But Jews do it the hard way. Simply because they are Jews. That's the point.

You could see something like this as a sort of gamblers fallacy - the more some groups ancestors have suffered, the less likely they are to give up that identity even if that means they will be isolated/attacked or whatever because of it. Counterintuitively if that group stopped being a magnet for hate/mistrust/etc. it might be the catalyst over several generations for the identity group to disappear when it had previously withstood almost anything that was thrown at it.

What I found most troubling about the Seder this time is that part of the Hagada (the ritual reading done in the Seder) that deals with "The Four Sons". The Hagada says (and I'll translate freely from Hebrew since I've never had a Seder in English):
"Keneged Arba'a Banim Dibra Ha'Torah: Hacham, Rasha, Tam, Veze Sheeino Yo'dei'a Lishol"

This translates roughly to:

"The Torah speaks of 4 sons/males (same word in Hebrew): A wise one, an evil one, a simple one and one which doesn't know how to question".

The Jewish tradition regarding these "sons" classifies them respectively as:
"Devout Jew, Atheist, slow-learner and utter imbecile". The slow-learner doesn't get what this whole Seder is about, the utter imbecile doesn't even understand that there's something going about at all.
The devout Jew just takes wholeheartedly everything that's told to him and the atheist, who is dubbed "the evil son" says that the whole thing is a waste of time.

The Hagada says that were atheists (the evil sons) present in the exodus, God would not save them from Egypt.

That being said, I have to admit that I see little good in lightening up something that is still one of the most heinous chapters of any religious text. Then again, I don't much understand the religious impulse anymore. The older I get, the more asinine it seems to me to be. But I am not Jewish, not a member of a religion that accounts for less than 1% of all religions (there are more non-religious people than there are Jews). It's a different kind of psychology in effect, is what I'm saying.

As an aside, I wonder if the blood smeared on the doorjamb was like a laser painting the spot that a smart bomb would then target. Seriously, though, Jehova was an old-school deity who desired blood sacrifice, blood being perceived as the bearer of life-force. It would not at all surprise me to hear that if an Egyptian had followed the Jews' example then the plague would have passed over the Egyptian's house as well. Think that sounds crazy? Consider the elemental problem of Judges 1:19, where we read: "And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." Jehova was an elemental deity who could be thwarted by iron. This leads me to suspect that it was only the mark of sacrificial blood that saved anyone. For instance, the passage in the Exodus it says: "from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle". In other words, a firstborn whose parent couldn't make the mark, because said parent was in the dungeon, Jew or non-Jew, was killed. Even cattle were killed. This is an implacable elemental force at work; there's no real thoughtful consciousness at work here.

...Not that the story is in any real sense true to the facts of history. The thing is, it reflects the rather simple understanding of the Jews in that age, even as we see the rather simple ideas, however artfully expressed, of the Egyptians. As one person at the seder put it: "God wanted to show off what a big wang he had" (said by a liberal feminist Jew).

It shouldn't be spelled YHVH, it should be spelled YMMV.

So what does all this mean? I can guess the various designations are pleas for sympathy. The Jews suffered in WW2, the Black suffered during slavery; so they can get away with using quasi-racist terms to perpetuate the self-designating labels which generated the ire against them in the first place (not that it was right, you see).

Oh well, then there's Kennedy. He's an Irish Catholic and an American at the same time.

Re. Jennifer's point that practice is what makes you Jewish: An interesting parallel with the non-supernaturalist aspects of Buddhism. Not based on any specific creed, and not centered on a weekly service, but centered on continuous observation, introspection and practice including both meditation and social action.

My spouse is a Jewish atheist, and we both would like our son to identify as Jewish. So we are trying to raise a humanist, Jewish son and I often struggle with what that means. I hope he will be able to absorb the best parts of the Jewish spirit of inquiry and awe without necessarily believing in a supreme being, or privileging the truth of one book over all others.

BTW, we went to a humanist seder this year -- it was fun!

*Rabbi Reznick says stuff like, "If I'm wrong may the synagogue walls collapse!"

1) "Wow, my ancestors had a really bloodthirsty idea of God. Since there's no historical evidence of the Exodus... I wonder if this story comes from another religion originally?"

2) "Wow, my God used to be an ass. I hope he knows better now, but in any case I'm going to give him a piece of my mind."

3) "To me, this is at its heart a story about how sometimes atrocities are committed in pursuit of an otherwise laudable goal. I think God expects us to recognize that his actions in this story are horrible and wrong."

Being Jewish does not require that one take the story of Passover to be literally true, or even to be an accurate metaphor depicting the nature of the God of Abraham. And even then, worship doesn't have to signify approval or agreement, and godhood doesn't necessarily mean moral authority - just look at the Greek, Egyptian, and Norse pantheons, and look at why people worshiped them.

There's a fantastic story from my friend's Torah study class that I think is relevant here.

Four rabbis were arguing over the meaning of a particular piece of Jewish law. Rabbi Reznick had persuaded two of them, but the fourth, Rabbi Erlich, disagreed vehemently. They debated it heavily, and finally, Rabbi Erlich said, "This is what it means. Let us ask God."

And God said, "Rabbi Erlich is correct."

Rabbi Reznick said, "No! When it was written, yes, you decided. But now, things are decided down here!"

That isn't too hard then at all and why worship something that is less than you? And I would disagree that Judaism is a "philosopy", perhaps that's what it's becoem but there was a lot of worship supposedly, lots of "sweet scent of smoke for the Lord", blind obediance to the point of killing a daughter, etc? What happens when the temple is supposedly rebuilt? Do the sacrifices start up again?

David Plotz makes a similar observation in "The Good Book", it's not God that does anything to keep the Jewish people intact, it is the Jewish people's keeping of the book that is the key.

And there is one sect of Judaism (Reconstructionist) which is essentially atheist.

There is another sect of Judaism that is explicitly atheistic.