trials and tribulations: what's the buzz this passover?
Passover is a time for bringing up old memories and making new ones (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Every Passover, Jews around the world ask the same question at the Seder: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”
For me, this year’s two Seders were different from all my other Seders. It was the first time I spent them with only my wife and no other family members present. It’s been especially poignant given that for the second year in a row, Passover, Easter, and Ramadan are taking place on the same weekend, an event that is supposed to happen only once every thirty-three years. Thus, families who follow Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are gathering together, as if DEI has come to religion.
Passover has always been a special holiday for me. Since I was a kid, we would have two Seders, one at our house, the other at one of my uncles’. When my father died in 1985, I took over as leader, to the chagrin of some, as I was significantly more strict and covered more of the Haggadah, meaning the festival meal would start later than usual.
However, my mother would always mention that her grandfather read just about every word of the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt, so his Seders would go deep into the evening. He would still be at the table poring over the Haggadah as everyone else began eating and kibbitzing.
My mother died in 2017, my sister and her husband spend most of their time in California since the pandemic, my brother moved farther out on Long Island, my aunt and uncle who usually host one Seder recently retired to Florida, and my cousins who also host had a flood in their apartment and have had to vacate temporarily. For most of my life I was spoiled, with all of my family living nearby, able to get together at the drop of a yarmulke, but now we’re spread out, seeing one another much less frequently than we used to.
Last week we were fortunate to be invited to our rabbi’s apartment for the first night, an extremely fun and thoughtful Seder with intellectual discussion, lots of jokes, and Pesach bingo.
On the second night, we went to dear friends in Brooklyn, which happily has become an annual tradition. At that Seder, we grate our own horseradish, sing Passover-related songs based on old standards, and drain every overflowing cup of wine, good to the last drop.
At both Seders, at least one of the hosts’ parents was present (seemingly in their eighties or nineties), which was truly wonderful but also made me think of my parents and how much I would love to have them back for Passover (and the rest of the year). One of the central sections of the Seder is the Ten Plagues, when we read off the list of afflictions G-d brought upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians for not letting the enslaved Jews go free; my mother would lead us through the calamities in a mix of Hebrew and Yiddish, pronouncing them incorrectly year after year but doing so with such relish that we didn’t really care.
But other things were missing as well. I am not a wine connoisseur, so I look forward each Passover to drinking the supersweet Manischewitz Concord Grape; I might be the last Jew on earth who prefers that to the continuing influx of high-end vintages from Israel, Europe, and elsewhere. But the manager of my excellent local liquor store said that he couldn’t get any Manischewitz because of distribution issues he says have been going on ever since Gallo bought Manischewitz in January 2021.
For three decades, we have been bringing remarkable Kosher for Passover cakes and tarts to Seders from Daniel’s Bagels, desserts the shop got from an Israeli bakery; these were no mere fake-tasting cakes but confections that would stand on their own at any time of year. Alas, despite surviving a power play by Dunkin’ Donuts next door and making it through the pandemic, Daniel’s shut its awning for good after thirty-three years (just like Jesus?) on March 26. I hope it’s wasn’t because of my column about the deli a few months ago.
At least we had no difficulty finding matzoh, unlike Jews in rural areas where boxes of unleavened bread are being scarfed up by churches that hold Christian Seders; the Last Supper, of course, was a Jewish Seder. These locations, in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, and other states, are being called matzoh deserts.
One part of the Seder that I was glad to miss in recent years was the prayer for the Jews who were not free to practice their religion in the Soviet Union. Since the release of Natan Sharansky, the coming of Glasnost, and the breakup of the USSR, we had dropped that page from our Haggadah, only to add it back this year with the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been charged with espionage and is currently imprisoned in Russia, awaiting trial.
On Good Friday evening, my wife and I and a few friends went to the Cutting Room to see Jan Tilley lead a band of five musicians and three vocalists through an abbreviated version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1971 rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar. There was a food and drink minimum, and I was having trouble finding something on the menu. I ultimately ordered a burger with no bun, then added potato latkes. “Oh, they’re made with bread,” the server told me, immediately recognizing that I was observing Passover. I tried to figure out an appropriate drink but we settled on water.
One of the songs in Jesus Christ Superstar is “The Last Supper,” which begins with the apostles singing at the seder, “Look at all my trials and tribulations / Sinking in a gentle pool of wine / Don’t disturb me now; I can see the answers / Till ‘this evening’ is ‘this morning,’ life is fine.”
The Haggadah is filled with questions and answers that relate not just to the story of the exodus from Egypt but to life itself, in my ancestors’ time as well as my own. In Webber and Rice’s musical, Mary Magdalene tells Jesus, “Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to / problems that upset you, oh / Don’t you know / Everything’s alright, yes, everything’s fine.” Those are words to live by, whether one is religious or secular or somewhere in between.
One of the central lines of the Seder is “next year in Jerusalem,” which also is recited at the end of Yom Kippur. We may not be in Jerusalem, but “next year with my family,” perhaps, here in New York; my aunt and uncle have already promised to come up from Florida and host a Seder in 2024; hopefully my brother and my sister will be there as well and we’ll all be together again, with or without Manischewitz, Daniel’s desserts, and mispronounced plagues. After all, everything is alright; life is fine.
A Zissen Pesach, happy Easter, and Ramadan Kareem to all who observe those holy days, and merry Sunday to those who don’t.
Do not wander in the matzo desert!