Passover Seder

Tonight is the Seder dinner. I have been feeling irritated all week, tired of the cliques that have been forming in the center, tired of feeling like I am always trying to make friends and that it’s never the other way around. I called my mom last night and complained to her relentlessly. While I feel better today, I am a little stir crazy and decide to work out since I’ve done so probably only two other times this semester. My roommate and her beach-blonde friend talk to me for a minute, asking me which guy I think is the cutest in the program. It’s funny to be having this kind of conversation with them, like it’s a scene from a stereotypical and badly scripted Hollywood film. But I smile and enjoy talking to them before they leave for Arabic. My roommate said she knew I wasn’t feeling well last night and wonders if I’m okay. I’m surprised that she can sense my mood so well because while we are closest as far as roommates go, we never do things together outside of our room. I find that I like knowing there is someone looking out for me.

I run across the center’s grounds, skipping up the steps that wind through the garden, my feet light and crunching over the gravel. I have missed exercise and the kind of solitude and connection with the world that I feel when it is just me and the sun and the sky. I jog past the archways at the back of the building and around towards the front, circling the olive press and getting my fill of the springy floor in the kids’ playground. I hear the Arabic teacher as I run past their room. Luckily the shades are pulled down, so I don’t have to worry about being seen. After another round of running, I do the exercises on the grass that my sister has taught me, balancing on one leg and doing jumping jacks as I keep an eye on the Dome of the Rock. I love being out here on my own with a scene as stunning as this. It feels like a gift. Sometimes I forget as I am attending classes and doing homework and trying to make friends that I am here to know myself and my God better. It is good to remember to put myself in balance again.

I cut my stretching short and hurry to my room for a quick shower. Throwing on my clothes, I am paranoid that my shade shirt under my cardigan is too tight, but I am tired of wearing the same combination of clothes every day, so I take my roommate’s advice and decide to wear the outfit.

My seat in the Oasis is at the head table. I had volunteered to do a reading for the dinner, thinking I might as well get involved if given the opportunity. To my chagrin I realize I am assigned to sit right next to my Judaism professor. He is on my left while the two students on my right are unofficially dating and talk to each other whenever we are not instructed to sit silently.

As the dinner begins I remain very still, bringing my cup closer to my professor when he pours grape juice into my cup.

“L'Haim,” we say in unison. It reminds me of Cottonwood Height’s Fiddler on the Roof and makes me think of Tevye and miss Hailee all at once. The dinner is a slow process. First we dip a piece of celery green into salt water, representing bitterness and tears. My professor breaks a piece of mazza in front of the room and hands me my portion. We are allowed to make a tiny sandwich out of it with spreads of purple horseradish and sweet dates. Further into the dinner we recite the plagues of Egypt, releasing a drop of grape juice into our water after we say each one. I watch as the blood-like liquid dissipates into the clear liquid, and the sight strikes me as being slightly eerie.

I looked at my reading for a few minutes before I had worked out, though the words were confusing. Still, I wait for my turn to read, blocking out the meaning of those who speak before me in slightly nervous anticipation. I want my words to feel as though they have weight to them; I want the audience to feel like there is a kind of music to the letters, to the vowels and to the consonants. My voice is a little dry, but I like the way the words on the page warm up the room when I speak them, how I can hold a moment captive just by the sound of my own voice. I also take part in a song with a group of students. It is a children’s melody and I like singing in Hebrew, even though the words have my tongue all tangled up in knots when we sing the sixteenth notes.

My professor, Ophir Yarden, washes his hands using a bronze cup and dries them off on a towel. We do the same at the far end of the room when he gives us permission, though with the little water I used and the now well-used and limp towel drying my hands, the purpose of washing is full of irony.

Our dinner is in several courses, and it is my task to bring out each one for myself and for the girl next to me. We have salad, salmon, mashed potatoes shaped like a pear, cranberry chicken, and the first broccoli I’ve seen since I’ve been here. I get an extra half a piece of salmon from another girl nearby who doesn’t want her’s and it is a good conversation starter with my professor. I ask him about all kinds of things—how we both love salmon, what his children’s names are, if they have favorite treats his kids eat when they camp with the Scouts. Apparently smores haven’t made an appearance here in Israel, though they do roast marshmallows. The conversation is awkward, since Ophir talks to his six-year-old son sitting beside him now and then, and the rest of the time sits silent. His boy has shoulder length blonde curly hair and charmed the room the moment the students saw him. I try and talk to the girl who gave me her salmon. She plays the harp, and I ask Ophir if he plays an instrument.

He says he plays the CD player.

I ask him if he likes any particular kind of music.

He doesn’t.

I ask him if there’s any kind of live entertainment we should see while we’re here.

He says he doesn’t get out much.

By the end if it all, I know that his mother-in-law is a Viking, his children speak Swedish and English at home, and that he doesn’t seem to have a particular affinity for the United States even though he was born there. He has a smaller frame, is completely bald, and missed a hair above his lip when shaving. He told our class that he keeps his kipah on with double-stick tape, and there was a definite awkward moment when a piece of lettuce was on his chin and I didn’t know if I should tell him it was there. Luckily I think his son did the dirty work for me while I was still in the midst of a long internal debate about what to do. 

For dessert we have square apple pie and Ben and Jerry’s vanilla ice cream, which is my new one weakness. There are also little finger desserts that I can’t possibly eat, but I try a couple anyway.

As the meal closes we open the door in the Oasis for the coming of Elijah, and I wonder how so many people cannot know the truth of it all, how they are unaware that the prophet has already come. And as interesting as it is to see the silver platter full of objects of symbolism like the egg and the chicken wing and the bitter greens, as much as I loved the food and the words and the song, I know there is something missing here. And I wonder if the Jews have ever felt that.

And did they ever have the courage to look for it? Would they have searched through the holes in their stories and found that there was something wanting?

Would I even bother searching, if I were in their shoes?