Here is the introduction to my new Passover Seder Supplement, “The Cry of the Canaanites.” Click here for the entire text to print out and read at your seder table this year. (Click here, here and here for supplements I’ve written in previous years):

After singing Dayenu, we say:

Our telling of the Exodus story is not yet complete. It is not “dayenu” – it is not enough for us – to sing joyfully of the Israelites entrance into the Promised Land without noting that this promise came with a command: to dispossess and annihilate the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan:

So the trumpets were sounded, and when they army heard the sound, they raised a great shout, and the wall collapsed. The army advanced on the city, every man straight ahead, and they captured it. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city; both man and woman, young and old, as well as the cattle, the sheep and the donkeys, with the edge of the sword.

(Joshua 6:20-21)

As difficult as it may be to read such as these in our most sacred text, it is even more unsettling when we consider that the Conquest Tradition of the Bible has inspired centuries of colonial dispossession of indigenous peoples throughout the world. It has also been used in various ways by early Zionist ideologues, the political founders of the state of Israel and by the present day religious settler movement.

Therefore, we cannot continue with our seder until we honestly face – and disavow – the immoral conquest tradition that is embedded within our Exodus story. We now take this time to read and discuss the teachings of three liberation theologians: one Native American, one African American and one Palestinian. As we consider their challenge to us, let us ask one another: how will we hearken to the cry of Canaanites past and present? Are we ready to admit our complicity in their dispossession? Can we transform the dream of a Promised Land into the reality of a land that is truly promised to all?