Passover has come and gone, at least for the less orthodox of us; we who don't first spend a week scrubbing the house of chametz, and then forsake bagels for matzoh for another week (or, god forbid, eight days, as some have it). One good thing about the coming of Pesach every year is that it reminds me the matzoh in the cabinet is now a year old and should probably be burned in lieu of the chametz.
In any case, two nights is about all I can handle of thanking god for his endless beneficence to the Jews, even in a good year. This year we had the additional irony of thanking him for his plagues.
I said, "Let's not do the plagues" when we got all the participants online. I was overruled by the Matriarch, who is 90 and therefore commands respect. She is hunkered down in her Delray Beach home with her 70-something brother and his wife and their dog, not exactly by mutual agreement - they were visiting her when it became unwise to travel back to Long Island, particularly for an elderly person with COPD. So the plagues were in. But the rabbis and their interpretive wisdom are still out, a decades-old tradition that will not soon be revised.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about then either you do not celebrate Passover, or you don't use the (in)famous Maxwell House Haggadah as a guidebook for the seder. It was all but universally used by American Jews from 1932 until maybe the 1960's, when some people started using peace-love-and-harmony Haggadahs, or modern language Haggadahs, or historically correct Haggadahs.To all those Haggadahs my family said "Bah!" Not that we are especially conservative, either politically or Judaically. I think it's just the opposite: the venerable Haggadah, conceived as an advertising gimmick, is one of our few, tenuous links to tradition. Without it, our generally atheistic appreciation of Jewish custom would be on life support. Which, in the real world of today and the historical world of the Jewish diaspora, suggests a poor probability of positive outcomes.
So it's still Maxwell House, though Mom just offered the opinion that "we really should get one with updated language soon". Not to mention excising all that rabbinical wisdom. Inbetween the prayers and historical references, the authors of the Maxwell House classic thought it wise to insert what Rabbi Shmegegee said in 1473 regarding this or that fine point of meaning in the seder. We have religiously skipped over the rabbi paragraphs since I can remember, and it seemed particularly inappropriate to worry about them in a year when we are all, against most interpretive traditions, communicating via laptops and iPads during one of the holiest of Jewish holidays. (Try to buy something online from 47th St. Photo during any Jewish holiday or the Sabbath and you'll see what I mean.)
As for the plagues, I found it difficult to summon much enthusiasm for god's alleged visitation of plagues upon the Egyptians. Egypt has had a total of about 1800 confirmed cases and 135 deaths so far from COVID-19. New York State alone had 777 deaths in the 24 hour period before I started writing this. I guess the inference should be that god is fine with the Egyptians today, but with New York, not so much. Or, that plagues are not a good barometer of god's moral sentiments.
People in our extended family have been doing seders with the assistance of Skype or Zoom or whatever for a lot longer than the coronavirus has been around. Even the closer extended family is scattered to the four corners of the U.S., so parents have had their children participate remotely before. But now there are new conditions, which allow for new expressions of Passover merriment.
The number one novel idea this year is to show up for the video-seder with a face mask. Oi vay, you say. But a friend of mine recently questioned me as to whether there was really a virus going around - did I know that the symptoms of the so-called coronavirus are almost exactly the same as the symptoms of radiation poisoning? And couldn't it be that those 5G networks are what's causing all this suffering? For her, this meant there was no use in wearing a face mask. But is it much of a leap from this to the notion that one should at least wear a face mask when videoconferencing? Those CRT's used to be famously prone to emit harmful radiation, right? All the worse when operated over virus-like 5G networks. Zap.
For me, it was sufficient to complain about the mess I had to clean up after having all those guests. Although only my wife and daughter were physically on premises, it felt like I was making kneidlach and charoses for an entire family. Perhaps when they are actually all with us it feels to them like I am making it for three people? But I don't recall ever having to cut matzohballs in half to feed everyone. And as for the charoses, my impression is that if I didn't put wine in it there would be plenty left over.
Thanks to the near universality of those Maxwell House booklets, it was surprisingly easy to go around the table(s) reading the text where appropriate. If it seems a little disorienting that a weak Internet connection should suddenly cut someone off in the middle of thanking god for manna or plagues or just being a great guy, my answer is that if god would keep those connections stable for about an hour, two nights a year, we wouldn't have that problem.
But it was worth all the technical difficulties to hear my 6 year old daughter read the four questions, more or less handling unfamiliar words like "distinguished" and "unleavened" and "reclined", to the duly impressed remote ears of her grandmother, great aunt and uncle, uncle and two older half-siblings. Not to mention her proud Mom and Dad who went forth and multiplied, as it is said.
Less salutary was the contribution of Javi, aunt and uncle's Javapoo mutt. I believe it was just as my mother had embarked on a critical analysis of the Exodus when a series of shrieks suddenly emerged from behind the horizon of her countertop. I thought the voices of the dead had come to provide authenticity to the proceedings. Or someone over there had seen a mouse. But it was only Javi, protesting that he was in fact the youngest and should have read the four questions. I reminded him of the seven-year multiplier rule and he said, in a much more civil tone, "That's okay, Javapoos are used to suffering."
The rest of the seder was uneventful, but celebrating it with live telefeeds of Mom, my two older children, a brother and an aunt and uncle at once under these apocalyptic circumstances should count as some kind of miracle. So, though I stand less than impressed with god's historical protection of his "chosen" people (chosen for what, I ask - being roasted like a Paschal lamb?) I offer these short words of praise, in the spirit of Maxwell House:
Had he given us computers and not given us the Internet it would have been sufficient.
Had he given us the Internet but not given us videoconferencing it would have been sufficient.
Had he given us videoconferencing and not given us free programs like Facetime and Google Hangouts it would have been sufficient (though free is better).
Had he given us free videoconferencing programs but not given us a mostly stable Internet connection it would have been sufficient (that's okay, we're used to suffering).
Had he given us a stable Internet connection but not allowed us to take pictures of the text and send them to family members who didn't have it as the service was going on, it would have been sufficient, but very weird of him.
Had he done all that and not kept us all alive and well so we could use all these technical tchotchkes it would have been par for the course of our history - but thank the lord for small favors anyway!
And speaking of said Lord and his prayers, this one probably captures the moment better than anything in the Passover service:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul: he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me; your rod and staff comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: you anoint my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
As we sat there kibbitzing and enjoying the company of those we love - as even in the midst of the crisis we had enough food and wine and matzoh meal - as we did not want, and did have our table prepared - I could not help hearing the echo of a different reality. What about those who are not talking about that walk, but taking it right now? What about the sirens in the background? What if one of those video images went dark? What if mine did?
It is always the case that some are dying while the rest of us, any of whom may for all we know die tomorrow, carry on as if death were no more than a distant tremor - eating, drinking, socializing, living while we have the chance. It is easy to put the others out of your mind when it is just the ongoing background noise of something we already know, the so-called human condition. But it's not so easy when so many of those nearby are suddenly and unexpectedly leaving us, without even the benefit of a warm hand on their shoulder, often intubated and unconscious, suffocating alone in their beds and headed for a refrigerator truck.
A thousand a day - in the Metropolitan area alone. It seemed unimaginable just a few weeks ago, as a mild winter began giving way to an early spring. Now it is Passover, and what can we say to them as we, the fortunate, go on to celebrate life, freedom, and what we hope will be a brighter future? All I can think of to say is that I hope you all had a chance to lie down in green pastures, sit by still waters, and walk the path of righteousness during your time here. We are never ready to say we are done - we always think about our time coming at some point in the distant future. What we have done is never enough, but it is something - and now it will have to be sufficient.
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