I love Passover. In fact, it’s probably my favorite Jewish holiday. How could you not love it? It’s basically Thanksgiving, except instead of turkey and mashed potatoes, you get brisket and chicken soup with matzoh balls. And instead of football all day, with Passover you usually get a NCAA Tourney game or two. Even better, Passover is for two nights, so it’s double the fun.

Despite that, though, I have a problem with Passover. A serious problem with it. In fact, you can say I have a big, huge honking problem with it. As much as I love the idea of Passover, I think it’s a pretty dumb-ass story to throw a holiday around.

What basically bugs me is the whole giving thanks part of it. See, the point of the Seder is retell the story of the Exodus and to give thanks for being freed from slavery. Who we give thanks to is, of course, the Big Guy, the Big Kahuna, the Master of Disaster, God. Or as we Jews like to say, G-d. See, we were slaves for a long, long time and finally, at some point, G-d came around and decided to save us. For this we give Him thanks. But should we be thanking Him?

According to the story, we were slaves for around 400 years. That’s a long fucking time to be slaves. Think about it. Four hundred years ago, what we now call America was still a bunch of colonies owned by European Empires and a bunch of doomed Native Americans. Four hundred years ago, there was no tv because electricity was about three centuries away from being invented and there were no toilets so everybody just dumped their shit either out the window or into the closest river. Four hundred years ago, people were wearing pantaloons and big huge fluffy collars and calling each other “thou” and “thee” and all sorts of other dumb things. In other words, that was a long, long time ago. And imagine being in a group of people who are enslaved for that period of time. That's an awful long period of time for a group of people to know nothing but waking up every day knowing nothing but being whipped by some guy in a loin cloth, carrying mortar and pistle and your back just so the Pharoah could have a place to keep his stuffed cats when he died

And I don’t even want to bring up the fact that He, in his infinite wisdom, let us become slaves in the first place. I mean, if he was really so great, couldn’t he of done something then? Couldn’t he of like, done some duex et machina magic type thingy and kept the Egyptians from capturing us in the first place? Couldn’t He of done something other than tell Jacob what was going to happen, something like maybe warm him or tell his sons that maybe they should go to another country?

I know, I know, God had his reasons. He even told Jacob what they were, that as a reward, He would give us His law. Which is, yes, kind of a compliment because it’s not like He gave the same offer to the Hittites or Babylonians. On the other hand, how much character building does a people need before we can handle His laws? Was being slaves for, say, 200 years not enough character building? If not, couldn’t he have given us Two of his Ten commandments, then given us some of the others every time some other punk-ass Empire came down to the Promised Land and kicked our butts? And he also gave us one more thing, He gave us the Promised Land- Israel. Something which has just been working out great for us.

In fact, in a way, the whole thing is kind of symbolic of what it means to be a Jew. Think about it. What other people have pretty much been bitch-slapped by history quite like us? What other group of people have had so much bad shit happen to them? Sure, there are other groups of people who have had bad runs of it- the Irish, the Africans, the Native Americans, but we’re talking of about 4,000 years of serious bad shit. The entire Old Testament is just one big huge chronology of all the times we’ve gotten our butts kicked. We were pretty much walked all over by every Empire that came to power, the Belgium of the Bible. There was, let’s see, The Hittites, the Babylonians, the Macedonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Assyrians, just to name a few. And then the Romans came and we pissed them off so much they chased us out of our own country. Which led to about 2000 years of being scapegoated and kicked around anytime the goyim felt like kicking someone around. There was the Inquisition, the Programs, the ghettos, the ritual slaughter around Easter, the raping and pillaging by soldiers on their way to the Crusades, and the Holocaust. And that doesn’t even include the thousands of years of just simple harassment and murder.

Yet, holiday after holiday, sabbath after sabbath, day after day, here we are, thanking God for all that He has given us. After all of this, we still thank Him for everything, kind of a religious philosophy of “thank you, sir, can I have another one?” If we were thrown onto a couch by a therapist and analyzed, we’d probably be told that as a collective religion we were either co-dependant on someone not quite deserving of it or told that we were enablers. Instead of thanking God, maybe we should be giving him the finger and telling Him to go pick one somebody else for a change.

But maybe that is the point. We’ve been around now for thousands of years, one of the world’s oldest religion and, along with the Greeks, the people who kick-started Western Civilization. And despite all of the shit we went through, all of the times people came and tried to beat us, humiliate us, knock us down, even try and eliminate us through gas chambers. We’re still here. And we’ve outlasted pretty much everyone who fucked with us. The Hittites and Assyrians? Gone. Babylonians? Gone. Greece and Rome? Nothing but a huge influence on great architecture, philosophy, art, and Toga parties. Torquamada? One of history’s great villians? The Czar? Loved so much his countrymen decided to take up one of history’s great dumb ideas. Hitler? Blew his brains out like a coward in a bunker with only his frumpy mistress around to watch the whole thing.

In fact, despite all of that, it’s probably the best time ever to be Jewish in our long, ugly history. We have our Promised Land back (for now), we’re pretty much free to be who we are in most of the world, and despite an occasional hiccup of anti-semitism, we’re pretty safe. Hell, we’re doing so good we’re finally free to do what we've always wanted to do– screw shiksas.

Maybe we should be giving thanks.