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A new take on Thanksgiving and 4 other lessons from my first seder
“HAPPY JEWISH THANKSGIVING!”
Before Sarah Silverman’s tweet yesterday, this Midwestern gentile hadn’t really put it together that Passover seders could be thought of as a Jewish Thanksgiving.
Immediately, I thought she was referring to the food. Ahead of my first seder last night, I’d read and heard that food was a big deal at Passover, but it wasn’t until we’d been sitting at the table for more than an hour without much more than a relish tray to nibble on that I realized the Thanksgiving reference goes way beyond food.
Yes, by the end of the night, we’d eaten so much matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, turkey, brisket, meatballs, potato kugel, spinach souffle and matzo brownies (see No. 2 below) that we could hardly sit up straight, but throughout the four-hour affair, I was struck by the reflective, socially conscious and grateful nature of the conversation that our hosts led.
From the beginning, the dialogue shifted back and forth from the stories of Joseph and Moses to the modern day tribulation of people in northern Japan, Libya and Egypt. We talked in remembrance of the family and friends whose presence we felt but could not see. It was a celebration of our freedom and a reminder that oppression and imprisonment are alive and well, be it in the form of a dictator or disease.
In the many years of my Protestant religious experience, God was always the one to whom we prayed to ease the world’s burdens, but around the seder table, we encouraged each other to take on that task. As people blessed enough to be free, how can we make the world a better place?
As I’ve said before, my own family Thanksgiving usually turns into a mostly stressful affair, with less emphasis placed on the thanks and more on whether or not the stuffing and gravy are made “correctly.”
We’ll spend a few minutes at the beginning of the dinner thanking God for the food, the family and the people who are serving our country and the rest of the dinner praising those who made it.
But to have an entire dinner revolve around the essence of what it means to be thankful — for our internal and collective struggles, our rituals, our unique personal faith, our families and yes, the food on our plates — was really something special.
So, that was my big takeaway from my first seder last night.
Here are four more:
2 . Matzo is delicious, and not just the crispy, unleavened cracker-like bread or matzo balls. We had brownies with the distinct flavor of matzo toward the end of the seder that I would prefer to eat over most other brownies any day of the week.
3 . Wine should be an official part of more religious and nonreligious holiday celebrations. The four glasses of wine at a traditional seder might be a bit much for the conservative members of my own family, but I’d love for once not to be the only person drinking wine at the holiday dinner table.
4 . Fruit gummies might be my favorite candy. Hard-to-chew orange slices of my own childhood can’t compare to these tender “slices” of sugar-coated gummy wonderfulness.
5 . Even ritualistic ceremonies can be amended. Many seders nowadays include an orange as a symbol of the inclusion of women and gays and lesbians, who for years had been marginalized within the Jewish community.
A special thanks Mike Krell, who runs Austin Food Carts and is a fellow founding member of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance, and his family for including me in their seder last night. I thought I was there for the food, but they gave me so much more.
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By Karen Humphrey
April 24, 2011 1:27 PM | Link to this
I was also a guest at this seder and I must say that you captured the essence quite well.