The Last Seder at 110 Rivington

If you saw us that year, 1955, gathered at twilight at the Passover table, you might have thought we were the exemplary extended family. All ages represented. A large, "up from nothing, from dust" family, as my father, Max, would say, prospering, with two of the generations American born.  In a way we were, as much as any family can be ideal. Which is not very much.

        

There we sat, crowded around an expectant, appointed table that filled the middle room, some twenty of us- aunts, uncles, cousins and a few of Zayde's undernourished- looking bachelor friends. At each place setting a fine china soup bowl atop a fine china plate, beside a small Haggadah in English and Hebrew. Silverware polished to a high shine and two glasses - one for wine even for the children and one for water or seltzer.  In the center of the table, six candles flamed in wrought silver candlesticks and next to them a stack of matzahs that were covered by an embroidered cloth. Everything was ready. And we knew that in the apartment directly below us Uncle Sol and Aunt Ruth, cousins Isaac and Bernie, Eleanor and her husband Bill and their small son Ira, were sitting as we sat, about to begin as we were about to begin.  And all the Jews in New York City, including Uncle Harry and our cousins in Brooklyn, the same.

A couch with Mission-style wooden arms was pushed up against the table. This was where the children were placed- Barbara, myself, Harvey, David, Ira, Allen - I don't remember where the really little children were. My father and the uncles, Morris and Ben and Murray, sat facing us.  Zayde was at the head of the table leaning on pillows because the Haggadah said we must rest on pillows as we tell this story to demonstrate that we are free people.

        

And the women, you might be wondering. Where were the women - my mother, Ida and Aunt Yetta, Aunt Ann and Natalie, and Bubbie, where were they? Ah, now we begin to approach the flaws, the falling short that is part of any family picture. The women's chairs were nearest the kitchen door, at the open end of the table because they spent the evening getting up and helping Bubbie serve and then sitting down to eat something and then getting up again to clear and wash the dishes, all the while keeping note of which child was eating what and how much because being "a good eater" was much prized in those days. Bubbie didn't sit down at all.

        

Led by Zayde, the men rushed through the Hebrew text of the Haggadah in a mumbling singsong. Now about this Haggadah.  

Every year from the time I could read I would search in the Haggadah for the story, the really compelling story of Moses in the basket, the Princess who found him, his time in the desert, with the Pharoah and finally the great exodus from Egypt. Each year I would imagine I had somehow missed it the year before. But, no it wasn't there. It was never there. Instead the Haggadah was a series of obscure vignettes about ancient rabbis, Rabbi Gamliel was one, who said this or that and sat up disputing until the cock crowed. I assumed that this text was the way it had to be, like the Torah, not a word could be changed.

        

The men read on, but no matter how fast they read, it was not fast enough. The roast was getting cold, the children irritable. The women hovered, paced, ached to serve. It was already eight o'clock.  But the meal could not begin until the men had finished.  Cousin David pinched me and I rushed to pinch him back and our mothers glowered at us so we switched to kicking each other under the table.

        

Finally everyone was fed and the children went careening into the darkened far bedrooms to search for the afikomen, the hidden middle matzah without which the meal and the story are forever incomplete.  It was Ira, the oldest, who found it that last year, wrapped in a napkin, tucked under a lamp. He was promised five dollars when the holidays were over. The rest of us were each promised two.

        

Sometime later that spring Bubbie and Zayde decided they were too old to care for a six room apartment. They moved across the street to three rooms and our large gatherings downtown were no more.  

        

After that, the setting for our seders was a suburban finished basement, minus the grandparents who wouldn't travel on the holiday or stay in anyone else's home.  Without them the link to something larger vanished, at least for me. I'm not sure why this was. Maybe because we just repeated what had been - the same Rabbinic Haggadah stories we didn't understand, the mumbling, the hovering, the meal served too soon or too late. We never made it our own.

        

It's different now, as I'm sure you know.  The Haggadah, as it turns out, is not at all like the Torah. An infinite number of approaches are possible.  Currently, for every nuance of Jewish observance there exists a suitable Haggadah text in English or Hebrew or both. And, if you can't find a published one to your liking, you can always create your own. Even the occasional liberal church hosts some ecumenical version during the Easter season.

        

This year, on April 22, my sister Jayne will set a lovely table.  My husband Sam (not Jewish but might as well be by now) and I will go to her home in Connecticut where her husband Larry and all our adult children and their partners will join us.  Maybe there will also be some friends.  Our leader is female, it's me, since I'm the one who cares the most and is the most knowledgeable. I will lead the seder as a participatory event, mostly in English, using a Haggadah that tells the story of the Exodus and, with additional handouts, we will recall modern examples of oppression and freedom.  The telling, the washing, the dipping, the sandwich of bitter herbs and our songs are completed in less than an hour. For myself, on this night, the seder is remains a connection to Jews around the world and to our stories past and present. I do not know if this is so for my own children. Perhaps this year I will ask them.