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Passover and Veganism - A Great Complement
by Jennye Laws-Woolf, IDA

Ah, Passover- the hardest time of the year to be vegan, and yet the most appropriate. Passover is the holiday of liberation, the time of year when we recall the throwing off of the shackles of slavery, when we take the time (often hours and hours of time the 1st two nights especially) to really examine the concepts of slavery and oppression.

When, then, is it more appropriate to be a vegan? When we recall our liberation from Egypt, step back into the past to revisit the slavery of the Jewish people and remember the millenia of persecution since, it becomes even easier to truly empathize with those beings that still suffer under slavery and oppression.

I remember my first vegan Pesach. I had been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for years and had never had a problem cooking at Passover. Eggs are so ubiquitous in Passover cooking that being a lacto-ovo vegetarian didn't mean much change at all from the usual Passover diet - minus the brisket of course. But try to remove the eggs and the cooking ideas seems to hit a brick wall. Every baked good, every casserole, every kugel is replete with eggs. And, to make it worse, the usual egg substitutes aren't kosher for Passover! I could only remember truly dreading the sheer amount of potatoes I would have to eat. (It turned out to be easier than I thought, by the way.)

But, no matter the difficulty, I couldn't help but see the eggs on sale at the grocery store for $.25 a dozen and recall the cruelty that enables them to sell those eggs so cheaply. I also couldn't help but see the irony of celebrating my freedom on the shackles of another being's slavery. Millions of other beings.

It's all about slavery and oppression, isn't it? The powerful enslaving the powerless and then going on about their "right" to do so. The Egyptians had a "right" to enslave the Hebrews, the Nazis made it their "right" to kill Jews and gypsies and homosexuals. But just because it was their "right" didn't, and doesn't, make it right. We can cram way too many hens into a way too small wire cage and then stack those cages into the sky. We can take thousands of male chicks a day and stuff them into trash bags and dumpsters because they are "waste" products. We can do all manner of evil things. The question is - should we?

And that's where Passover comes in. Passover reminds us of what it feels like to be the oppressed, to be the enslaved. We are required to laboriously retell the story and recount it to our children, to remove all leavened products from our homes and our diets every single year. And it isn't because we might forget the story or because 8 days worth of matzo is good for us. No, it is so that we never forget what it is to know slavery and to remind us to fight slavery and oppression whenever and wherever we find it.

So, while Passover may very well be the toughest time of the year to be vegan, it is also the easiest. Because when our eyes and our hearts are opened to the message of liberation, we cannot help but to want to share that freedom with all who remain oppressed.