This conversation is bound to happen sometime in the next couple of days.
"You know Pesach is coming?" my Hasidic friend asks.
"Yeah, and so is Easter" I say.
The signal should have been obvious to him, "this conversation is over". The less obvious signal which he will probably get while he's walking away would be that two years ago was the last time I would have celebrated Pesach, and that this year I will celebrate Ramadan, Easter, and Passover equally. Or, I won't celebrate them equally.
It's fair to say that Easter has no meaning to me. I don't know what the holiday is about, and I don't care. And the same can be said about Ramadan. I don't have any experience with those holidays, neither negative nor positive. I just don't care for them. But that is not the case with Pesach; I have a lot to say about that one. A lot.
It all begins with a hangover. I wake up the morning (afternoon) after Purim with a massive hangover. I have no recollection of the events that took place the previous day, but it feels like I had fun, and that fun was about to be replaced with weeks of misery. In the next couple of weeks I will have to help clean our massive fifteen room house for Pesach, and everything in them. That's right, every single item in every single room. Every toy in the playroom, every garment in every closet, and every book in my father's study that haven't been opened in years. Anyone who has ever lived with me more than a day knows how much I hate cleaning, probably more than any of you hate Rush Limbaugh or Paris Hilton. Don't get me wrong, I love cleanliness, I just hate doing it, and my parents knew it and made me do it anyway. As the weeks passed the pressure grew, every week my mother's voice pitch increased, which increased my headaches, which increased my Tylenol dose, which increased my disinterest in Pesach.
When Pesach finally arrived, everyone has reached their threshold of stress tolerance. The human animals have been kept in cages for four weeks without food and water for their psyche, the cage doors have now been opened, and they all came bursting out looking for prey. And with fourteen manic people in the house, prey was at every corner. Let the show begin. And what a show it was.
Act 1: The father comes home from shul with a throbbing headache from all the work and praying of the day shouting, yelling, and screaming at everyone and about everything that's not to his personal preference, the seder table, the pillows, the matzos, the maror is not sharp enough, and whatnot. Mother walks into the room and tries the proven relaxation method of yelling over the father trying to calm him down. I always played the role of the nudge. Let me explain. There are three types of people, the shlimazel, the shlemiel, and the nudge. The shlimazel is the person who carries the bowl of soup and drops it, the shlemiel is the person he drops it on, and the nudge is the one who asks what kind of soup it was. I played the nudge, but I really cared about the stuff I was nudging about, much like Donny in The Big Lebowski.
Act 2: A repeat of act 1, but with the table already set, a few props added, and a very hungry cast.
And then came The Four Questions. Going around the table, everyone big and small, young and old, repeated last year’s questions. Questions no one cared about, questions that didn't make any sense, questions that will not be followed by answers further in the Hagadah, and questions sung by a two-year-old that has absolutely no clue what and why he is asking them. Questions that begged for revision year after year, and questions that I last asked two years ago.
So here is my revised version of The Four Questions, which I might or might not ask this year.
1. Why on all the other nights of the year we eat a tasty, nourishing, and easily digested meal at 6pm, and this night we eat two hours of Hagadah as an appetizer and constipation-inducing matzoh?
2. Why on all the other nights of the year we eat tasty veggies as a side dish, and this night we eat torturous horseradish as an appetizer?
3. Why hasn't anyone thought about cooking the potatoes in salt instead of the messy method of dipping them in salt water before eating?
4. Why on all the other nights of the year we sit straight up on our chairs while eating and drinking, and this night we eat and drink in the most uncomfortable position ever attempted by human beings after the fetal position?
One more question: What the fuck?!
"You know Pesach is coming?" my Hasidic friend asks.
"Yeah, and so is Easter" I say.
The signal should have been obvious to him, "this conversation is over". The less obvious signal which he will probably get while he's walking away would be that two years ago was the last time I would have celebrated Pesach, and that this year I will celebrate Ramadan, Easter, and Passover equally. Or, I won't celebrate them equally.
It's fair to say that Easter has no meaning to me. I don't know what the holiday is about, and I don't care. And the same can be said about Ramadan. I don't have any experience with those holidays, neither negative nor positive. I just don't care for them. But that is not the case with Pesach; I have a lot to say about that one. A lot.
It all begins with a hangover. I wake up the morning (afternoon) after Purim with a massive hangover. I have no recollection of the events that took place the previous day, but it feels like I had fun, and that fun was about to be replaced with weeks of misery. In the next couple of weeks I will have to help clean our massive fifteen room house for Pesach, and everything in them. That's right, every single item in every single room. Every toy in the playroom, every garment in every closet, and every book in my father's study that haven't been opened in years. Anyone who has ever lived with me more than a day knows how much I hate cleaning, probably more than any of you hate Rush Limbaugh or Paris Hilton. Don't get me wrong, I love cleanliness, I just hate doing it, and my parents knew it and made me do it anyway. As the weeks passed the pressure grew, every week my mother's voice pitch increased, which increased my headaches, which increased my Tylenol dose, which increased my disinterest in Pesach.
When Pesach finally arrived, everyone has reached their threshold of stress tolerance. The human animals have been kept in cages for four weeks without food and water for their psyche, the cage doors have now been opened, and they all came bursting out looking for prey. And with fourteen manic people in the house, prey was at every corner. Let the show begin. And what a show it was.
Act 1: The father comes home from shul with a throbbing headache from all the work and praying of the day shouting, yelling, and screaming at everyone and about everything that's not to his personal preference, the seder table, the pillows, the matzos, the maror is not sharp enough, and whatnot. Mother walks into the room and tries the proven relaxation method of yelling over the father trying to calm him down. I always played the role of the nudge. Let me explain. There are three types of people, the shlimazel, the shlemiel, and the nudge. The shlimazel is the person who carries the bowl of soup and drops it, the shlemiel is the person he drops it on, and the nudge is the one who asks what kind of soup it was. I played the nudge, but I really cared about the stuff I was nudging about, much like Donny in The Big Lebowski.
Act 2: A repeat of act 1, but with the table already set, a few props added, and a very hungry cast.
And then came The Four Questions. Going around the table, everyone big and small, young and old, repeated last year’s questions. Questions no one cared about, questions that didn't make any sense, questions that will not be followed by answers further in the Hagadah, and questions sung by a two-year-old that has absolutely no clue what and why he is asking them. Questions that begged for revision year after year, and questions that I last asked two years ago.
So here is my revised version of The Four Questions, which I might or might not ask this year.
1. Why on all the other nights of the year we eat a tasty, nourishing, and easily digested meal at 6pm, and this night we eat two hours of Hagadah as an appetizer and constipation-inducing matzoh?
2. Why on all the other nights of the year we eat tasty veggies as a side dish, and this night we eat torturous horseradish as an appetizer?
3. Why hasn't anyone thought about cooking the potatoes in salt instead of the messy method of dipping them in salt water before eating?
4. Why on all the other nights of the year we sit straight up on our chairs while eating and drinking, and this night we eat and drink in the most uncomfortable position ever attempted by human beings after the fetal position?
One more question: What the fuck?!
ha ha soo funny but can't be more true
ReplyDeleteBig shame your dad was such a difficult person.
ReplyDeleteWith a normal easygoing dad you could have found Yiddishkeit to be not so oppressive and not so hard to keep.
Shame.