1 COMMENT I
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And Above All
HEALTHY PASSOVER
`Created' Family
Does Own Seder
JANE ARNOLD
Special to The Jewish News
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T
his year's Pesach
marks our twelfth
first-night seder and
our fifth second-night seder.
We have no blood family to
come to our seders; we have
created a Jewish family of our
own to celebrate the holidays.
The friend who started the
seders with me has moved to
California but when he talks
about coming "home" for
Passover, he means coming
back to us. The music teacher,
the single mother and her
daughter, the now-divorced
couple who helped found the
Reconstructionist Havurah —
these people are our Jewish
family. And as a family, we
come together at Pesach to
celebrate our coming out of
Egypt.
Because we all come from
assimilated backgrounds, we
have no long family traditions
to build on. So our Jewish
family has had to create its
own traditions.
Every year we call the local
Hillel and tell them we wel-
come guests at our seder. It
has become a tradition that I
assure Mrs. Masters at the
Hillel that we welcome inter-
faith couples, and that she
tell me again the story of the
dreadful time an interfaith
couple was turned away from
the seder where she had sent
them.
It has become a tradition
that we invite at least one
non-Jew to our seder, so that
my husband is not the only
non-Jew at the table.
It has become a tradition
that we use the Birnbaum
Haggadah, but we entertain
requests for extra material.
One year, my husband, who
had spent several months
memorizing it, recited Psalm
137 in Hebrew. Another year,
a friend wanted to read the
meditation following the
Amidah. Last year, to satisfy
our daughter, "David,
Melech-Israel" became our
standard Pesach song.
It has become a tradition
that my husband will hide
the afikomen, every year in-
sisting that "It's right there
in plain sight" as the sear-
chers become more and more
discouraged.
It is rapidly becoming a
tradition, and a joke, that our
guests will be offered their
Jane Arnold is a writer in
Massachusetts.
choice of red or white, sweet
or dry wine, and that the
resulting confusion of match-
ing glasses to people will add
15 minutes to seating the
guests.
It is rapidly becoming a
tradition, and not quite a
joke, that no matter how ear-
ly I tell people to arrive, some-
one will straggle in at least a
half-hour after we plan to
start the seder.
And it has become a tradi-
tion that every year I will
mutter, "Someday, we're go-
ing to do this right. We're go-
ing to do the whole thing in
Hebrew, all the way through,
and everyone will sing. Some-
day, we're going to have a real
seder."
A real seder. What is a real
seder?
When I asked myself that,
I thought back to the New
Jersey shore in the 1960s,
where a small town boasted a
It has become a
tradition that we
invite at least one
non-Jew to our
seder, so that my
husband is not the
only non-Jew at
the table.
coffeehouse called The Ink-
well. Dimly lit, Dylan on the
jukebox, coffee concoctions
served on red-and-white
tablecloths, dark rumors
about what went on upstairs:
the local teenagers gathered
at The Inkwell and longed for
California and real cof-
feehouses.
Many years later, a friend
who made it to Berkeley, who
lived the hippy scene and the
artistic scene and the drug
scene, said to me, "I didn't
know it at the time, but The
Inkwell was the real cof-
feehouse."
Last year at Pesach, as I
reluctantly agreed to abbrev-
iate Hallel for the sake of
whining children and ex-
hausted parents, as I darkly
pointed out that someday we
were going to all chant
Hallel, in unison, in Hebrew,
all the way through, that
someday we were going to
have a real seder, I stopped
and looked at the seder table.
Three generations of Jews
gathered together in love and
friendship, meeting as a fami-
ly, to celebrate our freedom
from bondage. Children of
1,2,3 and 12 learning that we,
too, came out of Egypt with