AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER

Why is this Bloomsday different from all other Bloomsdays?

To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here.

We continue our occasional investigation of all the things Leopold Bloom misunderstands about religion. We’ve already covered his unique views on Catholicism and Buddhism in “Lotus Eaters”, so today we’ll tackle Judaism, specifically his thoughts about Passover in “Aeolus”.

As Bloom watches the Freeman’s Journal typesetter arrange the letters that will eventually become Paddy Dignam’s obituary, he is struck by the typesetter’s ability to read from right to left:

“He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD kcirtaP.”

Observing the typesetter at work rouses a memory of Bloom’s father Rudolph reading from the Haggadah at Passover:

“Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage alleluia.”

Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) is a Jewish festival that commemorates the ancient Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, as recounted in the Old Testament. The story goes that God sent ten plagues to pressure the Egyptians to free the Israelites. During the tenth and final plague, the Angel of Death descended upon Egypt and killed the firstborn son of each Egyptian family. The Israelites marked their doors with the blood of a lamb so that Death would “pass over” their homes and spare their sons. After this, the Israelites were freed from bondage in Egypt and wandered for forty years in the wilderness before reaching the Promised Land of Israel.

Modern Passover is a weeklong festival in the spring. On the first night or the first two nights, depending on the branch of Judaism, a Seder is held, during which a symbolically rich meal is eaten, prayers are said, songs are sung and stories are told. The phrase “Next year in Jerusalem” is sung at the close of the Seder. The Haggadah, meaning “the telling” in Hebrew, is the book containing the Passover liturgy. The name “Haggadah” is derived from the Hebrew version of Exodus 13:8, which commands:

“And thou shalt tell thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that which the LORD did for me when I came forth out of Egypt.”

Though Rudolph converted to Christianity in order to marry his wife Ellen, here we learn that he attempted to keep Jewish tradition alive in their home despite his conversion. Leopold recalls his father leading a Passover Seder, though I wonder if the Seder was just father and son or if they shared the table with more than just Elijah. In Bloom’s memory it’s only himself and Poor Papa, so for our purposes those are two most important people in attendance.

Marc Chagall, *The Israelites are eating the Passover Lamb*, 1931

Leopold wasn’t a diligent pupil of “all that long business,” but some of the Passover rituals have lodged in his memory. I can imagine a very bored little boy sitting patiently at a carefully laid table while his father futilely attempts to impart some religion and tradition to him. Leopold recalls the Hebrew term “Pessach,” but refers to the liturgical text for the Seder as “a hagadah book” rather than simply the Haggadah, signaling the younger Bloom’s unfamiliarity with even the most basic trappings of the Seder. Such a gap in knowledge is par for the course for Leopold. However, this is merely trivia next to his botched recitation of the opening lines of the Seder about how Moses “brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage.” The story of the Exodus from Egypt is usually framed as an escape from bondage that culminates in the Jews entering the Promised Land of Israel. As with many such “bloomisms” this apparent error contains some roundabout wisdom, as we’ll see.

Accuracy notwithstanding, Bloom has a strong emotional tie to memories of Passover. Daniel Mark Fogel wrote that the Haggadah is tied to “Bloom’s most detailed memories of Jewish observances.” Bloom tries to remember other bits of the Seder, and in his usual fashion, doesn’t get them quite right:

“Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that’s the other.”

Bloom tries to remember a prayer recited at the Seder and comes up with a truncated version of the Shema. He catches himself, though, thinking “No, that’s the other [prayer].” The prayer should read “Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad,” which translates to “Hear, O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is One.”

The Shema is recited daily by observant Jews as well as for the dying or by martyrs in their final moments. Shortening or misremembering this particular prayer demonstrates just how unfamiliar Bloom is with Jewish religious practices. Another subtle hint at Bloom’s disconnect from Jewish tradition can be seen in his use of “alleluia” rather than “hallelujah” earlier in this passage. Both phrases mean “Praise the Lord,” but “hallelujah” is the Hebrew version, while “alleluia” is used in Latin and Greek. Muddling this single word shows the influence of Christianity on Bloom’s conception of religion. He continues:

“Then the twelve brothers, Jacob’s sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the water and the butcher. And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it well. Justice it means but it’s everybody eating everyone else. That’s what life is after all.”

This story is a compressed version of the song “Chad Gadya” that is sung at the end of the Seder. The phrase “chad gadya” is Aramaic for “one kid goat,” the lamb in Bloom’s version. Bloom is not far off in his memory of the song, which tells how each of the entities consume one another until the Almighty destroys the Angel of Death. The kid goat appears again at the end of the song. Bloom interprets “Chad Gadya” as a comment on the dog-eat-dog nature of life. “Chad Gadya” can also be interpreted as the various empires of the ancient world swallowing one another in succession until the coming of the Almighty destroys pain and suffering, paving the way to the Promised Land for the chosen people, the Jews, (the kid goat).

Bloom’s descriptions of the Seder show that Joyce was likely well-acquainted with the Haggadah (Fogel points to Bloom’s largely accurate paraphrase of “Chad Gadya” in particular). Joyce would have had plenty of opportunities to obtain a Haggadah, given his circle of Jewish friends in Trieste. The Haggadah is available in translation in English, Italian and many other languages. I don’t think it would have been difficult at all for Joyce to acquire a copy. We can infer, then, that Joyce and Bloom are aware of the commandment from Exodus to pass the story of Passover from father to son. While Christian-convert Rudolph tried to fulfill this commandment, Leopold is unable to do so because his son, Rudy, died in infancy. Bloom has held onto a sense of lingering guilt over his rejection of his father’s faith. From “Ithaca”:

“Why did Bloom experience a sentiment of remorse?
Because in immature impatience he had treated with disrespect certain beliefs and practices.”

What follows is a list of Jewish beliefs and practices that Bloom treated disrespectfully as a younger man. It calls to mind Stephen’s Agenbite of Inwit - his gnawing guilt over refusing to pray for his mother due to his own agnosticism. Bloom preserves in his desk drawer his father’s suicide letter and his Haggadah. Bloom has had a much longer time to come to terms with his guilt and grief than Stephen has. Possessing a more mature viewpoint, he has shifted from his youthful disrespect:

“How did these beliefs and practices now appear to him?
Not more rational than they had then appeared, not less rational than other beliefs and practices now appeared.”

Though the guilt and grief persist, Bloom has found a middle ground. He doesn’t embrace the religion of his father, but he no longer derides it, either. Bloom has been able to mature into a good Jew on his own terms. The meeting of Bloom and Stephen introduces a new possibility to pass knowledge to a son-figure. Malachi 4:6 states that the coming of Elijah “shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers….” Elijah’s arrival is heralded in a throwaway that Bloom receives in “Lestrygonians,” so father-son reconciliation is surely on the horizon. The seeds of atonement between father and son are planted in the closing episodes of Ulysses, even if they don't reach maturity within the narrative.

Of course, Bloom and Stephen’s meeting isn’t just any old meeting; it’s a manifestation of hypostasis, a union of Father and Son, more specifically the union of God the Father and God the Son. The Holy Trinity plays no role in the Passover Seder, but Fogel sees Passover imagery in Bloom and Stephen’s overlapping thoughts early in Ulysses. Consider Stephen's description of a “bowl of bitter waters” in “Telemachus”, triggered by a passing cloud. Fogel connects this bitterness to maror, the bitter herb eaten at Passover as a symbol of the bitter lives of the Israelites in Egypt. While Dublin Bay is generally regarded as the bowl of bitter waters, Fogel points out that Stephen says the bowl of bitter waters is behind him as he looks out to sea. Given Stephen’s vantage point, this bitter water functions as a symbol of hardship like the maror. Stephen certainly has a smorgasbord of bitter memories to choose from. On top of this, Dublin Bay is a salty body of water and could be symbolic karpas, or the vegetables dipped in salt water during the Seder. The salty water symbolizes the tears shed by the Israelites in Egypt, just as the bitter, salty waters of Dublin Bay remind Stephen of his personal loss. In Fogel’s view, Stephen is surrounded in Passover imagery whether he realizes it or not.

At a parallel hour, Bloom is struck with a vision of a Promised Land turned barren and foreboding. Walking home from Dlugacz’s shop with his kidney for breakfast, Bloom sees a cloud briefly pass before the sun, plunging him (and Stephen in Sandycove) into momentary grief and despair. On Bloom’s end, he sees a vision of the Promised Land as a desolate wasteland where his people wander the earth from “captivity to captivity,” an image of the Israelites wandering the wilderness for forty years after they escape Egypt. This image is in line with Bloom’s misquotation in “Aeolus” - “out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage.” He sees only bitterness lying ahead if he were to seek the Promised Land. He also sees the salt, glimpsing “age crusting him with a salt cloak.” Once the dark cloud has “passed over,” both Stephen and Bloom are released from their dark visions.

In the psychic union of Bloom and Stephen, we see the fulfillment of Ulysses as “an epic of two races” - of the Irish and the Jews - as Joyce himself described it. Abby Bender writes in the book Israelites in Erin: Exodus, Revolution, and the Irish Revival that Joyce incorporates the story of the Exodus from Egypt as an expression of the ways in which both the Irish and the Jews dwell in cultural memory, stating that the Irish remember the dead “as if they were here” but that Jews remember the past “as if [they] were there.” Bender quotes Rabbi Neil Gillman saying, “[Exodus] inhabits an eternal present; it is contemporaneous, it is happening today, to us.” This is true for Bloom as well. Looking at Ulysses from a metaphysical point of view, metempsychosis allows Ulysses’ characters to inhabit many presents at once, as ordinary people, as religious heroes like Moses, and as mythical heroes like Odysseus.

The eternal present of the Haggadah is an excellent model for Ulysses. Through the Seder, Jews fulfill the commandment to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt, but as Bender points out, “...the more one tells the story of the departure from Egypt, the more praiseworthy he is.” Within the narrative of Ulysses, Joyce tells the story of Moses and the Israelites again and again. In “Aeolus” alone, we see Bloom remembering the Exodus in his Passover memories, then the newsmen discussing John F. Taylor’s speech comparing the Israelites and the Irish, and finally, Stephen’s “Parable of the Plums” employing imagery from Exodus. The Haggadah also meanders through various interpolations, prayers, songs and stories in the telling of the Exodus story, similar to Ulysses’ many stylistic digressions and interpolations. The Haggadah, like the “Ithaca” episode of Ulysses, employs a question and answer format, most notably the Four Questions. The Haggadah also echoes words from earlier passages throughout the later passages, just like Ulysses (Agendath Netaim, Elijah is Coming, What perfume does your wife wear?, etc.) Finally, the Haggadah is meant to incorporate the whole of Jewish experience, beginning with the Exodus from Egypt and folding in later historical events such as the Holocaust and the foundation of Israel. In his book Reading Joyce’s Ulysses, Daniel Schwarz writes, “Joyce draws upon this elastic and protean tradition to imply that Ulysses is to be regarded as the Haggadah of the Irish experience.”

Let’s return at last to Bloom’s description of the Jews being brought out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage. Bloom’s mistake seems plain on its face since it’s so contrary to the traditional Passover story. Bender believes this inversion is Bloom misremembering the Hallel, a prayer said during important festivals, including Passover. We learn in “Ithaca” that Bloom has not only held onto his father’s Haggadah, but marked a certain passage with his eyeglasses:

“An ancient haggadah book in which a pair of hornrimmed convex spectacles inserted marked the passage of thanksgiving in the ritual prayers for Pessach (Passover)...”

The Hallel is made up of Psalms 113-118 and gives thanks for freedom from enslavement in Egypt, so this is likely the prayer marked by Rudolph’s hornrimmed convex spectacles. Bloom is in the wilderness of his own life on June 16, so he isn’t ready to hear a prayer of thanksgiving just yet. If we look at Exodus as a Jewish parallel to Odysseus’ wanderings, and Odysseus’ struggles as a parallel to Bloom’s struggles on Bloomsday, “Aeolus” is a point in the narrative where Bloom-Moses-Odysseus experiences major setbacks and crushing disappointment, having glimpsed Ithaca only to be blown off course at the last moment. Sure, Bloom’s out of Egypt, but his trials and tribulations are only just beginning.

Nicholas Poussin, *The Adoration of the Golden Calf*, 1630’s

In Bloom’s misquote, Bender sees the paradox of the Seder, which conjures memories of the origin of the Jewish nation, but glosses over the central struggles of those forty years in the wilderness. She points out the Israelites’ misery during this era is not recounted in the Haggadah - their longing to eat from the “fleshpots of Egypt,'' their rejection of Moses, their worship of the Golden Calf. Exodus is not just a celebration of newfound freedom, but also the imposition of responsibility upon those attempting to establish a nation. This is Bloom’s critique of the story told in the Haggadah - it remembers the elation of initial freedom while excluding the gnawing uncertainty of exile and the cognitive dissonance of yearning for the relative comforts of bondage.

The expression “Next year in Jerusalem” is meant to end the Seder on a note of hope, a reminder that entry into the land of milk and honey is at hand. However, as we see in Bloom’s rejection of the Zionist settlement at Agendath Netaim, he rejects the very premise of this sentiment. Rather than milk and honey, Bloom imagines desiccation and screech owls. Bloom’s personal trauma leaves him living in an eternal present, but unlike the ritualized present of the Seder, Bloom’s memories leave him roiling in unresolved pain and anguish. Bloom is unable to work through his trauma because he is trapped in a present buttressed by painful memories. Bender goes so far as to say that “... the Haggadah is, in a sense, a lie…,” paraphrasing the following sentiment from Ernest Renan (who is cited elsewhere in Ulysses):

“... a nation being a people who collectively remember, but who have collectively forgotten the traumas of their history.”

In “Cyclops,” Bloom describes a nation as “the same people living in the same place”; home is people sharing space, and that’s enough. Bloom’s nationalism rejects the dog-eat-dog system of justice he sees in “Chad Gadya,” choosing love instead. He also rejects the need for a messiah. The Prophet Elijah, who enters homes at Passover as a herald of the Messiah, appears in Ulysses as a crumpled throwaway drifting on the currents of the Liffey, gradually heading out to sea. Bloom holds space in Ulysses as a Moses figure, and thus by extension, a Parnell figure, a savior who will lead his people to a new Bloomusalem. Like Moses and Parnell, when Bloom is suddenly elevated as a utopian savior in “Circe,” he is just as quickly betrayed by his supporters. A nationalistic project centered on a single, messianic figure is doomed to failure once the Messiah is revealed to be all-too human. The perfection demanded of Zion is unattainable on this earthly plain. Bender describes Ulysses as ending in a “hopeful state of exile” rather than with a “triumphal homecoming” like The Odyssey. Ulysses is a story of acceptance rather than striving. Bender points out that the final words that appear on the page, after Molly’s “yes”, are “Trieste-Zurich-Paris,” the cities where Joyce wrote his epic in exile, a voluntary exile that led him out of the house of bondage in Ireland.

AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER

Further Reading:

Rhetoric and the Enthymeme in Aeolus

The House of Keyes