Publicizing the Miracle: Optimistic Discursive Practices and the Commodities of Passover

Abstract

This study considers and contextualizes a Jewish discursive practice that I refer to as hyperbolic reckoning: the use of exaggerated large numbers. I analyze two instances of hyperbolic reckoning in advertising and other print and online promotional materials linked to Passover, and suggest that the rhetoric being deployed links the acquisition of a commodity (a Passover Haggadah) or the support of an organization that distributes the commodity (Passover foods) to an optimistic perspective on Jewish well-being. The optimistic perspective being cultivated stands in contrast to and even resists a more familiar pessimistic one frequently seen in printed and online analyses of demographic evidence, suggesting that Jewish well-being is in a precarious state. One cannot know if hyperbolic reckoning in these instances actually succeeds in cultivating optimistic perceptions; one cannot measure if acquiring those commodities or supporting an organization that distributes them actually leads to a change in the attitude of individuals, let alone an amelioration of Jewish well-being. One can, however, confirm that the strategy of hyperbolic reckoning in these contemporary instances rests upon a variety of familiar Jewish cultural precedents, and appears to take authority from them.