Pharisee on a Donkey

Easter reflections from a Jewish perspective

What if the gospels weren’t a break from Judaism—but part of it? What if the Easter story, told in Jewish voices with Jewish grief, belongs to our tradition, too? A reflection on Jesus, resistance, empire, and reclaiming what’s already ours.

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Easter has always carried a strange kind of weight in my life.

I grew up in a mainline Protestant household—my dad’s a pastor in the non-doctrinal UCC. So Easter was there. Not with the pageantry you might imagine—no incense, no massive choir procession—but with thoughtful sermons, quiet conviction, and a sense that something meaningful was unfolding.

Then, in my adolescence, I discovered I was Jewish. Not in some abstract, genealogical way, but in a way that stuck. In a way that reoriented how I understood myself, my history, and the stories I’d grown up with. That shift opened up a different kind of reading—not just of scripture, but of the world.

And now, every spring, I find myself standing between stories.

Between the empty tomb and the parting sea.

Between my dad’s thoughtful Easter reflections and the Haggadah’s call to see ourselves as if we, too, had left Egypt.

And honestly, I don’t think I’m the only one standing in that in-between space.

***

Christians call it Easter. Jews might just call it Sunday in Jerusalem under Roman occupation.

But whatever you call it, the stories being told this week aren’t foreign to Judaism.

They’re part of it.

The gospels are soaked in Jewish language, Jewish imagery, Jewish grief. They’re built on the bones of the prophets. They retell old hopes with new urgency. These aren’t tales of a new religion. They’re Jewish stories, told by Jewish voices, through the scaffolding of Jewish scripture.

Jesus didn’t crash Judaism’s party. He grew up in the house, argued in the hallway, and flipped a table or two when things got tense.

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To my Christian friends: I hope this adds depth.

Easter didn’t come out of nowhere. It came out of empire.

Out of Roman taxation and brutality.

Out of a Jewish teacher’s protest.

Out of the longing that Gd’s justice might still break through the jackboot of Caesar.

And to my Jewish friends: don’t give Jesus away so easily.

He’s not just theirs. He’s ours too—shit, ours first!

Maybe not in creed. But in context.

Not in divinity. But in defiance.

The man executed on a Roman cross was one of us, schlepping to the Temple and kidnapped along the way.

***

Jesus entering Jerusalem on a colt, people waving palms, shouting “Hosanna.” Was that a literal event? I don’t think so. Or not like that at any rate.

The gospel writers weren’t writing news reports. They were writing midrash. Jewish storytelling, text on text, meaning on meaning. They pull from Zechariah—“your king comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey.” They pull from Psalm 118—“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

It’s not that they saw these things happen and then remembered the scripture.

It’s that they saw the scripture, and wrote the moment to match it.

That doesn’t make it less true.

It makes it more.

***

We talk about the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament” like they’re two entirely different universes. Like someone changed the channel between Malachi and Matthew. But what if that divide never existed?

What if we shelved the gospels after the prophets—say, between Zechariah and Daniel?

They wouldn’t feel out of place.

They’re full of the same longing.

The same fury at injustice.

The same hope that empire won’t get the final word.

That’s not a new religion talking. That’s just another chapter in the long Jewish story.

***

Crucifixion wasn’t a religious act.

It was public, imperial violence.

A punishment reserved for insurgents, enslaved people, lower classes who dared defy the order of things.

Jesus wasn’t killed because he was “divine.” He was killed because he was a problem.

A man with a following.

A man who taught in parables that mocked the rich and promised reversal.

A man who walked into the Temple and flipped over the tables of people profiting off the poor.

This wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was the state doing what the state does: eliminate the threat.

***

And then: resurrection.

Whatever you believe that word means, in Jewish terms, it always pointed toward justice.

Resurrection wasn’t a magic trick. It was a vindication. A promise that the crushed would rise, that the murdered would matter, that the blood in the streets wasn’t the end of the story.

So when the early followers of Jesus told a resurrection story, they weren’t just talking about life after death.

They were saying: the verdict of empire is not the final word.

Gd overrules Caesar.

That’s resurrection, too.

***

It’s no accident that Easter falls during Pesach.

These are both stories of resistance.

Both tell of bodies under empire, of liberation breaking through power, of the Holy One siding not with the rulers, but with the people.

In Jewish liturgy, we say:

“In every generation, each person must see themselves as though they left Egypt.”

Not “read about Egypt.”

Not “believe in Egypt.”

Left it.

That means the empire isn’t just back there.

It’s right here.

***

Seeing that I am not Christian, I don’t keep Easter. And despite being Jewish, I don’t keep Kosher for Passover, either!

Hell, I don’t keep Shabbat particularly well, tbh.

But I read the stories. And I sit with the tension. And I join with community.

And this year, like every year, I see a Jewish man standing in front of an empire and saying no.

I see a people under occupation daring to imagine something different.

I see writers in the decades after Jesus’ death crafting stories not just to remember him, but to proclaim something bolder:

That injustice can be resisted.

That death doesn’t get the last word.

That somewhere in the margins of history, Gd is still whispering, not yet.

***

To my Christian friends: may your Easter be rich and rooted.

To my Jewish friends: don’t give Jesus away to the Christians, we have claimed moshciah Bar Khokba, who I don’t think any of us thinks of as an actual contendor for moshiach, but we still roll with him. I’m not saying anything of Jesus more than he was a man, and I don’t think any of us need to be rolling with him. Alls I mean is that as a man, he was a Jewish man, a teacher, a rabbi, and a threat to the empire. Don’t let later Christian doctrine define our history for us. At least until Constantine, stories about Jesus are stories about us.

To everyone: let’s keep pushing the empire back, in whatever small and holy ways we can.

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If this resonated with you, consider sharing it. Especially with the folks who don’t often get to hear Jewish perspectives on Easter. Leave a comment if you’re holding your own story in tension this season. I’d love to hear it.