, Sinwars and AH’s of the world, perpetuated in the fog of each’s own narcissism.
The striking element here is not that these tropes exist. It is that they are repeated by someone who declares himself inside the community. The phrases are not critiques of policy. They are narratives about what Jews are. Once that shift occurs, the argument leaves the realm of political disagreement and enters the territory of the stereotype. Strikingly in line with Owens, Carlson and Hamas.
The final posture is not dissent; it is cancerous collaboration with the perpetrators of the worst vocabulary ever used against Jews. When a Jew reaches for “court Jew,” for the cartoon of the weak exile versus the scheming power broker, he is not offering critique, he is laundering bigotry through a Jewish voice. That damage lands harder precisely because it comes from inside. It grants permission to those who already believe these things, it decorates their claims with a veneer of legitimacy, and it feeds narratives that have justified exclusion, violence, and expulsion for centuries.
The grotesque symmetry is impossible to ignore: the same images that circulate in the outer fringes of American politics and in movements that openly seek the destruction of the Jewish state from both the far-right and far-left — and here they are, repeated verbatim by someone who should know exactly what they are. There is no courage or insight here; the author should see who their real-world allies here are, and perhaps pause for a tsunami of realization that could punch a God-sized hole in this apparently scientifically-based ideology of delusion. This is nothing but a self-inflicted degradation of a community and of one’s self, handed gift-wrapped to our adversaries.
Thanks??? :-|