Passover

Worth at least two days off from school!

If you happened to live in Brooklyn,

Passover was a time of quiet celebration.

Or, sometimes not so quiet.

If you are a believer, you’re certain that the festival commemorates the Exodus from Egypt,

After the killing of all the first born male Egyptians, people and animals,   

who did not live under 

A blood-stained marked home entrance.

 For me it meant only a sip of wine with a weird dinner,

After a day of Dodger style stickball. 

I no longer play stickball and my childhood indifference to faith

Has hardened into weary skepticism of all things religious.

Saturday we went to our annual Passover Supper.

We used a very abbreviated version of the Passover prayer book (Hagaddah);

This Hagaddah inserts some contemporary thoughts

Into a script that goes back 2000 years.

We, adults and children, 17 strong, sat at the long polished, hardwood, dining table,

And took turns reading, in English, from the prayer book.

Why go? To experience the dubious acceptance of the children

And the passing of the matzos?

I go to measure the changes a year has wrought. 

Leah,  now 16, is  both angry and sad.

Tonight her life looks bleak,

And I’m not fool enough

To impose my poorly-remembered past

Onto her private unhappiness.

Marcia, our hostess these last 15 years, enjoys the annual gathering, the singing,

And 17 voices sharing the reading of the tiny Hagaddah.

I think she will not be unhappy

To pass the hosting to her daughter, Rachel.

Leonard, our host, absorbs the grandchildren’s changing attitudes,

The conversation of friends, and the comfort tradition brings.

As for me, I’m grateful for the annual snapshot.

Once again Elijah did not make an appearance.