For the past few weeks, my son has been singing the Pesach songs that they're teaching the kids at L'École Juive Moderne: Ma nishtana, Avadim Hayinu and Eyal Golan's version of Am Yisrael Chai [you'll excuse me for not providing a link, it's awful]. Listening to him singing the second one though, something about the way he was singing it made me look closer at the words. The way it's usually sung is
"עבדים היינו עבדים / עתה בני חורין, בני חורין"
We were slaves, we were slaves / now we are free, now we are free.
This song isn't really found in the Haggadah; it's a modern Israeli sung, supposedly based on a line in Aramaic in the Haggadah with a totally different message:
"השתא עבדי לשנה הבאה בני חורין"
Now, this year, we are slaves / Next year we will be free.
The author of the modern song, Shalom Postolski, was one of the founders of Kibbutz Harod in the 1920s and was sometimes asked by the kindergarten teachers to compose children’s nursery rhymes, because there simply weren’t enough in Hebrew at the time. We can suppose that the Haggadah’s hope for liberation in the future seemed too ‘diasporic’ for the ideological Zionists of that generation who saw self-emancipation in working the land, building a state and creating the New Jew.
But that wasn't what struck me when I listened to Amitai singing this song. He was mispronouncing one of the words in Hebrew, the word for free people: instead of Bnei Chorin with an N, he was saying Bnei Chorim with an M.
Now before I continue to explain why I was struck by this, I need to say in his defence that he is absolutely correct. Rabbinic Hebrew often doesn't distinguish between N and M and the end of words, and many words end with M in Biblical Hebrew end with N in rabbinic Hebrew, like Gittin (divorce), Nissuin (marriage), Zikukin (fireworks). And the same here: in rabbinic texts free people are called Bnei Chorin, but when we look in the Tanach, we find a different word:
אִֽי־לָ֣ךְ אֶ֔רֶץ שֶׁמַּלְכֵּ֖ךְ נָ֑עַר וְשָׂרַ֖יִךְ בַּבֹּ֥קֶר יֹאכֵֽלוּ ׃ אַשְׁרֵ֣יךְ אֶ֔רֶץ שֶׁמַּלְכֵּ֖ךְ בֶּן־חוֹרִ֑ים וְשָׂרַ֙יִךְ֙ בָּעֵ֣ת יֹאכֵ֔לוּ בִּגְבוּרָ֖ה וְלֹ֥א בַשְּׁתִֽי ׃
Alas for you, O land whose king is a child and whose ministers dine in the morning! Happy are you, O land whose king is free [ben chorim] and whose ministers dine at the proper time—with restraint, not with guzzling! (Ecclesiastes 10:16-17)
Many of the N suffixes returned to being M in modern Hebrew, but not this one, and this is probably because the word Chorim has another meaning too - holes. To modern Israeli ears, Ben Chorim sounds like a son of holes, a person of holes, a holey man. This is what I was reflecting on when my son sang the song. “We were slaves, and now we have holes.”
In the laws of making matzah [OH 460:4] there is a recommendation to make lots of holes in the matzah, and for most of us today who buy Pesach food from shops and don't make it ourselves, that's one of the features that we associate most with the matzah, apart from its great taste. It's flat bread with holes. Why holes? The technical reason is that it's another way to stop the dough from rising within the minutes before it is baked, and it can also prevent small pockets of air forming within the dough that might preserve uncooked flour, which could later become chametz on Pesach if they came into contact with a liquid. So we have the custom of poking holes in the dough.
But perhaps there is a deeper symbolism here, connected to becoming Bnei Chorim, holey people, at this time of year. We often say that Pesach is the celebration of liberation. But there are two sides of liberation: the process of becoming liberated and the state of being free. Becoming liberated doesn’t usually just happen, it involves a growing consciousness that life could be different, and physical action to change the existing situation into one in which one is more free. I don’t want to do a Marxist analysis of the Pesach story (although someone surely has done already), but I just want to point out that usually the process of becoming free involves resistance. Being free is a different state of being. Often we think that being free is about doing whatever I want to do, but very often that’s a trap: my confusions and my ego and my desires are very often what are holding me back. Freedom might be the ability to let go and flow with whatever the world brings, not to resist but to be full of holes, bnei chorim.
Certainly, there’s a privilege in being able to flow and accept the world; in a state of oppression acceptance means defeat. But the goal of Pesach, at least, is to try out being in a place of privilege. The poorest person in Israel is told to lean at the table and drink four glasses of wine [Mishnah Pesachim 10:1]. For this week, our mind doesn’t have to be on the struggle to become more free, but to enjoy being there. There’s a time for this and a time for that, like with everything. This is why I am glad that we have these two songs in the Pesach liturgy now, one that says ‘now we are slaves, next year may we be free’, and the other that says ‘we were slaves, now we are free’. Both perspectives are precious to me.
Chag Sameach !