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Sunday, April 01, 2007

Why Was This Night Different?

Imshin

(Published by Cafe Diverso in Voices of the World)

Mum sat quietly smiling, at her place by the big, festive dining table that Bish and I had set out in our living room for the evening. She was so tiny, so fragile, no more than a shadow of the plump bundle of energy we had always known. She had been diagnosed just three weeks before, and even though it gave us hope that she would be starting chemotherapy after the Passover holiday, I think we all knew deep inside that it was the last Seder Night she would be with us. Little did we know that by the end of the evening, Seder Night would have changed forever, and not only for our family.

Every year in the spring, on Seder Night, the whole extended family gathered to retell an ancient story of how our ancestors were freed from slavery in Egypt, to embark on a journey into the desert that would eventually lead them to the land of the Fathers. Religious and secular alike, on the first night of Passover, Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora took part in telling the story to the next generation. The sages of old had bequeathed a memorable way of passing it on.

For the night began with the youngest child of the family asking why this night was different from all other nights, asking about four differences in particular; the rest of the evening was then devoted to providing the answers. And who could not remember the excitement of being the youngest and singing these Four Questions? And finding the Afikoman, the special piece of matza, unleavened bread, that Grandpa had hidden, so as to ‘steal’ it and hide it again … only to ‘sell’ it back to him at the end of the meal? And eating the sweet Charoset in memory of the mortar the Israelite slaves had used to build the Egyptian cities, and the bitter herbs in memory of their suffering? And who could forget shivering in fearful anticipation as the door was opened to let in the Prophet Elijah, and craning our necks to see if he was really drinking from the cup of wine prepared for him (although we knew it was really only Uncle Solly shaking the table)? And all the other little traditions, songs, and stories that made up Seder Night.

Once, we had tried a new way of telling the story, a modern, politically correct, American version I’d found on the Internet. Humanistic, they’d called it. Although we had agreed with the sentiment, no one had enjoyed it very much. It wasn’t the same.

This year the ancient story had taken on a new meaning. The land was burning under our feet. People were being blown up nearly every day, on the bus on the way to work, in a pizza parlor, buying groceries in the market. Parting reluctantly from my children every morning, I would kiss them longer and hold them closer, fearfully aware that this may very well be the last time I ever saw them.

How things had changed. Israeli army tanks were now surrounding the main Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, waiting for the order. Who could remember the hope that had been in our hearts not so long ago, and the excitement we had felt that finally a new morning was dawning on this afflicted land – a morning of peace and coexistence?

This Seder Night, my family and I seemed to wrap ourselves in the tradition as a cocoon, to protect us. We felt, like never before, a deep connection to centuries of Jews sitting around the Seder table, singing the same songs, reading the same passages, drinking the same four cups of wine, and telling the same story of freedom, but always with one ear listening, fearful.

And we knew we had this one last Seder Night to show Mum how much we loved her. So we sang, how we sang, like never before, at the tops of our voices, banging on the table, louder and louder. Until Dad said they’d better go home now, back to Netanya, because Mum was tired.
It was then that Bish went to check the news on the internet. And that was how we heard.

It’s mainly older folk who have Seder Night in a hotel, because they can’t do it on their own any more, or because their families live far away. It saves cooking, of course, and washing up afterwards. But mainly it means they get to be with a lot of people. Everyone loves Seder Night with a lot of people.

They said later that many of those who had been in the Park Hotel in Netanya that night, just up the road from my parents’ place, had been going there for Seder Night for years. They had felt completely at home there. The last thing they had expected, as they sat down at the festive Seder table, was that instead of the Prophet Elijah it would be a man wearing a bomb that walked in…
posted by Imshin 11:33 AM

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