Um, What's With All the Frogs?

Around this time of year, as Passover rolls around and springtime begins to turn our world from brown to green, my mother becomes obsessed with frogs. To be fair, she's not alone: many of the grown-ups in her congregation (and other communities, I'm sure!) are infatuated with frogs, too. Rubber frogs, plush frogs, gooey frogs that stick to windows, frog decorations, frog towels, frog hats, frog candies, frog-themed coloring books, frog games, and, of course, the ever-popular frog song.

All these frogs are freaking me out.

At the annual Passover Seder, we retell the Exodus story and dramatize its climax—the plagues. We read that Pharaoh refuses to let the Israelite slaves go, so the Egyptians suffer the ten plagues, most of which sound really, truly horrific. Rivers turn to blood, livestock succumb to illnesses, locusts eat all the crops, darkness covers the land, firstborn sons die en masse, etc. The majestic, fatherly God of the Old Testament exacts revenge on the slaveholders in a Shock and Awe campaign that wows audiences to this day.

Hard to stomach all that retribution, actually. Imagine all those people thirsting, starving, watching their cows and goats suffer, grieving the losses of their children, dying left and right. Sure, you could argue that they deserved it, but should you drink to their suffering?

And maybe that's why the relative innocence of the plague of frogs makes it the obvious choice of the modern American Jew—why my mom and her friends have selected the froggy as their Passover mascot. (It's like a Jewish Easter Bunny: cute, endlessly reproducible, innocent.)

And yet, isn't this preoccupation with frogs a sort of schadenfreude?

I'm not one to thump the Bible, but these quotes work with my thesis, so suspend your disbelief and check out these two oft-repeated verses (especially around the Seder table):

“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt." (Exodus 22:21)

"You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land." (Deuteronomy 23:7)

These directives are not exactly easy to follow. Modern slavery (of prostitutes, of migrant workers) has been hard to stop entirely, despite widespread condemnation of it. Persecution of immigrants (just look at Alabama's new law) is equally difficult to end. Focusing a springtime holiday on the ethics of treating the other as one would treat oneself is not easy (or likely). We don't need an eight-day Yom Kippur just when the skies are brightening and the tulips are popping up.

Lightening it up with a few songs (and frogs) is OK.

But a celebration of suffering is not the point of Passover, nor was it ever the focus of the original Exodus story, so I get a little miffed each year as my parents' frog collection grows. My mom keeps her pile of frogs in a display hutch in the dining room, and my kids stare at them eagerly whenever we visit. My son asks her, "When will the frogs come out?" She answers, "At the Passover Seder," and he jumps around gleefully in anticipation.

This focus on the plagues is natural: they are perhaps the most exciting part of the story. The narrative arc leads us to a peak, and we plateau at this height through Pharaoh's decree to "Leave, already!" and the Hebrews' rapid exodus, then reach two more peaks (crossing the Red Sea and receiving the ten commandments (literally on a mountain peak)) then at long last descend the arc to the denouement: 40 years of wandering in the desert, trying to become a people.

We Jews, for generations, millenniums, even, were marginalized and persecuted, and raising a glass (or four) to commemorate our release from bondage and our becoming a free nation, a community, is important. Reminding ourselves to treat others fairly "for we were once slaves in Egypt" is the central message. Telling this story is important.

Does the frog-fetish ritual really do it justice?

Photo by Sushiflinger via Wikimedia Commons