Michael Schulder: [00:00:00] Professor Deborah Dash Moore, my professor from Vassar College, 40 years ago, Intro to Jewish History and Religion, thank you for joining me on Wavemaker Conversations.
Deborah Dash Moore: Well, I just want to let you know, I was, uh, um, uh, in my early twenties, at the time. [laughs]
Michael Schulder: But I still trusted you because that still seemed older to me than where I was. You know, so I, I wrote you- so the story of how I'm coming to you now, it's Passover time, we’re- it's the run up to Passover.
I noticed that you were Editor in chief of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization multi-volume work, very interdisciplinary within the realm of Jewish studies.
Deborah Dash Moore: Yes
Michael Schulder: And I said, wait a second, Deborah- Deborah Dash Moore, that was my professor at Vassar College 40 years ago. And I wrote you and you said you remembered me. And I thought “Wow, I must've [00:01:00] left such an impression, 40 years later! what did I say in class? What did I write?” And then you broke the news to me about why you remembered me, which is:
Deborah Dash Moore: Which is there weren’t a lot of men in Vassar at that time. It had gone co-ed in the early seventies, but it took them a while to figure out how to recruit men because they had to go to different sources. And one of the interesting things is that in the seventies, they went to public schools for recruiting men much more so than for the women. So there was also a little bit of a different class background. They had women coming from private schools a lot because that had- what was, had been established. But men, they didn't have an entree into the private school. So they went to public schools, um, which is interesting, right?
Michael Schulder: I- you know what? I did not realize that, and that puts my story into context because I went to a [00:02:00] public high school and I was so thrilled to have gotten into Vassar, which was an amazing experience.
Deborah Dash Moore: Yeah, yeah.
Michael Schulder: Well, listen. So here we are in the run-up to Passover and you and I spoke briefly, just recently, and it was, you know, “What is there in this multi-volume Posen library that we could tap into?” And you pointed me to this letter from J- in 1866, a Passover letter from J. A. Joel, a Jewish private in the Union army during the civil war, and the volume notes he was one of roughly seven to eight thousand Jews who fought for the Union cause. And, you know, I was really moved by that letter because here they are, on basically the eve of a battle in West Virginia where their lives were all going to be risked and some of them would lose their lives, and it was days before Passover and they decided they were going to have a Seder. So tell us about [00:03:00] that because on many levels, this idea of keeping traditions alive even in the worst of times, keeping hope alive in the worst of times, really resonated with me as I read that.
Deborah Dash Moore: Yeah. So in the wilds of West Virginia, you're right, they know that the holiday is coming. And he writes that they ask permission, right? Because you'd have to get permission to have a Seder. And there are around twenty guys who are Jewish, who joined together to do this Seder, which is impressive also, right? It's not just him, but there’re quite a few. And so then they need to get the supplies. And they ended up going to Cincinnati. Well, not they, but they request from the sutler, who's also a Jew to go to Cincinnati and get the matzas.
Michael Schulder: What is that term, a “sutler,” you said?
Deborah Dash Moore: A sutler. So a sutler is [00:04:00] someone who provides food and provisions to the military. So he had wagons and that kind of thing so that he could go in and get it. So, um, he goes to Cincinnati and he packs in not just matzas for them, but also two Haggadahs, right? So they have the text-
Michael Schulder: And for the non-Jews in the audience, the Haggadahs are…?
Deborah Dash Moore: So the Haggadah is the text that is read at the Passover Seder. It is, um, it actually does not have much of what we just read about oppression beforehand because it emphasizes the actual Exodus and the leaving, right, that occurs okay? And it has a- an order to a meal. So there are certain things that they needed to do. So in the meal today, you have something called Charoset, which is supposed to be like [00:05:00] brick, and you make it usually out of nuts and apples, or sometimes figs, you know, it's, it's a brick kind of thing, but it’s a food. But they didn't have the Charoset. So they said “We got an actual brick,” [laughs] which they put on the table. It was a little hard to digest, so they just looked at it and were reminded of the enslavement and the making of bricks. But they did get alcohol, right? They had, uh, and they got a bitter herb, which was, it turned out exceedingly bitter. So when they each ate the bitter herbs, ‘cause the bitterness of- you're supposed to taste the bitterness of slavery through the bitter herb, their mouths were on fire. And so they forgot the law about drinking, you know, the four cups of wine in stages and they just consumed all of it, right? [laughs] Because- to get rid of the- it's, it's a very funny account in that way.
Michael Schulder: [00:06:00] Let me ask you, do you have it up there?
Deborah Dash Moore: Yeah, I do, yes.
Michael Schulder: And so, it was really moving to me at the end that this was such a joyous memory – and, you know, I'll post the link and post the letter, you know, in, in the newsletter that accompanies our conversation – but I, you know, I was wondering if, again, given your sweeping knowledge of the arc of the history of the Jews, you know, are there other examples that you can recall maybe that we can take inspiration from now, whatever our context. You know, we're living in very difficult times, they are fraught to say the least, but to be able to carve out that space for celebration, no matter what, to be able to see the hope, no matter what, this is a theme that comes up a lot in Jewish history, in human history, really. What other stories might that trigger in your mind from your….
Deborah Dash Moore: [holding up book] So there's the cover of volume six, and you'll notice it has [00:07:00] women there, and they are Miriam leading the women in song. This comes from a Haggadah that was illustrated by a Jewish woman named Charlotte Von Rothschild in the 19th century. She'd made it as a gift for her uncle. And it's really this this gorgeous visualization that women too are part of the story. And although in the traditional Haggadah that you read for the Seder service, women are not particularly mentioned at all, she decided to put this illustration in that gives a prominence to the women. And I'll hold it up just again and over here in the background, you can see Moses is pretty tiny. [laughs] He's there, he's there, but this is, this is the women's moment in this song of the sea. [00:08:00] Yes.
Michael Schulder: This is why we need diverse voices in storytelling, because there are certain people who have big influence and unfortunately are kept in the background too often.
Deborah Dash Moore: Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think it's really wonderful, um, to, you know, to have women's voices very much represented as well as men in this account, yeah.
Michael Schulder: You've been teaching college students for so long, it's really a couple of generations worth.
Deborah Dash Moore: Yes, definitely.
Michael Schulder: And I asked, you know, I asked you recently when we had our first conversation, you know, “What are you noticing these days about college students?” And you said something to me, you said “For many college stu- for many 18, 19, 20-year-olds today, the 20th century is a closed book.” Tell me about that, ‘cause that was concerning to me when I heard it, but it's not too late to change it. It's not too late to open up that book. But tell me about that.
Deborah Dash Moore: Right. So when I say- I discover for the students that- some of these students, that it's a closed book. What [00:09:00] I mean is that, um, the Holocaust, the establishment of the state of Israel, the World War II, the civil rights movement, the things that are in your consciousness, in my consciousness, they're not… they could have happened for these students 500 years ago, not just 50 or 75 years ago. And the fact that they're not in their consciousness means that it's really hard to sort of talk about what's happening right now. I connected to them with what was happening before. I think I gave you the example back then of 1963 and the march on Washington that Martin Luther King Jr. organized for jobs and freedom. And that march included Jews and [00:10:00] organizations as well as individuals. And one of the organizations was an organization called the American Jewish Congress that was headed at that time by a rabbi who had been kicked out of Germany by Hitler in 1938 and come to the United States. His name was your Joachim Prinz. And Prinz actually got the slot of speaking just before King. And Prince gives a very short but powerful speech, and he says, you know, “We’re Jews, we had this experience of oppression, and one of the things that I took away from living in Nazi Germany through the 1930s,” right, he'd left in ‘38, before the war, “is that the worst thing that one can do is to be silent. We cannot,” he says to Americans who are listening, “become a nation of onlookers, a nation that is [00:11:00] silent.” And this is a very important, I think, point of view, to say when we think about Black Lives Matter today, when we think about the, the movements that currently exist, we can't just become passive and onlookers, right? We have to pull that. That's such a distant memory, for our students today. So it's hard to get them to recognize that they're- things happened not that long ago that they should bring into their own consciousness.
Michael Schulder: So just to tie everything up and come back to Passover, but tie it into- you know, we, you sort of stopped in the early 1960s there for a while. We were talking about Martin Luther King Jr. and of course that, you know, there's that wonderful quote that's often cited from MLK: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends [00:12:00] toward justice.” And I come back to you again – I’ve used the word sweeping many times because, as I remember my Intro to Jewish History and Religion class from you and the reading list, it spanned thousands of years. And so if anybody has their arms around thousands of years, it's you. Does the arc of the moral universe bend toward justice? And as you look at our situation now, are there areas of history that you dip into and find solace and encouragement in that gives you strength today, as you look forward?
Deborah Dash Moore: So I think it's- despite the fact that much of Jewish history has many tragic elements to it – expulsions, persecution, genocide – [00:13:00] there is within Judaism, its religion and culture and civilization, an impulse to affirm that the arc of the universe moves towards justice. And Jewish historians, starting with a very famous historian named Salo Baron, have tended to move away from what he called the “lachrymose view” of Jewish history, which is to say seeing Jewish history as just, you know, one, one trial after another, after another, which would not be an arc moving toward justice, and to see instead a kind of resilience and the ways in which things change. And I will go back now to feminism and the impact, not just that it had on the United States, [00:14:00] but the impact that it had on Judaism. I think when you look at Jewish religious practices and Jewish culture today, you see so much more creativity among women that is accepted broadly. So it's not just you have women rabbis and women cantors, you have women novelists, you have women poets. You know, it's just an extraordinary change. And this has changed the character of Jewish religious practice. Many people now- there's a plate, to bring it back to Passover, there's a plate in which you put a variety of objects. I mentioned the Charoset, the brick, and the bitter herbs, there’s also- you put matza, egg… People now add a cup for Miriam, right? And they put water in it because she's dancing by the [00:15:00] red sea, but it's a way of bringing women into the service and making one conscious of it. Some people put as well in orange to recognize gay and lesbian and trans people who have also been excluded. So I think there is a much greater inclusiveness now. And that does give me hope and a sense of justice and equality.
Michael Schulder: Well, professor Deborah Dash Moore, I'm going to work really hard on the writing of this piece based on this interview. One day I want you to remember me from my writing and not my gender. [Deborah laughs] So I'm going to try.
Deborah Dash Moore: Okay, that’s a good deal.
Michael Schulder: By the way, as I write this… So give me the last tip as a professor, you know, I'm going to write this story. This is going to, in some ways, you know, expand our minds as [00:16:00] we go into Passover. We're going to have a, maybe a deeper understanding or a different way of looking at Passover because of these stories. What do I have to deliver to get an A from you?
Deborah Dash Moore: So I think what you need to do is you need to have an argument, right? You know that. You need to have good examples that support your argument. Given what you write in Wavemaker, the way in which it speaks to you personally, I think matters a lot, and would matter to your readers also. So I would keep those three things in mind. Yeah.
Michael Schulder: Thank you. I feel like I just got extended office hours from you. Thank you.
Deborah Dash Moore: It was a real pleasure to meet you again as an adult. [laughs] Although you were a young adult, then.
Michael Schulder: Thank you, listen, this is such a treat for me. Thank [00:17:00] you. And I'm so thrilled, not even just that I got to reconnect with you, but I'm really thrilled to have this, this digital library on my desk. I mean, I'm really going to be using this a lot, so thank you, and-
Deborah Dash Moore: Great.
Michael Schulder: It's fantastic.
Deborah Dash Moore: This was wonderful.
Michael Schulder: Thanks for joining me on Wavemaker Conversations.
Deborah Dash Moore: You're welcome. It was a lot of fun. Take care, Michael.