Close your eyes gently, Ruth's soothing, hypnotic
voice directs. All of us, sitting around the table, comply.
Ruth is leading the Writing Workshop this week; we're
familiar, from past sessions, with the `meditation exercises'
she dreams up.
Relax... relax... Breathe deeply... Relax the muscles of
your neck... your forehead... your mouth... Relax your
arms... your legs... your back. Let go of all anger... let go
of sadness... tension... pain...
Now let your mind drift back to your Seder night... Can you
picture it? Can you see your Seder plate? Is it silver?
Porcelain? Your matza cover? Is it silk? Fringed velvet?
Embroidered? White or gold? The bechers... The
Hagaddahs... Can you see the people? Can you taste the matza?
What kind of matza is it? How does it taste? The
moror... The charoses... Can you smell the
wine?
And the sounds? Does you family sing all the songs? Do you
stay up until the end? Or are you soon in Dreamland?
*
Funny. I was so exhausted when I came here tonight, you'd
have thought this exercise would put me right to sleep. It's
a few days after Pesach and some weeks since our group has
last met. Each of us has been caught up in her own private
whirlwind of Pesach cleaning and frenzied preparations for
yom tov.
After some quiet moments, Ruth's voice continues softly.
Now, whenever you're ready... pick up your pen... and
write...
Without thinking, all mental blocks and barriers seemingly
melting into nothingness, I pick up the pen I haven't touched
in weeks. I write.
What a powerful exercise this is! I can feel the tears
filling my eyes, washing away all stress and weariness. I sit
once more at our Seder table, at the same time hovering some
feet above. And what I see -- with all that's negative
removed -- what I see is that... why, it was a beautiful
Seder! An absolutely lovely Seder!
*
The Seder plate is beautiful. Our married children surprised
us with it for last year's Seder. Before that, we'd had some
big, compartmentalized `disposable' paper Seder plates, with
gold labels in each compartment -- which we didn't dispose of
at all, but re-used for a few years. And before that, we had
nothing at all. That seems to be the Yerushalmi custom (maybe
just due to poverty). At least it's what my father-in-law
z'l always did.
Each male over thirteen had his own three matzas, baked that
afternoon, in front of him, and decked with a matza cover.
The items that I'd always thought of as belonging to the
Seder plate were, instead, arranged directly on the matza
cover (very gingerly, so as not to break the matzos). But
last year, as I say, the children bought this combination
matza holder and Seder plate for my husband; three tiered,
silver -- well, silver-colored and probably chrome, and very
shiny, with silky, gold-embroidered curtains: Cohen, Levi,
Yisroel. There it stands at the head of the table, making the
whole, extended table look so grand.
And yet, I barely looked at it or thought about it at the
time, or only cast occasional sidelong glances, not daring
more, telling myself that I had no time, that there was a
table to be set, people to be attended to, food to be served,
dishes to be cleared.
Why was that? It, too, the Seder plate, as I gaze upon it
now, fills my eyes with tears. I think these welling tears
are a good sign, not a sign of sadness or depression, but of
openness to feeling all there is to feel. Emotions that seem
to have been tight-shut, tight- knotted, put `on hold,' in
deep freeze for the duration, are budding, opening, re-
opening, as in new spring sunshine. With the relaxation of
tensed muscles, something seems to warm and loosen in my
soul.
In the leisure of this reverie, I let my eyes and thoughts
dwell upon this Seder plate, and am at once back in the
moment of its giving. Is this the memory I was skirting,
evading? The shocked surprise of it. They are giving
us? But... but it was always us giving
them. Does this, then, signal a new and unfamiliar
stage? Those moments had been bittersweet. (Who am I that
anyone should give me? Is it not nachas enough that
the job of raising them is mostly done? Is that not gift
enough by far?) Gratitude mixed with fear of the unknown
future, the loss of authority and control.
*
The matza. "He who holds matza, holds emuna in his
hands." Where did I hear that? I sit, we sit, then, eating
emuna, silent but for the crunching of emuna,
between hastily chomping teeth so as to get it all down
within the allotted time. I am, this night, filling, being
filled with emuna. Crisp emuna, fresh, brown-
baked. This afternoon, when they brought it home, it was
literally still hot from the oven.
Precious emuna cupped carefully between my hands,
escaping from between my fingers, from my lips, caught
between my teeth, crumbling down my chin, down my white apron
front, now stained a bit with wine, catching on the white
wool of my sweater sleeves, raining onto my lap. Riches of
emuna, abundant, dust and shower me. I munch, feed on,
am nourished by emuna, like mother and babe.
*
The sounds. Our darling grandson, of course, predominates, is
central. This is his night. Meir'l. Long, soft chestnut curls
-- the last 34 days of them before being shorn off -- bobbing
down his back, solemn, owlish and bespectacled, standing on a
chair to say the Ma nishtana. No, you can't fool him.
He knows, so unshakably, and despite all of our attempts at
persuasion to the contrary, that we don't eat chometz
tonight, and that we don't say `al netilas yodayim'
yet because we are not ready to eat.
What grips my heart now at this scene, relived, is not only
that, incredibly, this baby, in whose birth we so rejoiced
after six years of marriage, this mere baby can remember so
many words. What makes an even greater impression is the
firmness of his conviction, his certainty. His Rebbe said it
and he knows it's true. May it be ever so! And also, how much
he loves it. He's relishing, delighting in each word. Ah
yid learning a shtik'l Toira mit bren.
May all his life's essence be encapsulated here. Now with
long curls flowing down his back: someday with long snowy
beard flowing down his chest.
*
Dreamland. I am not used to wine. Even the mildest grape
juice sends me off to dreamland pretty fast. I hasten to
drink Cups Three and Four while I can still manipulate my
tongue thickly around the words of the Hagaddah. But despite
the haste, the fuzzy fogginess, the inability to concentrate,
my heart is overflowing, after all, with praise, with
celebration.
Because I was a slave in Egypt, and I would be still. Would I
have lasted long? But Hashem brought me out of there, out of
that awful place, with a Strong Hand and with an Outstretched
Arm.
*
Yes, that was our Seder. A beautiful Seder! I can see that
now... now that anger, exhaustion, doubts, resentment,
hassle, frustration etc., all things negative, have fallen
away. Now that I am no longer locked in disappointment,
bitterness, insecurity, pettiness, and hurt pride about those
who didn't come; no longer annoyed at my mother-in-law who
chants along with her great-grandson the mah
nishtana's familiar words. No longer irritated and
embarrassed about my younger children fighting over who gets
the chair with the arms to prop a pillow on; no longer
impatient with my son's long involved dvar Torah; no
longer anxious, hungry, weary.
Take all that away and what is left is joy. Just joy.
Is this how our Seder, how all our deeds, are viewed from
There? I wouldn't be surprised.
