Passover 2026 — remembering one difficult time in another difficult time
Passover and April Fool's. On the same day! The possibilities are endless. I feel compelled to greet our guests at Wednesday night's Seder with a hearty, "Welcome! Let's eat!"
Not laughing? As with all jokes, it's only funny if you know the set-up: Seder means "order" in Hebrew, and the meal only comes after a protracted span of praying and storytelling. Some years we don't eat until 9 p.m.
Makes no sense, right? Then you're probably not Jewish, like 97.5% of Americans. Jews are a shrinking shard. Rather than control the world, we can't even control our own children, who wander off, as kids will.
My wife, in her infinite wisdom, introduced a new Seder tradition: preliminary soup. We say a few throat-clearing prayers, and then her excellent, cannonball-dense, matzo ball soup is served, to fortify participants for the hour or two until the festive meal proper begins, the exact time being a tug-of-war between grey-bearded traditionalists and the younger generation, who want to eat and race back to their real lives.
I suppose the strictly religious might view early broth as the kind of canonical slippage that leads to Christmas trees and, eventually, even fewer Jews. I consider it kindness toward hungry relatives who have consented — heck, some traveled long distances — to endure this dusty rigmarole in return for a hearty meal, eventually, and all the wine they can hold.
My late colleague Roger Ebert once said that his entire political view can be summed up by "kindness." I'd like to extend that to religious orientation — if your religion doesn't prompt you to be kind, first and foremost, then it's just another tool for oppression, like the others. All religions are the same in that regard, or as I've said before: religion is a hammer: you can use it to build a house, or to hit somebody in the head. Same hammer.
Focusing on cosmetic differences seems so strange to me. "Oh, you've got an Estwing? Well, MY hammer is a Stanley. I believe the wooden handle absorbs shock better..."
Thus fortified, antisemitism rolls off me. All bigotry is ignorance married to fear. How much mental energy should be spent getting upset that the person viewing life through a keyhole caught sight of you? Someone who has lapped up the vile poison trickling through gutters for a thousand years now wants to upchuck a bit on my shoes. How hurt am I supposed to be? "Oh boo, frickin' hoo. The knee-jerk hater who bought a load of idiotic bilge doesn't like me..."
Maybe I'm hardened, as a newspaper columnist who hears from haters daily. I don't want to underestimate the scary turn the country has taken after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, and the current war in Iran, in lockstep with our good buddy, Israel. The latest twist on antisemitism — that Israel is a monstrous evil that should have never existed in the first place and must be stamped out by force — is certainly frightening, for its popularity, though it's really just a new set of steps to a very old dance, the classic Jews Don't Belong Here Polka. Don't know the words? You can hum along: "Life ... would be great ... but we've got these Jews here ... infesting ... INSERT LOCATION ... where they don't belong ... and we'd all ... be so much happier... if only they'd go live in ... INSERT SOME SPOT FAR AWAY.... "
See why we have a big dinner? If you had escaped arrows fired at you for the past 3,000 years, from Nebuchadnezzar to the current crop of incoming freshmen, you might be in a festive mood too. I really like Passover, and could list a dozen reasons why. Space dwindles, so I'll stick with my top four: 1) Dinner with family; 2) Special food; 3) Expressions of gratitude and 4) a great story.
Underline "gratitude." We're all slaves to something, struggling to break free. One year, I read excerpts from John Berryman's “Eleven Addresses to the Lord,” which begins,
Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,
inimitable contriver,
endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon,
thank you for such as it is my gift.
Love "boring moon." Though my favorite lines are these:
Fearful I peer upon the mountain path
where once Your shadow passed. Limner of the clouds
... I am afraid,
I never until now confessed.
I fell back in love with you, Father, for two reasons:
You were good to me, & a delicious author.
See why Seders take so long? Anyway, Happy Passover to those who celebrate. And to those who hate... maybe if you applied some of that incredible energy spent looking outward and condemning others to looking inward and improving yourself, well, couldn't hurt.