For the past several years, Seder has been held as much in spite of our son as with him. I’ve considered, each year, whether to enforce the dietary restrictions of the holiday for him. Each year I’ve tried to explain the holiday and what its particular rules are, and each year I’ve been met with utter incomprehension or resistance. Each year, I’ve decided that his need for as much consistency as we can provide him was more important than enforcing dietary restrictions that would eliminate most of what few things he’s willing to eat.
This year was different. This year he was enthusiastic, wanted to participate, wanted to know what we were doing and why. He read the four questions of the Seder perfectly, without prior practice. He listened to the answers, and insisted on reading the blessings himself. He got them right, too, and then went and did whatever he’d been reading about. That included washing his hands at one point, and actually eating a bite of parsley and one of matzo at others. I was so proud of him it’s a good thing I didn’t have buttons, because I guarantee they would have popped.
Clearly, teaching my son the traditions I grew up with is taking second place to putting the Seder itself together. That’s as well, because for some odd reason my mind didn’t wrap around the upcoming holiday until about three days ago. Then I put myself and everyhone around me into high gear, and began cleaning, cooking, and then cooking some more. And of course, we got some stories out of that. There was dessert. I usually make a chocolate wine sponge cake, but couldn’t for the life of me locate the cookbook containing the recipe, nor was it online. So I went through some of my other cookbooks, realizing to my own bemusement that I have an entire three foot shelf just of Passover cookbooks, let alone the other kosher cookbooks. There I found a recipe for honey sponge cake which sounded good to Wick. So I made it, adding assorted flavorings. It smelled wonderful, and looked good coming out of the oven. It continued to to look good as I turned it upside down over a wine bottle to cool, as is prescribed for sponge cakes. I had no sooner turned my back than my housemate, cleaning in the dining room, called me back in a tone that brooked no delay. The cake had fallen out of the pan in pieces all over the dining room table. I looked at it. I looked at my watch. No time to make another cake. So dessert, at the suggestion of my housemate, was a sort of take on trifle. The cake got torn into pieces. A quart of strawberries got pureed, and another sliced. That and a bag of frozen blueberries and some Cointreau got folded in with the cake. Hey presto, we had dessert!
Then there was the spontaneous translation. The Haggadah we use was prepared sometime in the 1920s or ’30s; the language is poetic, but quite opaque to a 7 year old. So I suggested that as each of us read a section, we paraphrase so boychick would understand. My housemate, slightly tipsy with the two cups of wine she’d already consumed, had to come up with an alternate term for “sojourn”. Her choice? “They were just going to Egypt to hang out for a while”. I shall never hear that phrase the same way again.
In every generation one must view things as if she had been in slavery in Egypt. As it was said – “And you will teach your son on that dsy: ‘This is because of what the Eternal did for me, in my departure from Egypt.’”
The Eternal redeem not only our ancestor, but us also.
T’would appear that the son who did not even know how to ask a question has graduated to at least the “What is this?” stage.
Because you began for him. “At p’tach lo.” Note that the word “you” in the Haggaddah (for the teacher of “She’Aino Yode’a Lish’ol”) is in the feminine form (and the verb in the masculine). It’s the responsibility of the mother first, and then the father also.
Kal HaKavod; Chag Sameach.
Murray (All cribbed from memory both very recent and way back there….)
In short…you appear to be a great Dor L’Dor saleswoman….