Tuesday, March 30, 2010

NOT YOUR BUBBY'S PESACH


Welcome to the Passover Seder of the Space Age. From the deserts of Egypt to the manicured dunes of Hilton Head, it is Sunday night in the universe and we are having Passover in a rented duplex somewhere along the coast of South Carolina. Alex has been in the kitchen all day marinating short ribs and roasting chicken. Jon chops fruit by his side while Nick Bermeo gyrates in the corner, wearing the shortest shorts you ever did see. I have been on the couch with a sprained ankle watching American Pie, which has stood the test of time better than you ever thought it would. The pallor of Ohio winter has begun to darken and on this our high holiday we will dine.

Some may say that we didn’t do it quite right. Some may say that a MacBook Pro is no substitute for a Hagaddah, or that you can’t really google the Four Questions. But we did. Forgive us this impropriety. Jews are resilient people. We make do with what we have.

On our Seder Plate there was parsley and a not-quite-hard boiled egg and a shank bone that never made it out of the Saran Wrap. The charoset was almost as good as Mom’s even though the maror never made it out of the fridge. This year someone put an orange on the plate, which I was told stands for the struggle of women rabbis. I don’t know. That part’s new to me. I had to look it up on Wikipedia.

So Elijah came and went and we never caught that stealthy bastard. Someone hid the afikomen but we forgot to look for it. That was always my favorite part, because whoever found it in my family would get a five-dollar bill (ten if we were doing well that year) from my Dad, who would roll it up all crisp and nice and slip it into our palms like it was some sort of sacred transaction. Your crumbly matzah for my money.

But enough. It is time to go. It is sunny and I can see the ocean and there is a bird outside my window that’s whistling the X-Files theme song and it is definitely time to go. - Theo Anthony Class of 2012

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