A week ago today I was still refraining from eating most carbs, as it was the Jewish holiday of Passover. A holiday where Jews across the world come together to remember the exodus from Egypt. One of the better known elements of the Passover seder, the holiday’s ritual meal, is the recitation of the 10 plagues of Egypt. Blood, Frogs, Locusts, etc. In the haggadah, the book that tells the Passover story, the edition my family uses, also lists ten modern day plagues.
Ten Modern Day Plagues:
- The making of war
- The teaching of hate and violence
- Despoliation of the earth
- Perversion of justice and of government
- Fomenting of vice and crime
- Neglect of human needs
- Oppression of nations and peoples
- Corruption of culture
- Subjugation of science, learning, and human discourse
- Erosion of freedoms
We’ve read that list every year of my life, but never has it felt as relevant, never have I paid such close attention as I did this year.
Today I sit watching The March for Science on C-SPAN. I’ve heard Bill Nye, and Denis Hayes who coordinated the first Earth Day, speak about their hopes for our future. I sit in my parent’s house, where we held our seder a week ago, and watch the atypical rise of Lake Ontario out their back window.