All of Us is All of Us
Shared narratives give us purpose and identity and a sense of belonging. Rejecting them leaves them in the hands of those we oppose. (Editor's Note, April 2025)
by Adam Zemel
Next Saturday evening Jews all over the world will sit down for Seder, the ritual meal that begins the weeklong holiday of Passover, celebrating the Exodus from Egypt. Passover is my favorite holiday, rich with rituals and customs and prayers that work together to position the Exodus from Egypt at the heart of Jewish identity while simultaneously emphasizing it as a metaphor for the human condition. The Haggadah (book that accompanies Seder), translated and paraphrased, obliges all Jews to see themselves as having been present for the Exodus from Egypt, and to retell its story every year at this season.
For me, thinking about my relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people, this obligation has two central meanings. The first is the more apparent–the Exodus obligation pulls me into a narrative. As I wrote recently in a blog post at my day job:
I love being Jewish because it teaches me that I am part of a narrative. A cycle of stories. A single story, stretching back through the generations for thousands of years, unfolding still. I am me, distinct, individual, and I am also playing a role in the grand Jewish narrative. There is no greater feeling of belonging than that of belonging to a story with the power to tell you who you are and why you matter. This is the great inheritance of the Jewish people passed down the generations. We stood at Mount Sinai.
The second meaning is tougher, something I wrestle with more than embrace. By pulling me into a narrative, the Exodus obligation expands my context–sometimes past the parameters of my own comfort. All the Jews were there, even those with whom I don’t get along. Who I oppose. Who do things in the name of Judaism that I oppose.
These Jews, too, feel themselves living that obligation. All of us is all of us. And even in my strong disagreement, I need to respect that. I might not admire or approve of how they interpret their obligation, but I need to respect it. First, because that obligation is the source of my own convictions, so diminishing the value of their conviction diminishes my own. Second, because it is pragmatic to recognize the strength of that conviction. It is useful to remember that the people I oppose feel just as passionate and motivated by our shared narrative as I do.
Why is this important?
I care about the narrative. It gives me purpose and identity and a sense of belonging to something bigger than myself. I cannot explain how we ended up with such contrasting understandings of our shared narrative, but I’m not willing to reject it for the sake of distancing myself from people I oppose, thereby leaving it entirely to those very people. What’s more, I don’t even know that it would be possible even if I wanted to.
Knowing I will never reject it, a temptation arises to conduct my Jewish self in a way that primarily disavows and negates the elements I oppose. This is a trap. There are no moral commitments, or political beliefs, or consumer choices I can adopt that would sever my connection with people I oppose who share my narrative. In my limited experience, attempting to build an understanding of Judaism for the primary purpose of indemnifying myself of its messier, more regressive elements leads to a brittle, inhospitable way of relating to what it means to be Jewish. And if I am making decisions based on a desire not to feel complicit, then my measure of the world narrows in on the axis between purity and complicity, at the expense of all else. This is its own doorway to nihilism
Here I will make explicit what has hopefully been operating to nuanced effect in the subtext: for me, this whole phenomenon is comparable to some of the wrestling that comes with being American–although I would venture that our shared narrative is at a 150 year low in terms of relevance or potency, which is a separate but related problem.
There are things in life we cannot reject. We did not opt in to them, and it is not really possible to opt out. Instead we wrestle with them, we accommodate ourselves to them until the discomfort grows unbearable, and we wrestle with them anew. Along the way together, we make fitful, scrappy progress toward that better world of dignity we promise to ourselves.
Adam Zemel is the founder and editor of Opposite of Nihilism. He has an MFA in fiction from UCRiverside Palm Desert, and he works in the marketing department of Hebrew College in Newton, MA. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, and elsewhere.
Coming soon
Next week:
Notes on the meaning of home from a writer who lost her house, but not her picket fence, in the Pacific Palisades
Later this month:
One millennial grapples with truth and belief in the post-enlightenment age
A writer with wanderlust renews her capacity for wonder in the heartfelt awe of fresh-eyed strangers.
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This is the sentence that really speaks to me: ", but I’m not willing to reject it for the sake of distancing myself from people I oppose, thereby leaving it entirely to those very people."
Love this essay! Thank you. Chag Pesach Sameach.