Pesach Pesach Pesach
Since I began Smith in 2000, Pesach has become more special. It became my favorite holiday of all times. I loved it. I loved the process that I went through at Smith, with all my Hillel friends of making a Haggadah with a different theme each year, of thinking carefully about what the holiday meant to myself and fellow students, and that current societal condition. Sophomore year, my friend and I decided to innovate Smith Hillel and bring the Haggadah to the digital age. We spent hours, upon hours in the midst of the end of the semester, down in the graphic design lab in Seeyle working our butts off in Pagemaker. It was an important year, the year of 9/11. We were reflective and used my favorite poem by EE Cummings "I thank ye god for this most amazing day...the eyes of my eyes have opened". (that might not be quoted exactly right, but you get the idea). I evolved each year and started to really think about thing like chametz--in the metaphorical sense--and contemplate how it applied to my life.
Last year, I was able to merge, in a nearly perfect way, my family traditions (which I will discuss momentarily) with my political/socially conscious/liberal Jewish self. I spent the first night with my nearly 40 members of my extended family (1st,2nd,3rd cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents) doing the incredibly reform Jew thing, and the second with my friends around a huge table in the Quaker Meeting House coop in Hyde Park participating in a veggie potluck seder, where we sat with pillows at our backs and read from more than one Haggadah (Love and Justice and A night of Questions--Recon). It was amazing. I felt so good after those 2 nights of seders.
This year, I didn't mentally cleanse myself of my chametz. I'm in such a strange mental place, a place that I haven't been in in so long that I can't really identify. It's not that I'm in transition anymore, that's not what I feel. But, it's mostly negative and I couldn't step away to go through that process. I just bought the food I'd need, and went to Chicago for the seder, went through the seder, and now I'm on the other side. I don't have friends here, and I wasn't staying in Chicago--so didn't even check if my friends were having their 2nd night seder--so I didn't do anything special last night.
The seder was wonderful in the ways that it always is. It's my family. My big, fun, family that I love--with kids and older people and lots of people my parents' age. The food is great, because it's a community effort. The service itself is not. We use the Union Haggadah from the 1950s. All the words invoke "he" and the language is the formal "thee, thou". The drawings are inked. It's oppressively mysognistic and old school, fast, and simple. I don't get anything from it. And, growing up, we spent lots of seders in different places--not just with our family, with different haggadahs.
I'm just musing, I guess. I hope that next year, I'll have a similar experience to last year--a combination of family tradition and something closer to my needs on the second night. And, that I'll be in a mental place that will allow me to experience the joy that Pesach usually brings me.
Happy Passover Everyone!
P.S. I realize that I did something really dumb this year...if I wished you a chag pesach. I know what it means and that it's not correct. I just didn't realize what I was saying until I was on my drive down to Chicago. Then, I just started laughing to myself in the car. Holiday, Pesach. Not happy pesach. Oy.
Last year, I was able to merge, in a nearly perfect way, my family traditions (which I will discuss momentarily) with my political/socially conscious/liberal Jewish self. I spent the first night with my nearly 40 members of my extended family (1st,2nd,3rd cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents) doing the incredibly reform Jew thing, and the second with my friends around a huge table in the Quaker Meeting House coop in Hyde Park participating in a veggie potluck seder, where we sat with pillows at our backs and read from more than one Haggadah (Love and Justice and A night of Questions--Recon). It was amazing. I felt so good after those 2 nights of seders.
This year, I didn't mentally cleanse myself of my chametz. I'm in such a strange mental place, a place that I haven't been in in so long that I can't really identify. It's not that I'm in transition anymore, that's not what I feel. But, it's mostly negative and I couldn't step away to go through that process. I just bought the food I'd need, and went to Chicago for the seder, went through the seder, and now I'm on the other side. I don't have friends here, and I wasn't staying in Chicago--so didn't even check if my friends were having their 2nd night seder--so I didn't do anything special last night.
The seder was wonderful in the ways that it always is. It's my family. My big, fun, family that I love--with kids and older people and lots of people my parents' age. The food is great, because it's a community effort. The service itself is not. We use the Union Haggadah from the 1950s. All the words invoke "he" and the language is the formal "thee, thou". The drawings are inked. It's oppressively mysognistic and old school, fast, and simple. I don't get anything from it. And, growing up, we spent lots of seders in different places--not just with our family, with different haggadahs.
I'm just musing, I guess. I hope that next year, I'll have a similar experience to last year--a combination of family tradition and something closer to my needs on the second night. And, that I'll be in a mental place that will allow me to experience the joy that Pesach usually brings me.
Happy Passover Everyone!
P.S. I realize that I did something really dumb this year...if I wished you a chag pesach. I know what it means and that it's not correct. I just didn't realize what I was saying until I was on my drive down to Chicago. Then, I just started laughing to myself in the car. Holiday, Pesach. Not happy pesach. Oy.