For Passover and Good Friday, NYT essayist writes about ‘killing’ ‘hateful God’

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The New York Times decided to publish a guest essay heavily criticizing God on Good Friday and the start of Passover.

Shalom Auslander composed a piece insisting that this Passover, we should stop paying attention to God: 

"In this time of war and violence, of oppression and suffering, I propose we pass over something else: God," he began, before claiming God is "hateful," full of "brutality," and, if mortal, "would be dragged to the Hague."

Auslander criticized God whose "wrath" and "plagues" harnessed against the Egyptians during the original Passover story from the Book of Exodus, remind him of what the Russians are doing to the Ukrainians right now. 

FRANCE - CIRCA 2002:  The parting of the Red Sea, illustration of the Old Testament, the end of the 19th century, engraving by Bequet, Delagrave edition, Paris. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

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According to the author, Israel’s ancient enemies were troubling, "But just as troubling — even more so today in light of the brutal slaughter taking place in Ukraine — were the plagues themselves."

"Egyptians young and old, innocent and guilty, suffered locusts and frogs, hail and darkness, beasts running wild and water becoming blood," Auslander lamented. 

"Surely, I wondered, there were some Egyptians who didn’t whip Jews, who didn’t have anything against Jews at all?" he asked. 

The author opined, "God, it seems, paints with a wide brush. He paints with a roller. In Egypt, said our rabbi, he even killed first-born cattle. He killed cows." 

A damaged building is seen, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine March 14, 2022. (REUTERS/Oleksandr Lapshyn)

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He then made the point, "If he were mortal, the God of Jews, Christians and Muslims would be dragged to The Hague. And yet we praise him. We emulate him. We implore our children to be like him."

According to Auslander, that’s why the war in Ukraine is happening. 

"Perhaps now, as missiles rain down and the dead are discovered in mass graves, is a good time to stop emulating this hateful God," the guest essayist proposed.

"Perhaps we can stop extolling his brutality. Perhaps now is a good time to teach our children to pass over God — to be as unlike him as possible," he added. 

Auslander then traveled back through Biblical history with other examples proving how God is so "hateful." 

"’God threw Adam out of Eden for eating an apple,’ they can caution their students. ‘That’s called being heavy-handed, children,’" he wrote, miming the rabbis he claimed to learn under as a boy.

Passover manuscript Published April 25, 2016 Associated Press Facebook0 Twitter0 livefyre0 Email Print In this photo taken Wednesday, April 20, 2016, the famed Birds' Head Haggadah, a medieval copy of a text read around the Passover holiday table, is seen on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

He also mentioned the plight of Eve. "Cursing all women for eternity because of Eve’s choices?" he asked incredulously.

The author recounted how at the end of his family’s traditional Seder meal each year, "we open the front door and call out to Him, ‘Pour out thy wrath upon the nations that did not know you!’" and then slammed God for obliging: "And God does. With plagues and floods, with fire and fury, on the young and old, the guilty and innocent." 

Auslander explained how humanity emulates God in the worst way. "And we humans, made in his image, do the same. With fixed-wing bombers and cluster bombs, with self-propelled mortars and thermobaric rocket launchers."

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The author concluded his screed by recalling how the rabbis used to tell students that God killed the first-born cattle because "’the Egyptians believed they were gods.’" 

Auslander added, "Killing gods is an idea I can get behind."