For Jews fleeing Ukraine, Passover takes on new meaning
By DEEPA BHARATH

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From left, Danya, 21, Gabriel, 21 and Borden, 17 all refugees from Odesa, Ukraine help to deliver bags with food to needy people during preparations for the celebration of Jewish Passover at the Chabad Jewish Education Center in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, April 7, 2022. Rabbis and Jewish organizations are working round the clock within Ukraine, Eastern Europe and other parts of Europe to make sure that Jews who remain in Ukraine and refugees who have fled as far away as Israel are able to celebrate Passover. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

“Good morning! Happy morning!” Rabbi Avraham Wolff exclaimed, with a big smile, as he walked into the Chabad synagogue in Odesa on a recent morning.

Russian missiles had just struck an oil refinery in the Ukrainian city, turning the sky charcoal gray. Hundreds were lining up outside his synagogue hoping to receive a kilo of matzah each for their Passover dinner tables. The unleavened flatbread, imperative at the ritual meal known as a Seder, is now hard to find in war-torn Ukraine amid the war and a crippling food shortage.

But the rabbi wanted no challenge to get him down — be it the lack of matzah or that he was missing his wife and children who had fled the Black Sea port for Berlin days ago.

“I need to smile for my community,” Wolff said. “We need humor. We need hope.”

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews have fled while about 80% remain in Ukraine, according to estimates from Chabad, one of the largest Hasidic Jewish organizations in the world. Inside and outside Ukraine, a nation steeped in Jewish history and heritage, people are preparing to celebrate Passover, which begins sundown on April 15. It’s been a challenge, to say the least.

The holiday marks the liberation of Jewish people from slavery in ancient Egypt, and their exodus under the leadership of Moses. The story is taking on special meaning for thousands of Jewish Ukrainian refugees who are living a dramatic story in real time.

Chabad, which has deep roots and a wide network in Ukraine, and other groups such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Jewish Federations of North America, have mobilized to help Ukrainian Jews celebrate Passover wherever they have sought refuge. In Ukraine, Chabad plans 52 public Seders welcoming about 9,000 people.

In Odesa, Wolff is preparing to host two large Seders – one in early evening at the Chabad synagogue for families with young children and a later Seder at a hotel where participants can stay the night, obeying a 9 p.m. curfew.

He’s been waving in trucks loaded with Passover supplies – matzah from Israel, milk from France, meat from Britain.

“We may not all be together, but it’s going to be an unforgettable Passover,” Wolff said. “This year, we celebrate as one big Jewish family around the world.”

JDC, which has evacuated more than 11,600 Jews from Ukraine, has shipped more than 2 tons of matzah, over 400 bottles of grape juice and over 700 pounds of kosher Passover food for refugees in Poland, Moldova, Hungary and Romania, said Chen Tzuk, the organization’s director of operations in Europe, Asia and Africa. In Ukraine, their social service centers and corps of volunteers are distributing nearly 16 tons of matzah to elderly Jews and families in need, she said.

“Passover is something familiar and basic for Jewish people,” Tzuk said. “For refugees who have left everything behind, it’s important to be able celebrate this holiday with honor and dignity.”

JDC is organizing in-person Seders in countries bordering Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, she said, and is facilitating online Seders where it’s too dangerous to gather in person.

The Jewish Federations of North America has set up a volunteer hub in support of refugees fleeing Ukraine; it’s a partnership with the Jewish Agency for Israel, the JDC and IsraAID. Russian-speaking volunteers, such as Alina Spaulding, will help organize a Seder for 100 refugees at a hotel in Budapest.

Spaulding, a resident of Greensboro, North Carolina, fled Kharkiv, Ukraine, as a 5-year-old in the 1970s with her parents. She said the war has rekindled strong connections to Ukraine.

“My mom showed me a photo of me with my grandpa on a street that was recently bombed,” Spaulding said. “We talked about the university in Kharkiv where my mom and dad went, which was also hit. Suddenly, it all felt so personal.”

Spaulding believes spending Passover with refugees will be “an experience to remember.”

“Part of the magic of Passover is finding your own story,” she said. “We’re in the middle of a modern-day exodus. I can’t even imagine the stories I will hear.”

Celebrating a holiday can give people a rush of hope and happiness even in grim situations, said Rabbi Jacob Biderman, who leads Chabad activities throughout Austria, including a center in Vienna that is sheltering about 800 Ukrainian Jews. Days after refugees reached his center, Biderman led a joyous celebration of Purim, a festival commemorating the deliverance of Jews from a planned massacre in ancient Persia.

“The look on their faces changed from sorrow to joy... Their eyes lit up,” Biderman said. “It gave them a sense of normalcy, dignity and the belief that their spiritual life is something no one can take away from them.”

That fueled Biderman’s determination to provide a memorable Passover Seder for the refugees.

Dr. Yaacov Gaissinovitch, his wife, Elizabeth, and their three children – ages 11, 8 and 4 – will be part of that celebration. They fled the Ukrainian city of Dnipro by car on Friday, March 4. Gaissinovitch, a urologist and mohel who performs the Jewish rite of circumcision, said it pained him, as an observant Jew, to drive on Shabbat – a forbidden act on the day of rest and prayer except when lives are at stake.

“I drove nonstop for 12 hours to Moldova to save us all,” he said. “We sang all the Shabbat songs in the car. It was very, very hard.”

In Dnipro, Gaissinovitch had his offices in the sprawling Menorah Center, which serves as a center of Jewish life, housing a synagogue, shops, restaurants, museums and the office of the city’s chief rabbi.

After a month of being severed from everything familiar, the Chabad center in Vienna has been a blessing, Gaissinovitch said.

“We’ve been accepted here very warmly,” he said. “After being disconnected for days, the children have been able to see that our life hasn’t stopped.”

A similar community at the Chabad center in Berlin is housing about 1,000 refugees, including Rabbi Avraham Wolff’s wife and children from Odesa. The center plans to host eight Seders citywide and has distributed matzah and other food to community members. Refugees, including 120 children from an Odesa orphanage who arrived in Berlin along with Wolff’s family, distributed the items to locals, said Yehuda Teichtal, the chief rabbi of Berlin.

“To me, this is extremely touching,” he said. “That people on the receiving end are able to give and not be viewed as victims. It’s empowering and energizing.”

As they prepare for Passover, Teichtal, Biderman and Wolff said they have been inspired by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who was among the most influential global leaders in Judaism in modern times. April 5 marked the Rebbe’s 120th birth anniversary, a special number in Jewish tradition.

“The Rebbe built a strong foundation (in Ukraine) so we’re able to do what we’re doing now,” Wolff said.

Schneerson grew up in Ukraine during a challenging time in the former Soviet Union, Teichtal said.

“In spite of all the darkness, his focus was selflessness, dedication, love for all humanity and the unwavering faith that we are going to overcome,” Teichtal said.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

The first Passover Haggadah in Ukrainian marks a community’s break with Russia

Holiday text undergoes complex translation as Ukraine’s Jews continue to forge a separate identity, a process hastened by Russia’s invasion

By DAVID I. KLEIN

       30 March 2023

Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi provided the illustrations for “For Our Freedom,” the first Ukrainian-language 

version of the Passover Hagaddah. (Courtesy/Project Kesher via JTA)

JTA — For Michal Stamova, the challenge of translating Passover’s core text into Ukrainian started with the title.

The Haggadah — the book containing the Passover story — starts with an “h” sound in both Hebrew, its original language, and English. In Russian, the primary language of organized Jewish life in Ukraine until recently, there is no such sound, so the book has long been known there as an “agada.”

Ukrainian does have an “h” sound. But the character representing that sound conveys a different sound in Russian: a “G.” So for many Ukrainian Jews, the cover of Stamova’s translation will read as “Gagada.”

The journey of that single sound reflects the complexity of the task Stamova took on to aid Ukrainian Jews in celebrating Passover a year into their country’s war with Russia. A musicologist from western Ukraine who fled to Israel shortly after Russia’s invasion, Stamova was recruited to create a Ukrainian-language Haggadah, a powerful sign of the community’s rupture with its Russophone past.

Stamova knew she wanted to base her translation not on the preexisting Russian translation, but on the original Hebrew and Aramaic. That proved challenging because much of the text of the Haggadah is lifted from other sources in the Jewish canon, but Jewish translations of those texts to Ukrainian are only underway now for the first time.

“At first, it was very difficult to start, because we don’t have the sources in Ukrainian,” Stamova said. “We don’t have Torah in Ukrainian. We don’t have Tanakh in Ukrainian. It was very difficult to know what words to find.”

Stamova’s text, titled “For Our Freedom,” was released online earlier this month in advance of the Passover holiday that starts April 5. It is one of a growing number of efforts to translate Jewish texts into Ukrainian. Translators affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement have produced a book of psalms and are working on a daily prayer book, with their sights set on a full translation of the Torah. An effort is also underway now to translate a chapter of a newer text associated with Yom Hashoah, the Holocaust memorial day, in advance of its commemoration this year on April 18.

A sample page of text from the new Ukrainain Haggadah. (Courtesy/Project Kesher via JTA)

The absence of those texts until now, despite Ukraine’s significant Jewish population, reflects the particular linguistic history of Ukrainian Jews. Under the Russian empire, Jews living in what is now Ukraine in the 19th century tended to adopt Russian rather than Ukrainian, usually in addition to Yiddish, because Ukrainian was perceived as the language of the peasantry and conferred few benefits. That tilt became more pronounced after World War II and the Holocaust, when Yiddish declined as a Jewish vernacular and Russian became the main language of the Soviet Union. The history helps explain why, even as the number of Ukrainians speaking Russian at home fell sharply over the last decade, Jews remained largely Russian-speaking. (Russian and Ukrainian are related linguistically, though their speakers cannot understand each other.)

Over the past 30 years, the vast majority of printed material used by Ukrainian Jewish communities, including Haggadahs for Passover, were created in Russian by groups such as Chabad, which is the main Jewish presence in both countries. But after Russia’s invasion, those materials became a liability at a time when being perceived as having ties to the enemy could be dangerous.

Indeed, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year prompted many Russian-speaking Ukrainians to switch languages as a marker of national solidarity — and sparked a push to translate Ukraine’s Jewish life into the Ukrainian language.

“Ukrainian Jews always spoke Russian. That really was the norm. With the advent of the escalation of the war, that has shifted, and Ukrainian Jews who are in the country are shifting as fast as they can over to Ukrainian,” said Karyn Gershon, the executive director of Project Kesher, the global Jewish feminist nonprofit that commissioned the new Haggadah.

Heavily damaged building seen after a Russian attack in Sloviansk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 27, 2023. (Libkos/AP)

Gershon said the Haggadah offers an opportunity to elevate a Ukrainian Jewish identity in other ways, such as by including tidbits about famous Jewish writers from the area that comprises modern Ukraine who in the past might have been characterized only as “Russian.”

“In most of the Jewish world, the things that make a Haggadah unique are the special readings,” Gershon said. The new Ukrainian Haggadah includes alongside the traditional text, she said, “prayers for the defenders of Ukraine, prayers for peace in Ukraine, but also [passages] reclaiming writers who were always categorized as Russian, but because they came from places like Kyiv, Odesa and Berdichev, are more accurately Ukrainian.”

For example, the Haggadah includes passages from the 1925 book “Passover Nights,” by Hava Shapiro, a Kyiv-born Jew and journalist who authored one of the first Hebrew-language diaries known to have been written by a woman.

The additions offer an element of pride for some of the Ukrainian Jews who plan to use the new Haggadah.

Illustrative: Ukrainian Jewish refugees are seen in a newly opened kosher camp on the southern shore of Lake Balaton in Balatonoszod, Hungary, on July 29, 2022. (Peter Kohalmi/AFP)

“It is bringing you to the roots of those Jews who were living here before the Holocaust,” said Lena Pysina, who lives in Cherkasy, southeast of Kyiv. “It’s about rebuilding the Jewish communities in Ukraine as ‘Ukrainian Jews.’”

Pysina said the switch to Ukrainian and the embrace of Ukrainian Jewish history in some ways echoed the themes of the Passover story, which describes the Israelites fleeing slavery in Egypt.

“It’s like an exodus for us. It is not comfortable, because we get used to what we get used to. But we have to be proactive, we have to find our identity,” she said. “It took us 70 years of Soviet times to… celebrate the Jewish holidays and Jewish traditions. And it took us 30 years to understand that we have to build Ukrainian Jewish communities, too.”

Those communities are very much in flux a year into the war, with millions of Ukrainians internally displaced or having relocated overseas. Stamova undertook the Haggadah project from Israel, where she is one of an estimated 15,000 Ukrainians who have arrived since February 2022.

An image from the new Ukrainian version of the Passover Hagaddah. (Courtesy/Project Kesher via JTA)

Stamova grew up in western Ukraine, where the use of the Ukrainian language is more common than in the east. Like most other Ukrainian Jews, she still grew up speaking Russian at home, but her school, university and most of her life outside the home was conducted in Ukrainian. That made her a natural fit for the translation project, along with her background in Jewish liturgy, which she had studied at a Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem.

The challenges went beyond phonetics. One frequent question was whether to use Russianisms that are widely known in Ukrainian and would be more easily understandable to a Jewish audience, or to use uniquely Ukrainian words.

The most difficult section of the text, she said, was Hallel, the penultimate step of the Passover seder. Hallel is a lengthy song of divine praise heavy with poetry and allegorical language — making for challenging translation work in any language.

Stamova said she sought to stick to the traditional understanding of the text while also making some adjustments for the contemporary seder attendee. For example, the section of the Haggadah about the “four sons” with varying relationships to Judaism is rendered gender-neutral and changed to the “four children” in Stamova’s translation — an adjustment that has been made in other languages, too.

Most of all, Stamova said, she hopes the Haggadah offers some solace to Ukrainian Jews whose entire lives have been turned upside down.

“The Jewish tradition of Pesach is that we every year have to remember that we escaped from Egypt, from slavery. It’s very therapeutic,” Stamova said, using the Hebrew word for Passover. “How is it like therapy? Yes, we every year remember this difficult story, but then we have a plan for the future, we say ‘next year in Jerusalem.’ So we have to have a plan. We have to see the future.”

Over 500 illegal Israeli settlers storm Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque amid Jewish Passover holiday

Illegal settlers enter Al-Aqsa Mosque complex from Mugharbah Gate, perform provocative rounds, Talmudic rituals, says Jerusalem Islamic Endowments Authority

Ikrame Imane Kouachi |28.04.2024 - U

Fanatic Jewish settlers gather in front of the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque to perform rituals during the Passover under the protection of Israeli police in East Jerusalem on April 26, 2024.

JERUSALEM

More than 500 illegal Israeli settlers forced their way into the flashpoint of Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem on Sunday to celebrate the Jewish Passover holiday.

"More than 500 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa from the Mugharbah Gate and carried out provocative rounds and performed Talmudic rituals in its courtyards," the Islamic Endowments Authority in Jerusalem said in a statement.

The authority added that the settlers' incursions were carried out under the protection of police, who tightened military measures at the gates of the Old City and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Settler incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque are expected to continue until afternoon prayers on Sunday, it added.

Since the first day of Passover, which began on Monday evening and lasts a week, hundreds of illegal settlers have been storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex daily under tight police measures, causing severe tensions in various parts of Jerusalem's Old City.

On Thursday, nearly 1,700 illegal Israeli settlers forced their way into the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in groups to celebrate Passover, the Islamic Endowments Authority in Jerusalem had said.

Right-wing Israeli extremist groups have previously called for widespread incursions into the mosque on the occasion of Passover.

Palestinians accuse Israel of taking rapid measures to Judaize Jerusalem, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and erase its Arab and Islamic identity.

Passover, which commemorates the Israelites' exodus from Egypt during the time of Prophet Moses, is considered one of the most important holidays on the Jewish religious calendar.

Since 2003, Israel has allowed illegal settlers into the flashpoint compound on an almost daily basis with the exception of Fridays and Saturdays.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is the world's third-holiest site for Muslims. Jews call the area the "Temple Mount," claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move never recognized by the international community.

THE THREE ABRAHAMIC SECTS
Passover, Easter, Ramadan 2022 fall simultaneously

In a rare conjunction, three major holidays of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are occurring at the same time this year.



The three largest monotheistic religions will be celebrating in Jerusalem this weekend

This Friday, Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus, and on Sunday celebrate Easter, marking their belief in his resurrection. On Friday, Jewish people celebrate the eve of Pesach, commonly called Passover, which commemorates the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and the end of their slavery.

And this weekend as well, Muslims around the world mark another Friday, their weekly holiday, within the month of Ramadan, which began on April 2 and ends on May 2. This coincidence of dates is unusual, especially as far as the proximity of the Islamic Ramadan to the Christian Lent or to the dates of Pesach and Easter is concerned.

This rare conjunction of holidays is possible because unlike the Christian calendar, which is determined by the course of the sun and is widely used in the Western world, the Islamic calendar is aligned with the moon and the lunar year. Twelve months in the solar year last 365 days, in the lunar year, on the other hand, only 354 days. Thus the Islamic cycle of holidays moves across the Western calendar over the course of a good three decades.

PASSOVER IN PICTURES: JEWS OBSERVE HOLIDAY OF DELIVERANCE
Passover: A freedom celebration
Passover, also called Pesach, is one of the major Jewish holidays. The week-long holiday begins at sundown on the first day. It follows the lunar calendar, meaning it takes place every year on different dates, but it usually falls in mid-March or April. It celebrates the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt under the leadership of the Old Testament prophet Moses.
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'Siblings in humanity'

The shorter course of the year offers Muslims "the chance to experience Ramadan as well as other festivals in different seasons and different climatic conditions," the spokesperson for Germany's Coordination Council of Muslims, Abdassamad El Yazidi, told DW. At the same time, it ensures that the Muslim holy days coincide over time with various holy days of Christians and Jews. "That should remind us that we are all siblings in humanity and must work together for good."

The Jewish holiday of Pesach and the Easter date of the Western churches, on the other hand, always occur quite close together in early spring. But they don't often fall on precisely the same date. In 2022, Passover begins on April 16, and the Christian Holy Week — which began on April 10 on Palm Sunday — climaxes from Maundy Thursday evening on April 14 to Easter Sunday morning. The holiday covers Jesus' "Passion," from the last supper with his disciples to the celebration of the resurrection.

The difference is due to the fact that the Christian calendar dates Easter to Sunday since the year 325 CE, more specifically to the first Sunday after the spring full moon. In the Jewish calendar, on the other hand, Passover can begin on any day of the week.

TRADITIONS AND RITUALS OF RAMADAN
Ramadan: Islam's holiest month
Every year, millions of practicing Muslims across the world fast, pray and give alms in observance of Islam's holiest month, the exact dates of which change each year. From firing off cannons to lunar sightings, DW explores how Muslims mark the occasion and what it means to the faithful.
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Jerusalem celebrates

Nowhere in the world do the celebrations of multiple monotheistic religions come together as closely as in Jerusalem. One can feel how all three religions are "looking forward to these days," German Benedictine monk Nikodemus Schnabel told DW. In what he described as an "intense time" there, "the city literally vibrates with the various pilgrims, as if there was a need to catch up after the coronavirus, to celebrate outside again and to come together for the festivals," said the monk, who has lived on the outskirts of Jerusalem's Old City for many years.

Ultimately, according to Schnabel, the common experience of a pilgrimage festival connects the religions. Christian churchgoers parade in prayer through the Old City for several days in a row. On Friday morning, Muslims go to the mosque on the Temple Mount for prayer. And during these days, many Jews are drawn to pray at the Wailing Wall — the ruins of the Western Wall of the Second Jewish Temple in antiquity. The location is considered by many Jews to be one of the holiest sites to pray at, due to its proximity to the nearby Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the ancient temple. In view of the political tensions in the area, such days are always a challenge for all security forces in the city.

GERMANY'S BEST-LOVED EASTER TRADITIONS

The decorated Easter egg

Germans love painting Easter eggs. The Sorbs, a cultural minority in Lower Lusatia, Brandenburg, are famous for their art of beautifully decorating eggs with wax. You can learn more about the Slavic minority and their customs at the Spreewald Museum in Lübbenau.

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Easter in Orthodoxy

After this weekend, however, the Easter celebrations are not over. In the Orthodox churches and some of the Eastern churches associated with the Catholic Church, the commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus is not held until the following weekend.

The reason for the differing dates is that in 1582, the Eastern Christians, under Pope Gregory XIII, opted for a calendar reform that shifted liturgical timing towards the Gregorian calendar. Those traditions now mark the beginning of spring differently.

The Greek, Russian, and other Eastern Christian Orthodox churches are celebrating Easter this year a week after the Western Christians. And in Germany, Ukrainian-speaking communities are preparing for a large crowd. Churches are expecting many Christians who have fled the Russian invasion in recent weeks.

This article was originally written in German.

SEE 

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2007/04/passover-song.html

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Pagan Origins of Easter 

Harris, Emhoff to hold first known Passover seder at VP’s residence

By 

Callie Patteson

April 15, 2022 

Emhoff became the first Jewish spouse of a US president or vice president when 

VP Harris was sworn in last year.Lawrence Jackson/White House/Handout via Xinhua/Sipa USA

Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will be the first known second family to host a Passover seder at the vice president’s residence Friday after holding a virtual celebration last year.

Harris confirmed her holiday plans on Twitter, posting a traditional Passover greeting.

“Chag Sameach to all those celebrating Passover. Tonight, like families in the United States, Israel, and around the world, the @SecondGentleman and I will also host a Passover Seder at our residence,” the post read. 

The news was first reported by CNN, citing a White House official who revealed that Jewish members of Harris and Emhoff’s staff will attend the gathering at the Naval Observatory in Washington along with their loved ones. 

The vice president also reportedly informed Israeli President Isaac Herzog of her plans to host the seder during their Thursday call.

Emhoff became the first Jewish spouse of a US president or vice president when Harris was sworn in last year. The couple were married in 2014.

Just two months after the inauguration, the second gentleman led the first-ever virtual Passover seder at the Naval Observatory, saying at the time he hoped it would be the last virtual celebration.

The couple will hold the seder at the Naval Observatory in Washington along with their loved ones.

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

In November of last year, the vice president’s family hung the first mezuzah on the front door of an executive residence in US history.

The celebration comes as Washington, DC, is hit with a wave of positive COVID-19 cases — with both Harris and President Biden potentially being exposed several times. 

Multiple administration officials, including Harris’ communications director Jamal Simmons and Attorney General Merrick Garland, contracted the virus after attending the superspreader Gridiron dinner April 2. 

As of Monday, both the president and vice president had tested negative for the virus.

Harris’ office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment. 

The God Eaters

Among the Cannibal Christians, by Earl Lee.
Did the early christians take the command, "Eat of my body," just a bit too literally? And just what did the "Body and Blood of Christ" really consist of? For evidence that the attitude of the early christians toward mind-altering substances was a wee bit more liberal than that of their brethren today, check this out.

Christian Cannibalism
(Communion, Eucharist)

“Jesus said, ‘Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.’” (The Gospel of Thomas)

"If, however, you (Christians) bite and devour one another, take care that you (Christians) are not consumed by one another." (Paul, Ga 5:15)

Christianity is the literal and symbolic consumption of the man god, the human sacrifice meant to atone for humanities original sin. Thus it was to be the final sacrifice to end religions based on sacrifice. Or it was supposed to be. However since then the sacrifice continues to be celebrated with ritual consumption of the god, and the sacrifices continue to be made in the gods name.

As repulsive as the notion may seem, it is a fact that "theophagy"--the technical term for the consumption of a god's body and blood--has been considered a religious experience worldwide for thousands of years. While certain cults/religions may think that they invented the concept of the Eucharist, and that the Eucharist has nothing whatsoever to do with cannibalism, the ritual of sacrificing a god or goddess and sharing his or her blood and body as a sacrament is an act found throughout the ancient world. The only thing so-called modern religion has done is to maintain the form of the Eucharist in a symbolic rather than literal sense, and for that perhaps we should be grateful.

The success of Christianity as a religion in ending cannibalism and human sacrifice is because it incorporates them as symbolic instead of actual practices in their rites.

In fact, the spread of Christianity is believed to have significantly diminished cannibalism worldwide.

An early example is J. A. MacCulloch in the year 1932. He discusses all possible theories
why cannibalism decreased in many places. In this context MacCulloch mentions the
“presence of a higher developed civilisation and especially a higher developed religion”.
He hints at the fact that Islam made an end to cannibalism in North- and East Africa and
only at the end, so to say, casually concludes: “Christianity together with other European
civilising influences has put an end to it (to cannibalism), that is in many parts of South
America, New Zealand, on many islands of the South Pacific, the former center of
cannibalism and in many parts of the African continent”.

Apparently the value principle takes precedence over the exchange principle. (The cannibal may kill his enemy because he sees him as food.) It is important for the Christian, however, to note that the basis for definition of value can differ. The Christian "cannibal" loves his enemy because he sees him as a human soul. Such a perception is difficult to make, however, unless there is a more abundant food supply.

Lestringant's point about cannibals, in the plural, is that anthropophagy (the practice of eating human flesh) does not equal cannibalism. He objects both to the reduction of the cannibal to the anthropophagite, and to the association of all anthropophagous rituals (not the least of which is the Christian Eucharist) with cannibalism. Cannibals demonstrates that, from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the identities of cannibals and the meanings of cannibalism were multitudinous and uncertain, and the figure of the cannibal was employed by European authors toward various rhetorical and didactic ends. By the nineteenth century, however, the identity and qualities of the cannibal had been reduced to a wholly non-European savage, who possessed "natural" appetites for human flesh and engaged in "primitive" cannibalistic rites. Montaigne's noble Brazilian cannibals, whose loquacity had dazzled the king's court in 1562, were replaced by hairy and lubricious African savages, whose nineteenth-century performances in two-bit colonial sideshow filled the likes of French novelist Gustave Flaubert with dread and disgust.

The term "cannibal," Lestringant reminds us, was invented by Christopher Columbus upon his 1492 arrival in Cuba. The word was a corruption of "Caribs," the enemies of the peace-loving Arawaks who welcomed the Italian captain. In the coining of canibal, Columbus created a portmanteau word by joining canis (the dog-headed cynocephalous of Pliny) with bal (belonging to "the lordship of the Great Khan"). On his second voyage, Columbus discovered the remains of cooked human flesh in a recently abandoned Carib village on Guadeloupe. Thus, Columbus's canibals came into being, an impossible combination of dog-headed and human flesh-eating descendants of the Great Khan. Although the canine and Asiatic genealogy was soon put behind, the "monstrous table manners" (p. 17) of the cannibal swiftly and tenaciously captured the imagination of Europeans.

Although colonial records are replete with references to "cannibals," consider the historical context. A 1503 decree from Queen Isabella of Spain, during the heyday of Spanish colonial conquest, allowed the enslavement of cannibals.

The edict, Whitehead says, "created quite a strong interest in 'discovering' cannibals in the New World. Then you wouldn't even have to observe the minimum notion of human rights they would get as human beings and as God's subjects. It demonized the native population, and legally produced an economic benefit."

So during the first 100 years of colonization of the vast Spanish New-World dominion, you could make good money by branding someone a cannibal. Indians were plantation slaves until about 1600, when legions of African slaves arrived. (Over the past quarter-century, some anthropologists have used this history to question the very existence of cannibalism. In their view -- see "The Man-eating Myth..." in the bibliography -- all evidence for cannibalism is so sketchy or biased as to be incredible.)

The accusation of blood libel begins with Christianity. It was first applied against the early Christians by the Romans. The Christians in Europe would later use this same accusation against Jews. Despite human sacrifice being a sin in the Old Testament; the Hebrew Bible strictly prohibits human sacrifices (e.g., Lev 18:21, 24-25; Deut 18:10; Jer 7:31, 19:5; Ezek 23:37,39).

In the early centuries of Christianity, the church existed under the Roman Empire, which granted its subjects freedom in some issues, but demanded conformity to its own ideals in others. Romans commonly thought Christians strayed from certain core morals of the state, summarized by three widespread stereotypes — that Christians practiced atheism, cannibalism, and incest.

As for cannibalism, Romans were appalled to hear that Christians ate the body and drank the blood of their Lord. The "rumors grew to absurd proportions," historical theologian D. Jeffrey Bingham writes. "Christians were even accused of eating infants."

The charges of incest and cannibalism arose from the fact that only the baptized were permitted to attend the Eucharist. What, therefore, was done in secret by such people was quite likely, in the pagan's mind, to be immoral. Moreover, the fragmentary knowledge which the pagan gained by hearsay about the meaning of the Lord's Supper—eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ—quickly led to the suspicion of cannibalism; while the Christian emphasis on love and brotherhood was easily distorted into a cloak for incest.

Ancient History Sourcebook: The Ritual Cannabilism Charge Against Christians

Now the story about the initiation of young novices is as much to be detested as it is well known. An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be stained with their rites: this infant is slain by the young pupil, who has been urged on as if to harmless blows on the surface of the meal, with dark and secret wounds. Thirstily - O horror! they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together; with this consciousness of wickedness they are covenanted to mutual silence.

From Minucius Felix, Octavius, R. E. Wallis, trans. in The Ante-Nicene Fathers
(Buffalo, N. Y.: The Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), Vol. 4, pp. 177-178.

Cannibals and Christianity

A strange relationship has developed between Christianity and cannibalism over the centuries. Christianity is a faith that believes in one god, believes in forgiveness and being kind to one’s neighbour. However there is firm evidence that believers in this one faith became at times a believer of eating one’s enemies. For example Syrian crusaders 1000 years ago reverted to cannibalism due to their Christian beliefs.

A report found that was written by a Christian leader Rudolph Caen about the village of Maarra stated:"Our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled."

The Blood Libel is still with us today applied to other religions in competition with Christianity.

Increasingly since 1970 fundamentalist Protestant sects, almost exclusively from the United States, have taken up the strong battle against Voodoo, accusing it of devil worship, suggesting cannibalism and demanding of converts a complete separation from their Voodoo connection.

Easter then is the celebration not only of death and resurrection but of consumption of the flesh and blood of the sacrificed god as a Passover feast. The ancient pagan tradition of eating corn or other forms of bread as the body of God is present in the Passover feast and later in the Easter feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus.

The Bible is the source for all things Christian.

Does it mention Easter?

Yes.

Notice Acts 12:1. King Herod began to persecute the Church, culminating in the brutal death of the apostle James by sword. This pleased the Jews so much that the apostle Peter was also taken prisoner by Herod. The plan was to later deliver him to the Jews. Verse 3 says, “Then were the days of unleavened bread.” The New Testament Church was observing these feast days described in Leviticus 23. Now read verse 4: “And when he [Herod] had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions [sixteen] of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.”

Is this Bible authority for Easter?

This passage is not talking about Easter. How do we know? The word translated Easter is the Greek word pascha (derived from the Hebrew word pesach; there is no original Greek word for Passover), and it has only one meaning. It always means Passover—it can never mean Easter! For this reason, we find a Hebrew word used in the Greek New Testament. Once again, this Hebrew word can only refer to Passover. And other translations, including the Revised Standard Version, correctly render this word Passover.

Instead of endorsing Easter, this verse really proves that the Church was still observing the supposedly Jewish Passover ten years after the death of Christ!

What About the New Testament?

If the Passover was instituted forever, then New Testament instruction for its observance should be clear. This instruction is found in I Corinthians 5:7-8: “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast (of unleavened bread, which always followed Passover, as explained above)…”

Christ, as the Lamb of God (John 1:29; Acts 8:32; I Peter 1:19; Rev. 5:6), replaced the Old Testament lamb eaten on Passover evening each year. The New Testament symbols of the bread and wine were instituted so that Christians could eat the body and drink the blood of Christ, the true Lamb of God. Jesus’ sacrifice replaced the need to kill a spring lamb. Luke 22:19 shows that Jesus substituted the bread and wine to be taken annually in commemoration of His sacrifice for the remission of our sins—both spiritual and physical.

Christian Cannibals

Even if you still stubbornly cling to the belief that the Eucharist represents only a symbol of eating flesh and drinking blood, that still makes you a cannibal, if only a symbolic cannibal. If you partake in communion as a metaphorical representation of eating Christ's body, then that still makes you a metaphorical cannibal. You simply have no easy out of this predicament as a symbolic cannibal sits as a subset of cannibalism.

Communion: Ritualized Cannibalism

From such a beginning, thousands and thousands of years ago, there developed and evolved basic ritualistic behavioral patterns, and mythological motifs, or themes, that have spread by a process of diffusion from, at least, the Neanderthal period through Cro-Magnon caves, and into the Christian churches and cathedrals of 20th-century America.

One of the more obvious of these is the "sacred meal" or ritualistic cannibalism. We still practice this ritual today in the Protestant and Roman Catholic communion, where we eat the body and drink the blood of the divine leader.

The Christian church calls it "communion," or "taking communion." The communicant eats and drinks, symbolically or literally, the flesh and blood of the divine "leader." The traditional invitation to Communion, spoken by the presiding clergy, is this: "Take, eat, this is my body . . . this cup is the new covenant is my blood . . . drink."

Eating a body and drinking blood is a cannibalistic theme, no matter how hard the clergy try to water it down, or theo-babble around it by calling it "only symbolic" cannibalism. In the 9th century, the clergy said that God made the flesh of Jesus only look like a wafer so as not to upset the worshipers. They were really cannibals, but they didn't have to face up to it, admit it, or be vividly aware of it.

And the blood libel about Christian Cannibalism continues even now, except the blood libel is used against liberals and Catholics. So it is not all Christians that are cannibals just those that are Catholic. Which is rather ironic considering it was the Catholic Empire that declared those it colonized cannibals.

Published 13 April 1998 in the News & Record (Greensboro, NC)

Could Clinton actually be a cannibal, too?

I have a problem with President Clinton's recent trip to Africa.

As a Republican who was raised blue-collar, union, and Southern (Do I have to say Democrat?), I'm not surprised that the president would make politically motivated blanket apologies for historical transgressions for which no one living is responsible. I'm not perturbed that while he was apologizing for our ancestors' wrongdoing that he didn't call on his African hosts to apologize for their ancestors' complicity in the slave trade as well.

As an atheist who was raised as a Protestant, I'm not upset that the president took Holy Communion while in South Africa, or that he, as a Southern Baptist, did so inappropriately in a Catholic church, or even that he, as a political partisan, did so as a shameless photo op.

The problem I have with the president's participation in this sacrament involves the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation. By this doctrine, the bread and wine retain their appearance but miraculously become the actual body and blood of Christ upon their consecration. Persons who participate in the Catholic Eucharist do so believing that they are eating real human flesh and drinking real human blood.

As if being an inveterate liar, an unapologetic draft dodger, and a self-confessed adulterer weren't bad enough, I am absolutely horrified to learn that Bill Clinton is also a cannibal.

James M. Wallace
Greensboro

Documents selected as Scripture

The Scriptures, too, are testimony by the early Christians. In 1 Cor 10:16, St. Paul states: "The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread, which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord?" In the next chapter, he draws the same association we find in the Didache and elsewhere, i.e. the need for purity in receiving the Eucharist. First, Paul narrates the meal with Jesus: (11:24) "And giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye, and eat: this is my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me." Likewise with the chalice; then Paul states (11:27) "Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord." So we find that the early letters and documents, as well as the letters that became Holy Scripture among Christians, appear strongly to affirm a belief in what is today called by many the Real Presence, a summary term that refers to the notion that Jesus Christ is "really, truly, and substantially present" in the Eucharist.

Over the centuries

Christian documents show that this dogma was maintained with the passage of time. From Origen, c 244: "[W]hen you have received the Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care lest a particle of it fall..." (Jurgens §490). From St. Ephraim, ante 373: "Do not now regard as bread that which I have given you; but take, eat this Bread, and do not scatter the crumbs; for what I have called My Body, that it is indeed" (Jurgens §707). From St. Augustine, c 412: "He walked here in the same flesh, and gave us the same flesh to be eaten unto salvation. But no one eats that flesh unless first he adores it; and thus it is discovered how such a footstool of the Lord's feet is adored; and not only do we not sin by adoring, we do sin by not adoring" (Jurgens §1479a). At the Roman Council VI, 1079, Berengarius affirmed: "I, Berengarius, in my heart believe and with my lips confess that through the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of our Redeemer the bread and wine which are placed on the altar are substantially changed into the true and proper and living flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord..." (Denziger [Dz] §355). In a discussion of the form of consecration (the word now used to refer to the blessing given by Jesus), Pope Innocent III states (1202) "For the species of bread and wine is perceived there, and the truth of the body and blood of Christ is believed and the power of unity and of love.... The form is of the bread and wine; the truth, of the flesh and blood..." (Dz §414-4). The dogma was affirmed repeatedly by the Roman Catholic Church and within Roman Catholic theology, e.g. at the Council of Lyon, A.D. 1274 (Dz §465); by Pope Benedict XII, 1341 (Dz §544); by Pope Clement VI, 1351 (Dz §574a); at the Council of Constance, 1418 (Dz §583); at the Council of Florence, 1439 (Dz §698); by Pope Julius III at the Council of Trent, 1551 (Dz §874); by Pope Benedict XIV, 1743 (Dz §1469); by Pope Pius VI, 1794 (Dz §1529); and by Pope Leo XIII, 1887 (Dz §1919), inter alia. Other examples can be found to flesh out any interim.

And we would not be forgiven if we didn't round our post with some Crowley.

THE GODEATER
1903
<<1.>>
[The idea of this obscure and fantastic play is as follows: By
a glorious act human misery is secured (History of Christianity).
Hence, appreciation of the personality of Jesus is no excuse for being a Christian.
Inversely, by a vile and irrational series of acts human happiness is secured (Story of the
play).
Hence, attacks on the Mystics of History need not cause us to condemn Mysticism.
Also, the Knowledge of Good and Evil is a Tree whose fruit Man has not yet tasted: so
that the Devil cheated Eve indeed; or (more probably) Eve cheated Adam. Unless (most
probable of all) God cheated the Devil, and the fruit was a common apple after all. Cf. H.
Maudsley, "Life in Mind and Conduct."]

See:

Pagan Origins of Easter

Passover Song

Palm Sunday April Fools Day

Judas the Obscure



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