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Another year, another Pesach. Many of my childhood memories of Judaism, colored by the rosy glow of nostalgia, have to do with the boisterous family Seders at the row house on Fairhill Street in South Philly of my maternal grandparents, Hymie and Sara Schwartz.

Sara laid out her full spread of Ashkenazic delicacies, including two kinds of homemade knishes. The house was redolent of chicken fat, tinged with the scent of aged velvety upholstery.

I had to wear itchy pants. One year I had such stage fright that my Uncle Mike, only 14 years older, had to ask the Four Questions.

Impatient, hungry relatives would badger Hymie to speed it up as he gamely tried to recite the entire Hagaddah. After dinner Uncle Froika and other aged relatives stopped by.

It was the only game in town, and I was a kid, and this is what you did. Over the years, I've drifted away from Passover. Even the humanistic versions recite the traditional story, which didn't happen. It seems to be a holiday based mostly on fantasy, with few redeeming qualities.

We Secular Humanistic Jews try to reconcile traditional Judaism with modernity, rationality, and integrity.

Unlike most other Jews, we don't mistake stories for reality. It is certain - and believe me, if people could have proved otherwise, they would have - that nothing in the Torah happened.

The entire document consists of four texts, written in the 8th-9th century BCE, later edited together into a single document. Deuteronomy is the product of a single author, while the other three texts were woven together to create the first four books.

As to why the Torah was written...it appears that a Hebrew king ordered up a national epic, much as a CEO directs his PR Department to come up with a flattering history of the company.

There is no proof for any if it. No Moses, no God, no plagues, no giving of law at Sinai or anywhere else, no record WHATSOEVER of the Jews in Egypt as slaves or any other capacity (the Egyptians kept excellent records, and we still have a lot of them).

As nomadic tribes, the early Hebrews attacked the fringes of Egypt's empire, were captured, and might have escaped. That's as close as the Torah comes to actual history.

There's nothing in the Torah about freedom (the only reason Moses gives for the Jews going off was to celebrate a worship festival; there's nothing about flying the coop...but that's what the Jews end up doing, in a sort of "mission creep").
God delivers them from the Egyptians ONLY because he wants to demonstrate his power and because he promised them the land. Read the Torah for yourself - that's what it says.

And there's simply no way 600,000 people could have crossed the desert and never left a trace.

I would like to pretend to believe the traditional story, but my dignity won't allow it.

What's to celebrate? What's left?

Spring and renewal - we can celebrate those. As for seeking freedom, that actually happened in modern times: without the Jewish Exodus from Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, many of us wouldn't be here. Brave people, my grandparents.

This year we had a primarily gastronomic Passover - delicious charoset, matzo ball soup, gefilte fish. We wished each other a gut yontiff and expressed pleasure that we're all still here and doing pretty well after all. The Angel of Death had passed us over once again.

It felt like a celebration, and we didn't have to pretend to believe the unbelievable.

Learn more about this author, Alan Perlman.
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