Matzoh Madness

Cleaning the house for Passover and getting the bedrooms ready for the guests who will be staying, and making and freezing soup and broth to assure it will be gluten free for those requiring gluten free, and there is still more than a week to go until the first seder.  It’s the first time in many years, excluding the pandemic spent alone in front of a screen, that I will not be spending Passover in Florida. The family I visited there has moved to a place beyond Passover, and I am now, indisputably, the older generation. In much of my extended family, I am the oldest of the older generation. The good news is that I need not go to Florida, and the awful politics of Florida, ever again.

Instead, I have ordered brisket and chicken, bought apples and walnuts and boxes and boxes of matzoh, including gluten free which is not labelled matzoh, because seriously??? I have assembled pots and dishes and glassware. I will be cooking and cooking and cooking. My sister will come to help. We will make some traditional recipes, some new. However lengthy the seders turn out to be, they will be much shorter than the time spent in preparation.

I do, it should go without saying in any Jewish family, expect a lot of, shall we say, vigorous discussion, around the seder table. Though seder means “order,” there is likely not to be much as my siblings and their families talk over one another to have the final word on all subjects, great and small.  I plan to assign seats with small children strategically placed between the most vociferous.  I fear this strategy may not work.  Four glasses of wine with a crowd that typically does not drink, with two of those glasses before the actual meal, is nobody’s great idea.

One relief of having so many dead relatives is that they are not here to live through this awful war and its repercussions–the relentless bombing and deaths of civilians, the rise in antisemitism. They lived through the Great Depression and the Holocaust and World War II. Death has given them a break.

At the same time, I am delighted that I will, by grace of a miracle I expect to occur between now and the time the seder begins next Monday night, be able to comfortably seat seventeen people in my small dining room on chairs that will somehow materialize.

My stepmother used to host our big family seders. Now that she’s gone, I thought I would link my poem that tells a bit of her story. It appears on the Ritualwell site, https://ritualwell.org/ritual/the-parting-gift/ and is a Passover poem. I also linked my midrashic poem about Jocheved, Moses’ mother, https://ritualwell.org/ritual/jocheved-after/. No, the story in the poem does not appear in the Bible. As I said, it’s midrash, modern midrash. That is to say, the rabbis did not make it up. I did.

How will you be spending your Pesach? Let us know in the comments. I wish I had room for all of you. As for me, in addition to the seders, I do avoid bread, etc., for the eight days. Why? Ritual soothes me, or, do put it more Jewishly, why not?

ALTE is open for submissions until we get enough for the next issue. The theme is “father.” Send us something, please. Email altetogether@gmail.com

Wishing you a zissen Pesach.