A small box of matzoh with a Passover pamphlet and nice note from a neighborhood rabbi was left at my front door. They must have really culled their list. I haven’t been an active member for years, but somehow they found me. Like many Jews I’m comfortable with the dichotomy of being Jewish and something else or nothing else - like a Chinese food menu in a column a or a column b kinda way.
My mother has been deceased for one year and there was no one to nag me to “make Passover” this year – to go to Safeway to the back of the store where they designate the 2 shelves to accommodate the 5 Jews that live in my small California town. The Passover section includes boxes of matzoh, jars of borscht and gefilte fish, a fish-like substance in a gel in a jar that my Portland son might jokingly call “a fish-forward experience.”
“Make this like this. Do this like that.” My mother would instruct in so many words over my shoulder in the kitchen. All that tradition could feel suffocating. Sometimes I resented the way she clung to tradition like a kid holding onto the side of a pool to keep from drowning. Other times I took comfort and felt truly connected to my heritage - mostly when I listened to the song Anatevka from Fiddler on the Roof. A huddled togetherness in another exile with deep sorrow and acceptance - always met with an underlying irony and sense of humor. There we were ready to begin the Seder, pointing to the Seder plate, reciting the Kiddish and then the Four questions.
Five minutes in, my kids would start kicking each other under the table and try to club each other with the shank bone on the Seder plate. When I was their age, my father had already left the house. I played all of the roles at Passover, reciting the Four questions reserved for the youngest, sitting slumped in a chair with a pillow behind my back at the head of the table - I even shook the table so the glass of wine spilled a little to show that the angel Elijah had visited. In a traditional game for the kids of Hide the Matzoh, I would hide the matzoh from myself and search for it and discover it right where I hid it. My mother would set the table with silver and fine linens. She would bring in the dishes one at a time to match the pace at which I read from the Hagadah Passover book of stories, songs and protocol.
It was a far cry from the intensity in the Bronx with my grandmother, Sadie and grandfather, Sol. Their Passover was like attending a funeral - solemn and sad. Six hours of Hebrew sitting on folding chairs with no bathroom breaks. I wore my Itchy white opaque stockings with an equally itchy wool sleeveless dress that my grandfather had made for me from a Butterick pattern. He was a tailor and had remarkably made his first full man’s tailored suit by age 11. I remember standing on a wooden box in the putty-colored apartment in the middle of their living room, yellowed plastic covering every piece of furniture. “Why did they want to preserve everything” I thought as I looked around the tiny one-bedroom apartment that was once home to their family of four.
Several Straight pins stuck out of the side of my grandfather’s mouth as he eyed the bottom of the dress and rubbed a stick of white chalk, marking the hem. The dress was a bold plaid, heavy, like their Sedar. My mother, as my grandmother did before her, would say a prayer over the candles at the beginning of the Sedar and cover her eyes and sob. I learned that it was a time of remembrance for all of those who were no longer with us and those who passed too soon.
This year I am alone in an empty house save for my King Charles companion. I take the matzoh out of the box and sprinkle some shredded cheese on top to melt in the oven. I leave it in too long and burn the edges black. I eat it anyway. I am feeling a little rebellious and very unhappy with the state of the world. I walk into the kitchen and reach for the Waspy Walker biscuits in the plaid box. We are not supposed to eat flour for the 8 days of Passover. I chomp the last of the biscuit in defiance of the no bread rule.
One of my favorite parts in the Sedar is The Four Sons. The Wise son asks detailed, legalistic questions about the rules. The Contrarian son asks "What does this service mean to you?" By saying "you" instead of "us," he separates himself from the community. The Simple Son asks “What is this?” and then there is the Silent son who doesn’t even know how to ask a question. I like that Judiaism understands that it needs to try to engage many types of individuals.
I feel content after finishing my burnt Matzoh with melted cheese, and think no matter how many times I have embraced or denounced Judaism, I recognize that I am born to it and all that it means - the full rapture, like Prokofiev’s 2nd movement from Cinderella, with all of the minors and majors and crescendos and wit, and expansive sorrow and utter jubilation of a Russian waltz. And in the end, I suppose I am all the sons still asking all the questions.
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