The Seder
The plan was to go to Frisco, to Amy’s synagogue’s mass seder.
But Peter didn’t want to drive and we don’t have a car so…
We did it ourselves.
Passover is one holiday you can’t miss. It’s somewhat joyous compared to the other two heavy hitters, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Then again, Rosh Hashanah is the New Year, which we used to celebrate by playing the Rosh Hashanah Open at the Equinox Hotel in Vermont. Our house was right down the street. And we purchased it from a Jewish realtor who invited us to the holidays at the Manchester temple.
Not that that was an official golf tournament. But that’s what my mother called it. She had a good sense of humor, and an attitude, and people loved her for it. I’m sure that’s what drew my father to her. You were never going to be sitting at home wondering what to do if my mother was around.
But she’s no longer with us. Nor is my dad, he died back in ’92. At the time 70 seemed somewhat aged, a good life, to die that young today is a tragedy.
So Felice looked up a recipe for charoset… There are very few Jewish delicacies, but charoset is one of them. You use it to make the Hillel sandwich, the highlight of the Passover seder.
So we start reading the Haggadah and…
My mind is flashing on seders past.
At first we used to go to my mother’s parents’ house in Peabody, Mass. They lived in the top floor of a triple-decker. My granddad owned two, he purchased them with the money he made in the tannery.
My older sister loved going to Peabody. Me, not so much. There was an old people smell in the apartment. But at least Uncle Harvey was there. He followed his dad into the tannery, but he hurt his back and ultimately O.D.’ed on pain medication in his forties. Beware of going down the back surgery route, sometimes your pain just gets worse and worse and worse.
But then we started to go to the Sheketoff’s for the seder. At this time they were still living in Bridgeport. There was a kids’ table, where we all got grape juice in paper cups. But eventually we started to sneak wine. Someone always boasted they could feel the effects, I’m not sure that ever happened.
But then the Sheks moved to Fairfield, into a spiffy new house they built. And we all sat around one big table and that was where Alan, instead of saying “bitter herbs,” said “bitter honey.” We joked about that at seders for years thereafter.
The seder was led by Harry Sheketoff. I never believed I’d get to the point where I’d run the seder myself. The leader has two big jobs, to assign the reading and decide which pages to skip.
So tonight’s Haggadah said the Jews left Egypt 4000 years ago. You mean this story has been passed down for all these years?
Not that I take it literally. Not that many Jews do. But we’re still Jews. It’s not like being a lapsed Catholic, you can even call yourself an atheist, but you’re still Jewish.
And it’s tough being Jewish in today’s society. We’re a tiny minority of the world’s population, but for some reason we’re responsible for all the world’s problems. And chances are we’ll go extinct. Primarily because of intermarriage.
So we hit the highlights… The four cups of wine…
And ultimately the Hillel sandwich.
You put the charoset between two pieces of matzoh and…
It’s always the highlight of the seder for me.
We passed on the overdone brisket, but we did have chicken soup.
And then we finished the Haggadah. We never did this as kids. We dreaded this as kids. We wanted to watch the baseball game, we wanted to go home and call our friends, we thought about school the next day… But Harry and a couple of other fathers would finish. They’d pour the cup of wine for Elijah, open the door, and after we were through running around the house they’d point out that the glass was now half-full, that Elijah had partaken. We were convinced that Harry or another dad had gulped the wine, but they’d never cop to this.
And of course there was the search for the afikomen, and the prizes dealt out thereafter. When we were young, we all got prizes. But as we got older, only the winner did, and it was a better prize to boot.
There were no kids in the condo tonight. We thought of Felice’s grand niece Ella. She has a friend in first grade who told her all about Hanukkah and…she came home and told her mom that she could celebrate the holiday, after all her Uncle Bob was Jewish, and that meant she was Jewish too!
Get old enough and it’s the younger generation that makes the seder interesting. You see them learn to read. Grow up. And someday they’ll be here and we won’t.
The sixties seem so antiquated now. But we felt they were cutting edge when we lived through them.
But we’re old now. Waiting to be replaced.
And all these years later, traditions mean something, they make you feel good. Just reciting the prayers, drinking the four glasses of wine, dipping and dropping the wine for the ten plagues… You feel part of a continuum.
And this bonds us to each other.
Let’s not talk about Gaza and Hamas, or even George Soros… Then again the Haggadah spoke of the concentration camps and the six million. But will that story continue to live, with Holocaust denial rampant and history even being disappeared in the United States?
I don’t know.
But I do know that during tonight’s seder I could see myself at four, at six, just learning to read, in high school, at various locations around this globe celebrating the holiday.
And this reflection was bittersweet. In that now I’m closer to the end than the beginning. But there’s a zone you enter during the seder. And the fewer the participants, the more palpable it is. You tingle a bit, you feel a bit special. You don’t feel better than anybody else, but you feel part of a tribe.
And that feels good.
