Monday, April 25, 2016

Gratitude Monday: Throwing plagues and asking questions

It’s been a number of years since I’ve been to a Seder—well into the last century, now that I think of it. So I was very happy to be invited to one held on Friday by friends I’ve “met” in the past year.

(Thank you, Internet.)

A Seder, if you are at all unclear, is the meal that commemorates the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. It’s a little like Thanksgiving, because it is a giving of thanks, and also because the food is inextricably woven into the Tradition. Meaning: just as it can be a real Bone of Contention if your family has cornbread stuffing at Thanksgiving and it turns out that your partner’s has oyster stuffing, there may need to be UN-level negotiations as to whether you have potato latkes or matzo latkes at your Passover Seder.

Thankfully, this was not an issue on Friday. There were both potato and matzo latkes, as well as two kinds of charoset, multiple kugels and every other holiday thing you could think of.

Depending on your family background, at Seder you can spend literally hours reading the Haggadah, with or without heated interpretive discussions; or you can do an extremely abbreviated version, ask the Four Questions and get straight to the brisket. There are certain elements common to every iteration, but you can take it from there.

As I said, it’s been a while since my last Seder, and mine have always been, uh, unorthodox. (I’m thinking in particular about the one with people from film school, where we watched the Passover portion of The Ten Commandments, and had the youngest black, male Catholic ask the Four Questions.) There were two elements of Friday’s that I don’t recall from the past: the Throwing of the Plagues, and the Asking of the Questions in multiple languages.

What languages, you inquire? Well, English, Latin, Russian, Yiddish, German, Dutch, French, Norwegian, Arabic, Spanish and Klingon.

It was a lovely family meal, with more than 20 people at long tables stretched across two rooms. And I’m very grateful to have been part of it.



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