I have posted things before that I wrote for writing classes held at my synagogue by my friend Lynn. They have usually been related to the High Holidays, but this year the class is less focused, and one class was very close to Pesach. The assignment was to invite a character to a seder. Some class members are writing novels, and used their fictional characters, but we could use real people or historical people, or pretty much anyone.
After thinking about it, I decided to bring my mother to the seder I attend every year.
It was easy to write the background, but when I got to the seder itself, I blocked. I realized I did not want her there. It was too late to completely rethink my piece, so the rest of the assignment changed then, and became about why I didn't.
This feels more personal than what I usually write here at Daily Kos, even though I have written personal diaries before, usually on health-related matters. I hope you will bear with me.
My mother grew up in an Orthodox family, where Jewish learning was for her older brother, not for her. She learned how to keep a kosher kitchen. For Pesach, the oven was kashered, all surfaces were covered, including wooden racks in the sink, dishes were changed. I even remember the bar of Rokeach dish soap with “kosher l’pesach” written on it. Many of the Pesach dishes were of glass, which could be used for meat or dairy meals. The seders she described consisted of her father and brother chanting the Haggadah in rapid Hebrew and performing the rituals, of which she understood nothing. There was no explanation, no discussion of the holiday. The women spent their time mostly in the kitchen preparing the food for when they could finally eat.
My mother cared for her mother and we lived in the apartment she grew up in until several years after my grandmother’s death, using her mother’s dishes and cooking things and keeping them after her death. I have no memories of my grandmother, who died when I was around three years old. My grandfather had died before I was born.
My father’s father had been a revolutionary in Russia as a young man, leaving in a rush after the 1905 Revolution when he was 17. He had attended a cheder for a few years as a child; my father had no religious education at all. So I grew up in a house with a strictly kosher kitchen and no Jewish observances outside the kitchen. Every Pesach the kitchen was completely Pesachdich and we had the family over for a traditional meal – but there was no one to conduct a seder. There was only one way to do that, in my mother’s mind, and we had no Orthodox men – or any men who could read Hebrew. The only brother born in this country, who learned with their father, had died when he was 20.
I know that after I had left home she sometimes went to more modern seders – my cousin in Cherry Hill sometimes had her visit for the holiday while she still lived in the Bronx, and after she moved to Arizona, my sister sometimes took her to a friend’s seder. I never attended one with her, so this year, almost 20 years after her death, I decided to bring her with me to Lynn’s seder, to experience with her what has become my tradition.
There is always a crowd – Lynn’s family, friends, and sometimes a surprise guest (or several).
After I introduced her to the people there before us, my mother went into the kitchen to see if she could help. She looked stiff, and it probably was more than the girdle she still wore. This meal was different from hers. It was dairy, to begin with – fish as a main course was strange, and the number of fresh vegetables was new. But Lynn was informal and welcoming, and put her to work and that helped. And she liked it that so much of the preparation had been done in advance; she could identify with that.
Did I mention that I never saw my mother sit down to a meal until we kids were grown up and insisted on it? So when I took her out to the living room to act like a guest, I felt strange, however she felt about it. I introduced her to a couple of people I thought she’d feel comfortable with, and she found things to talk about with them about – her work as a teacher her grandchildren and the children there.
I think part of the discomfort was our relationship to Judaism. Once I left home for college it became part of our conflict and she always believed I had no interest in it, probably because I never kept kosher and dated men who weren’t Jewish. And more basic, I believe, was her seeing my living far away from her as somehow un-Jewish. One year when I lived in Chicago I was able to visit in the spring. She told me that she was going to Cherry Hill for Pesach, so I’d better wait ‘til after she got back. I would have loved visiting my cousins for the seders, but I planned the visit for afterwards. Years later, when we both were visiting these same cousins, that visit came up. She had told them I was not interested in coming for Pesach, while I had gotten the impression that they wouldn’t have wanted an extra person. I should have known better. That is one of two times I ever confronted her with my reality, and she had to see what she had done and apologize.
So it wasn’t easy for her to participate in my Jewish life, nor for me to have her there. I have sometimes joked that the reason there are 613 commandments is so that I don’t have to follow any of the same ones my mother did.
She took her turn as we read the Haggadah, enjoyed the children’s contributions. We always have plenty of discussion at these seders, and talk about the customs and message of the holiday and our personal experiences and memories, including memories of other seders in our lives. She was very interested. She found it a little shocking that we would question and analyze customs that she took for granted. An intelligent woman, she had never applied that intelligence to Jewish custom. For her it was an emotional thing, a connection to her family. But in her later years she had begun to look at her youth critically and strive to understand it. At Lynn's, she told about the seders of her childhood, not critically, but thoughtfully.
We left before the last parts of the seder, as others also did; we had a long drive. But before we left, I had people sing Chad Gad Ya, which she always spoke of fondly, as bringing her childhood seders to an end.