Easter, Passover, and Divided Identity
By: Nik Notes
Tags: Christianity, Passover, Easter, Religion, Judaism

Today is Easter Sunday and the fourth day of Passover. Interestingly, although Passover and Easter usually coincide so that Easter occurs sometime during Passover, this is not always the case. The events leading up to the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Crucifixion itself, and the Resurrection are linked to Passover in the Gospels. The Last Supper is traditionally said to have been a Passover meal, although the current Jewish tradition of a seder as we know it did not yet exist, and the Gospel of John seems to have a different timeline. In the early centuries of the church, the date of Easter was based on that of Passover, hence on the Jewish lunar calendar. But later Gentile Christians decided to sever the calculation of the date of Easter from Passover as part of an effort to distinguish Christianity from Judaism (the lines between them had been quite blurry for the first few centuries). So it was decided at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE that Easter Sunday would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the Spring equinox.

Usually this still means Easter Sunday will fall on or shortly after the start of Passover, which is the 15th of Nisan on the Jewish lunar calendar and is most often the night of the first full moon after the equinox. But sometimes it’s not. Lunar calendars are only 354 days long, while the solar year is about 365 days long. In order to keep the holidays in their appropriate season, the Jewish calendar has to be adjusted every so often by adding an extra month. This is done in 7 of 19 years in a cycle. This doesn’t always separate Easter and Passover, but in 3 out of every 19 years it means Passover will occur one month later than Easter, as it will in 2022.

I should note that technically Easter Sunday is called Resurrection Sunday and the Easter season actually lasts until Pentecost. Pentecost occurs fifty days after Resurrection Sunday. This is because the first Pentecost, recorded in the Book of Acts, occurred on the Jewish festival of Shavuot, which is fifty days after Passover. Now that the date of Easter has been severed from that of Passover however, Pentecost and Shavuot do not always coincide either.

Why is this important? It highlights the close connection between and intertwined nature of Christianity and Judaism, as well as the history that led to the separation of the two. Although the word Easter in English is a Germanic word related to a pre-Christian spring festival, in many languages the word for Easter is still the same as that for Passover, such as Pascua in Spanish. Despite this, those Christians who continued to tie the date of Easter to that of Passover were condemned as heretics as part of the broader effort to suppress distinctively Jewish Christianity.

I believe the suppression of Jewish Christianity by the broader Gentile church was a mistake. From my reading of the Gospels and the Epistles, my understanding is that it was always intended that a distinctively Jewish Christian community would remain. In the Epistles, Paul argues strongly against those Jewish Christians who taught that Gentile Christians must be circumcised and follow the laws of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). But nowhere does he say Jewish Christians should not be circumcised or should not continue to follow the laws of the Torah. On the contrary, I believe it is implied that this is exactly what Jewish Christians should do, in the Gospels as well as in Acts and the Epistles.

To summarize my understanding: Christians need not observe the laws of the Torah. But if a Jewish Christian wishes to remain Jewish, they must continue to observe the laws of the Torah, as Jesus, the disciples, and, it seems to me, even Paul himself did. Jews need not remain Jewish in order to be Christian, but I believe it was intended that many would so that a distinctively Jewish Christian community would coexist with the broader Gentile Christian community.

This is important to me personally because of my family history. My grandmother was adopted and raised Lutheran in Nazi controlled Germany. As a result, I was raised Lutheran as well and I still am Lutheran. But my grandmother’s biological parents were Jewish. Or at least her mother was, whether her father was Jewish or not is less clear. In rabbinic Judaism, Jewishness is determined matrilineally, and my mother’s mother’s mother was Jewish.

Rabbinic Judaism developed a few centuries after the time the Gospels and Epistles were written, beginning at about the same time church councils like Nicaea were defining Christian doctrine. It is unclear if the matrilineal determination of Jewish identity was the tradition at the time of earlier Christianity. Early in the Bible a patrilineal determination of Israelite identity seems to be the norm (the term “Jewish” is anachronistic before the Babylonian Exile). But I believe there is evidence in the Book of Acts that the matrilineal tradition may have already been observed. Paul circumcises Timothy, whose father was Greek but his mother was Jewish.

My grandparents gave me a gold cross necklace that I sometimes wear. When I wear it, I have often been told I look like a Christian minister. But when I wear a yarmulke and the trench coat I inherited from my grandfather, I’ve been told I look like an Orthodox rabbi. I could go either way, except that I’d be Reconstructionist instead of Orthodox.

Better to me though would be a reconstruction of the distinctively Jewish Christianity that existed early in the history of the church. I am not particularly interested in “Messianic Judaism”, which seems to me like an awkward attempt to stitch together modern evangelical Protestantism and modern rabbinic Judaism. The seams are too obvious due to the centuries of developments on both sides that separate the two. But a reconstructed form of early Jewish Christianity, whatever that might look like, would be interesting to me.

Until someone manages to recreate such a Jewish Christianity though, I simply participate in both Lutheranism and rabbinic Judaism. It’s surprisingly easy to do, most of the time. There are few outright contradictions between the two in practice. Nothing that Jewish people do as part of Judaism is explicitly forbidden in Lutheranism, or in Christianity in general. And for the most part rabbinic Judaism has simply ignored Jesus of Nazareth. There is some hostility towards Jesus in some texts from early in the development of rabbinic Judaism and from the Middle Ages which reflect the unfortunate fact that Jews were being oppressed by the newly Christian Roman Empire and by later Christian nations. But over the centuries these texts have come to have less importance, and they were never numerous. Mostly Jesus just doesn’t figure into the thinking of rabbinic Judaism at all, one way or the other.

The Gospels and the Epistles make it clear that early Jewish Christians continued to attend synagogues with non-Christian Jews and saw nothing wrong with doing so. It seems that non-Christian Jews did not always object to Christian Jews attending synagogues either. There is evidence of conflict between the two groups in the Gospels and the Epistles, but also evidence that the lines between the two communities were often blurry.

Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin in his book The Jewish Gospels says it was only later that the lines were clarified and reinforced by authorities on both sides. The authority of the newly established as official imperial church on one side, and the authority of the rabbis, an emerging institution, on the other. Boyarin characterizes this as those with power policing the identities of those without power, defining who is and isn’t a Christian and who is and isn’t a Jew and excluding distinctively Jewish Christians from both categories.

Today though we live in a postmodern era in which identity is more fluid. I dislike many aspects of what is called “postmodernism.” But I do believe it is worthwhile to speak of a postmodern era that is distinct from the earlier modern era. A positive aspect of postmodernity is a greater freedom to choose, and to mix and match, our identities. It is in just such an era that a distinctively Jewish form of Christianity and a Jewish Christian identity could be reconstructed.

I use the term “reconstruct” as an intentional double entendre. Reconstructionist Judaism is the form of Judaism I admire most. Reconstructionist Judaism allows a multiplicity of theological views, including the views of its founder, Mordecai Kaplan, that verged on atheism. But Reconstructionists maintain that Jews should continue to observe Jewish traditions anyway and they are often more traditional in their observance than Reform or even Conservative Jews are (though more flexible than Orthodox Jews).

My own theological views are more like agnosticism than atheism. I believe the apparent existence of free will is evidence (or the appearance of evidence at least) that there is something in the universe other than the material reality observed by science. Otherwise the law of cause and effect would mean that everything that happens has been determined by a chain of cause and effect going all the way back to the Big Bang. If there is something beyond physical reality that can affect the physical universe in a way that gives us the free will we seem to have, it is possible this something could be like the soul or deity(ies) that various religions speak of.

In keeping with Pascal’s wager, I choose to believe this is so. But unlike Blaise Pascal, I do not take the existence of God as conceived by Christianity for granted. In a universe without any sort of eternal consciousness, everything is forgotten and nothing ultimately means anything. I would much prefer a universe in which something exists that can remember forever. I believe that this Something, if it is a Being beyond ourselves and not only our own consciousnesses like some non-theistic religions suggest, would recognize any effort we make to honor It as valid. So to what I will now call God, it does not matter which religion or religions we choose or whether the stories our religions tell are literally true. As long as our efforts are honest, God will recognize our attempt.

One of my favorite movies is Life of Pi (I still haven’t gotten around to reading the book). In it, the main character decides from an early age to try out every religion he can. Most of the movie consists of a story he tells about being on a lifeboat with a tiger and some fellow survivors of a shipwreck. At the risk of spoiling the ending, at the end the interviewer questions whether the story is really true and suggests the truth is actually a darker tale. The main character basically says, “maybe so, but which story do you prefer? I prefer the one with the tiger.”

I said I dislike postmodernism, but this movie is a very postmodern tale. It’s a story about choosing between two narratives, both of which are valid in a way even if only one, or possibly neither, of them are the literal truth. I suppose it would be more accurate to say I have mixed feelings about postmodernist thinking. I do believe some things are objectively true or not true, so I dislike the postmodernist insistence that this is not the case and everything is only a narrative. But in some cases, I agree with the movie’s conclusion: I prefer the story with the tiger.

The Life of Pi is set in India among a Hindu family. Hinduism says that there are four things a person might want. The least mature want to experience pleasure and avoid pain. But eventually one realizes that both pleasure and pain are fleeting (although in Hindu thinking this could take several rebirths), so one seeks to extend pleasure by obtaining success: wealth, power, and the like. Later though it is realized that even these things pass, and after one dies, are forgotten. So one seeks to serve the community, which will outlast the individual. Even the community though will not last forever. So the final desire of the most mature soul is for that which will last forever, Something Eternal.

What that Something Eternal is can be different things in different ways of thinking. Hinduism, like Reconstructionist Judaism, allows for multiple theologies. It could be a god or gods, however conceived, or an afterlife for our own consciousnesses, or reincarnation, or a chain of cause and effect that does not involve the continued existence of ourselves but also is not, unlike the chain of cause and effect imagined by physical science, morally neutral. Any of these things would give existence meaning that it otherwise lacks. But without Something Eternal, all existence is meaningless and absurd, as existentialist philosophy says.

I would rather act as if there is Something Eternal than act as if existence means nothing. I believe this is part of what draws me to the Jewish tradition. Judaism is a religion of action. Hinduism says there are four paths to God: knowledge, action, love, and exercises like meditation and yoga leading to mystical insight. I tend to favor knowledge and action, both of which are prominent in Judaism with its Talmud and Torah. Christianity can be seen as a bhakti religion, a path to God through love of one of God’s manifestations, Jesus Christ. I like this too, but I feel my religious life is more complete with the study and observances of the Jewish tradition added to the Christian tradition of love.

This is a bit of a simplification however. Christianity involves action too, and I believe it should involve even more than it typically does these days. Jesus many times said “do this” or “do not do this”, and he clearly stated we are to keep his “commandments.” And Judaism involves love of God as well. There are also meditative and mystical practices in both Judaism and Christianity which I admire but I have never been very good at that sort of thing.

One action that has developed in the Christian tradition is fasting during Lent, which brings me back to my divided and somewhat conflicted identity. This year I decided to fast during Lent by going completely vegan and giving up refined (white) grain products. I also gave up alcohol for Lent. This creates a bit of a conflict however, since the Passover seder involves wine and traditionally lamb and a charred boiled egg. So I looked online for a vegan seder service (called a haggadah) and bought some whole grain matzah (unleavened bread, since leavened bread is forbidden during Passover) and some grape juice. But then COVID-19 came along and cancelled my plans to organize a vegan, whole grain, alcohol-free seder.

There is another tradition that makes it hard to be vegan during Passover. The Torah forbids leavened wheat, spelt, barley, rye and oats during the seven (or eight in the Diaspora in Orthodox tradition) days of Passover. But in the Middle Ages Ashkenazi Jews (those from Central Europe) added a prohibition of all other grains and also legumes and many seeds. Quinoa is okay though, because no one in Europe knew about it when this additional prohibition was added. Nuts like almonds and pistachios are also allowed. So that’s how I’ve been getting my protein during my Lenten Passover.

This year is the first year I have decided to keep kosher for Passover (which is on top of regular kosher rules, but those don’t effect me because they only apply to meat so everything vegetarian is kosher). Since Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) last fall I have been trying to observe all of the Jewish holidays. This is because last summer my sister was able to find the name of our great grandmother: Gertrude Weinberg. She also learned that Gertrude’s sister Elizabeth is on a list of Jewish Holocaust survivors, but Gertrude is not on that list. It seems likely she did not survive.

Prior to this we had always believed our grandmother’s biological parents had been Jewish but we did not have much to go on. The Nazis tried to take our grandmother away when she was a child because they believed she was Jewish. Her biological parents were able to talk them out of it. It helped that the war was almost over and it was clear the Nazis would be defeated. There were some other stories like this in my family, but nothing concrete until my sister got into our genealogy.

I remember however always being interested in Judaism and Jewishness and my own possible Jewish identity. In the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tereza is drawn to what she considers “something higher” than the mundane and ordinary. I think I’ve always felt the same way, which is part of why I love that book and in particular the character Tereza. This has manifested itself in my life as an interest in religion, in that Something Eternal I want to believe exists, and also in my being drawn to things that seem like something different. Judaism and Jewishness were something different. I suppose this could be seen as the opposite of the temptation to assimilation that some who are raised Jewish experience.

Lutheranism is also a longstanding part of my identity however. In the Baptist South, I also saw it as something different. It’s a part of my identity I would not want to give up even as I make more of an effort to explore the Jewish side of who I am. Fortunately, early tradition says it is quite possible to be both Jewish and Christian. I haven’t had too much trouble celebrating both Easter and Passover this year, so I believe this is still true today. Probably even more so than it would have been before the postmodern era.

By the way, as a bit of an aside, I have read one view that says the postmodern era began in 1979 because it falls in between World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union and nothing particularly notable happened that year except for the Iranian Revolution, seen as the first postmodern revolution. I note this because I was born in 1979.