This is the time of year when Jewish people like me celebrate Passover and the rest of the free world celebrates Easter. Most Christians don’t know a thing about Passover and, likewise, most Jewish people don’t know a damn thing about Easter.
I don’t claim to be an expert on theology by any means, but hopefully the following narrative will shed some light on each mysterious holiday and allow believers of the two religions to better understand each other’s faith. Then one day we can all live in peace and harmony. I urge you to read these stories at your Passover Seder or your Easter feast so your families and friends will be enlightened too.
THE REAL STORY OF PASSOVER
Passover is the time of year when Jewish families get together and celebrate the life of Moses. He was not the guy who took two of everything on that ark and he is not one of the Alou brothers who play Major League baseball. No, Moses was this Jewish guy who was born into slavery way back in biblical times.
Moses’s mom didn’t want him to be a slave; she wanted him to be a doctor. (You know how Jewish mothers are.) So she threw him into a river where he was found by some Egyptian princess who took Moses in and raised him as royalty. But after awhile the princess found out that Moses was really a Hebrew and he was forced to become a slave again or something like that.
After many years of manual labor, Moses wanted a vacation. He asked the Pharaoh Ramses, who was named after the condom, if he and the rest of the Hebrews could get some time off. Ramses refused his request and then made cruel jokes about how cheap Moses was and how his nose was huge. Moses grew angry because the Pharaoh dismissed his request and then made bigoted, stereotypical jokes, but the Ramses would not ever free the Jewish people from slavery. You see, the Pharaoh needed the Hebrew slaves to build him stuff like pyramids, sphinxes and camel barns. The Pharaoh wasn’t about to do any work himself so he used the Jews, who have always been known for their strength and athletic prowess, to do all of the hard manual labor. (Kind of like what we Americans get Mexicans to do nowadays.)
Anyway, when Moses asked the Pharaoh to give the slaves a break, the Pharaoh hollered at Moses, “Hell no! I will not the Hebrew slaves go!” Now Moses was really angry and replied "Ramses, either you let my people go or I'm going to go tell on you to God and get him to send all sorts of nasty-ass plagues down from outer-space and you'll be very sorry!" The Pharaoh just laughed because he didn't believe him. Moses said "Fine, you sandy bastard, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!"
So Moses, true to his word, climbed up Mt. Olympus and told God all about the work Pharaoh had the Jewish people doing. God became angry at what he heard and decided that the Egyptians needed to be severely punished. True to His word, as deities often are, God sent a bunch of disgusting plagues down on the Egyptians like boils, locusts, explosive diarrhea, vermin, sitar music, cattle disease, frogs, and Gilbert Gottfried. But the worst of all of God’s plagues was this evil little ghost angel named Casper sent down to kill all of the firstborn male Egyptian children. God was only pissed at the Egyptians, so he gave the angel of death specific instructions to spare all of the children who had their weiners snipped at birth - basically, just the Jews.
Late that night while the town was asleep, the angel went on his serial killing spree. He passed over all of the Jewish peoples’ houses as he went, just like Christmas carolers do. And that's why we call the holiday Passover, because the murderous little angel “passed over” the Hebrews and Shebrews and only slew the Egyptians instead.
The next morning the Pharaoh awoke to the news that his only son had gotten smote or smitten or smited. Needless to say, the Pharaoh was incensed. So some other crap happened and then something else which I forget. But to make a long story short, while the Pharaoh was mourning the death of his son, Moses had rounded up all the Hebrews and escaped to find some prime real estate by the ocean.
The slaves walked for what seemed like 40 years, but turned out to be more like 38 years, and finally got to this giant sea. These particular Hebrews, who had spent forever wandering in the burning desert heat, were not very strong swimmers. “Oy, the sea is so big and we have no boats!” they moaned. “It would take a miracle to get across the raging waters!” Not knowing what to do the men began to argue about how much time and money they were wasting. The women began complaining about how the salty sea air was ruining their perms. The children grew impatient and started listening to rap music and pretending they were black.
Soon the people started getting ornery and began losing hope. Moses, sick of hearing his people’s whininess, reached into his overnight bag and pulled out his magic wand. He waved it in the air and yelled out some Hebrew chant and the water in the sea began to part. The Jews saw this unbelievable sight and were so happy that they did what every Jewish person does whenever they’re happy - the Hora!
Moments later the Pharaoh and his guards got to the sea too, but most of the Hebrews were already on the other shore. The Egyptians wanted revenge on the slaves for sending them such horrible plagues and making them give chase through the desert so they decided to follow them through the parted waters of the sea. As the last of the Hebrews stepped onto the other side, Moses waved the magic wand again. The water that had been parted for the slaves started flowing violently back down on top of the hapless Egyptians.
The Pharaoh and his followers, who were even worse swimmers than the Hebrews, were swallowed up by the raging waters of the sea. Maybe if the Egyptians were more like Cubans than they would have been able to somehow float to shore on a chariot tire or something. But nevertheless, they were not as resourceful as Cubans and all of the Egyptians drowned right there as the Hebrew slaves watched in amazement.
The Hebrews were relieved, but they still had a long way to go. They continued to walk for days until they reached their destination of Mount Sinai, which was named after a really good hospital in the downtown area. The Hebrews, tired from their ordeal, decided to celebrate their escape with a big catered party. Moses, however, told his people that he was going to climb up this mountain to talk to God again about all that had happened to them over the past few decades.
While Moses was gone, the Hebrews figured they’d have some fun so they threw a wild party with klesmer music, bagels and lox and Old Testament Pictionary. When Moses finally came down from the mountain after a few weeks, what he saw nauseated him. The party had gotten way out of hand! Moses saw all of his loyal followers dancing around naked and boozing it up like they were fraternity brothers, who in those days really were Greek. Moses tried to explain to them that while he was “high” on the mountain, God had given him these Ten Commandments as a guide for the Hebrews to live their lives morally, ethically and free from sin. But his followers kept on partying.
These commandments form God said some stuff about freedom of speech and about not lying, cheating on tests or littering. It also had a blurb about only worshiping God and not practicing idolatry or praying to statues of big fat naked Chinese men. Moses said, “I’ve only been gone an hour and you schmucks are already screwing everything up!” But the people were too busy getting drunk and praying to a golden cow and simply ignored Moses. Some even yelled at him for not chipping in his share of the money for the liquor and idols they had bought.
God, who had been relaxing at the peak of the mountain, heard all of this commotion and became enraged. He thought, “I have just given them my rules to live by and the Hebrews are not abiding by any of them! All they do is drink and party like it’s the last night at Sodom and Gomorrah!” Angry at the Hebrews for disregarding a direct holy order, God decided to teach all of the miscreants a valuable lesson.
The skies grew dark and cloudy as God said some weird incantation that turned all of the drunken revelers into mice. Then this guy, the Pied Piper, came out of a cave on the side of the mountain with an invisible flute and started playing “Hava Nagila.” All of the little Jewish mice were mesmerized by the happy tune and were led out of the town to the countryside where they sang and danced and wore tiny little mouse yarmulkes.
Later on that day the mice ate some enchanted cheese and were turned back into Hebrews again, as God had only wanted to teach them a lesson. Moses was so happy that his people were now free and that they were no longer rodents that he made some matzos and ate it with gefilte fish and Manischevitz wine. Then he became a Rabbi and blew a shofar and fell asleep.
THE REAL STORY OF EASTER
A bunch of Romans killed this guy Jesus, who was Jewish, because of some stuff that he said and did. Then he came back to life, I think, and then spooked them all and then died again. Then this rabbit came by and laid some eggs near where Jesus was and some of the eggs turned into chocolate and others were painted and had glitter on them. Then these little kids found them and everyone ate some ham. The End.
