< Back | Home

A practicing Muslim News-Letter reporter took on the challenge of adhering to the rules of Passover, which included eating kosher for the entire week and attending a seder.

Muslim reporter explores Judaism, adheres to strict laws of Passover

By: Husain Danish

Posted: 5/1/08

As I took the last bites of my Americone Dream, I stared silently at the clock. Five minutes left. What had I gotten myself into? In five minutes, the sun would set and my journey to enlightenment would begin.

My goal was to understand the Jewish experience by celebrating Passover according to Orthodox custom. Passover initially appeared to me as an easier version of Ramadan, a holiday I am quite used to celebrating. Rather than fasting from sunrise to sunset for an entire month, I would simply restrict my diet for eight days. Piece of cake.

I am not sure exactly why I took this assignment. Curiosity? A love of religion? Did I see it as a chance to prove my manliness? Did I do just because I could? Maybe it was a combination of all the above, or maybe none of them. Maybe it was just a spur-of-the-moment decision. To be honest, it doesn't matter.

When I told my Jewish friend Aaron about my new venture, he laughed. I assumed he was then going to lament the difficulty of the holiday and tell me that I should not go forth this experiment. He had, however, quite a different response.

"That's cool," he said. I stared at him, slightly shocked, confused by his response; but what he said next I did not expect at all.

"You can celebrate Passover and follow all the rules as strictly as possible," Aaron said. "But what will it mean to you? Like, what if I celebrated Ramadan with you for the entire month; would it have the same meaning for me as it does for you?"

I didn't know what to say. Maybe out of arrogance, I stored his advice in the back of my mind with the vain hope that I would forget it. I wasn't ready to listen. I thanked him for his comments and carried on with my day.

My next task was to find out what I actually had to do for this holiday. I talked to practically every Jewish student I knew on campus, and each told me something different about the holiday. Each rule not only revealed the splendid variations in the customs and traditions of Jewish culture but also the uniqueness of each distinct family tradition. Like the beliefs and customs of any faith, the rules of Passover appeared convoluted and confusing to an outsider like me.

In the end, I decided to adhere to the rules of Passover followed by the Chasidic Jews. I was prohibited from eating leavened bread, corn, beans and rice. Of course, this meant I couldn't eat anything made from these items including corn starch, corn oil, corn syrup and soy. No soda, no chocolate, no FFC French fries.

I would adhere to the strict laws of Kashrut and keep kosher. This didn't appear to be much of a problem; almost all the laws of Kashrut are the same as the dietary restrictions in my own religion, Islam. I also did not adhere to any customs that conflicted with my own religion, such as the drinking of wine during Sedar.

As part of the holiday, I planned to attend a Sedar, a religious ceremony, to mark the first night of Passover. To be honest, I was slightly nervous. I had attended religious services before, even Sabbath programs, but this was different. This, I felt, somehow had a deeper significance.

Passover is a time of remembrance, a time to mark the emancipation of the Israelites from bondage and their exodus from Egypt. It is a time to honor tradition, to remember the past and celebrate the Jewish heritage. I felt as though I stepped into a world quite alien and different from the one I knew.

The evening was spent reading prayers, singing and celebrating. Of all the prayers I listened to that night, there is one I remember most distinctly - an excerpt from the Haggadah [prayer book] entitled "Four Sons."

"The wicked son asks his father, 'What is this service to you?' He says 'to you,' but not to him! By thus excluding himself from the community he has denied that which is fundamental."

The days passed quickly; Sunday became Monday, Monday became Wednesday, and Wednesday became Friday. I was nearing the end of my journey. Yet, what had I accomplished? I had spent almost a week abiding by Passover's many rules yet I still did not understand the true meaning of the holiday.

I went and asked my friends and got many different responses. Some said Passover represented suffering, and others told me freedom and tradition. But none of this had any meaning for me. This was not my family's tradition, nor was it my people's freedom. Sure, it was not fun eating matzah every day, but I was not really suffering.

The problem was not the responses I received but the question itself. I asked, "What does Passover mean to you?" when I should have asked, "What does Passover mean to me?" I was reminded of Aaron's comment. True, Passover does not mean the same to me as it does to the believer, but it does not mean it cannot have meaning for me.

I wish I could read Hebrew. I wish I could have read the Torah and tried to understand what the Jewish experience was, what it meant to be Jewish. Alas, this was not an option. How was I to understand what Passover meant to me without knowing what Judaism was about?

At that moment, I looked over and saw my Koran on the bookshelf. It was a familiar book, a source of guidance, of solace. Maybe, I thought, there is another way for me to understand Passover. I reached for the Koran, covered my head as custom, and began to read. I read the story of the Bani Israel who prayed to Allah for salvation; of Allah, who did not ignore the prayers of his people and brought them salvation; of the mother of Moses, who by God's mercy was not forever separated from her son. It came to me then. Passover, at least for me, was a celebration of God's mercy, of Adonai's love for his children. Though we may feel as though God has abandoned us, in the end he is still listening.

Sunday evening had arrived, and my celebration of Passover was coming to an end. On this last night of Passover, I went to Hopkins Hillel for the prayer service. Though at first, the prayer room appeared strange, the more I looked around, the more I felt at home, as though I were at my own mosque.

When Rabbi Binyamin saw me, he came over, introduced himself and asked me my name. I introduced myself and told him why I was here, of my journey through Passover and how I felt at home. And there we began to share our respective faiths and rather than finding drastically different and conflicting beliefs, we found harmony. Rather than a clash of civilizations, there was a universal brotherhood.

Despite the obvious differences on the surface, all religions strive for one great ambition: to explain man's role in the universe and to understand his relation with a higher power, whether we call it God, Adonai, Allah, Atman or our own common humanity.