Chag Sameach to Bernie Sanders and to Bernie Sanders Only

Tonight I will be having Passover Seder with my family via Zoom. This is weird for several reasons, but the primary being that I generally avoid seder at all costs. It almost always falls on or around my birthday. On my 21st birthday, my mother begged me to come down to Atlanta for seder, to which I said no because I was going to be busy celebrating my newly found freedom to legally drink alcohol instead of begging my friends to buy it for me. Turns out I was (am?) a bitch. I hate parties and I always over drink due to nerves and I would have been better off spending the day with my family instead of watching people get undressed in the living room of my apartment and make out. (That really happened and it was a lot.)

When I was younger, I was the only one in my family who insisted on keeping passover. I did this despite never being bat mitzvahed. Probably as some round about way to prove to my classmates that I was Jewish enough and that I too must suffer through eight long days of no leavened goodies. Oh the horror as I turned away donuts in advisory! The pain I must endure! Look! I fit in! I may not have been a woman in God’s eyes but I sure did force myself to suffer (something that has continued to be a theme in my life…)

My father is not Jewish. My mother is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. I am somewhere in between. I love being Jewish. I love Judaism. I am not particularly religious but I am somewhat spiritual. I am culturally very Jewish (in that I fit most of the stereotypes of an old Jewish woman.) Yet, I am fervently pro-Palestine and I think that you can question a government’s practices without being anti-semitic. But hey! That’s just me! And lots of other Jews! I love that we have a million holidays and I love that they all center around food. I love to feed people and host people and make sure they have.

My Grandfather died in April of 2016 and, boy oh boy, what a time to go. Of course at the time, I was devastated, but reflecting on it now, I am glad he doesn’t have to live through another painful time in history. Arthur Pais was truly the kindest man I had ever met. He gave to everyone. He didn’t want anyone to live without. Likely this is because of the trauma he endured as a teenager in the camps of Dachau, but he was also just a giving person from his core.

I think about him a lot. I don’t remember the last seder I attended that he was at and that makes me sad. I feel like I missed out on creating memories to remember him by. But then I think of the times we went to the opera together because I was the only grandchild that would go with him or how he would always bring cookies when he came to visit and make us apple pancakes. I know my memories of him survive outside of this holiday, and all the others, but I wonder if I did myself a disservice by not creating more.

I tend to only turn to Judaism in times of turmoil…like in the middle of a pandemic for example. There is something comforting about knowing it is there for me when I need it. Judaism has survived a lot and I don’t foresee it going anywhere anytime soon. I think part of the reason I turn to it in these uncertain times is because it provides a sense of community. I am so far from so many people I love right now, but I know that we are all going to be slouching at the table tonight and having arguments about who is too old to find the afikomen.

There is also something comforting about today being the day that Bernie announced he is suspending his campaign. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing comforting about him dropping out. We are stuck with an old man rapist who has no idea what is really important. And that fucking blows. But I like to think, for Bernie’s sake, that today was the right day. That he can go home and he can slouch at the table and he can be around loved ones and they can commune together and cry together and yell about whether or not they can just skip some parts and get to the food.

My father (not a Jew) always says that my mother’s family (all Jews) is talking about the next meal during the one they are currently eating. More recently, I have liked to see this as keeping an eye on the future. I am sure part of it comes from the generational trauma of living with someone who spent years never knowing if there was a next meal. But I am choosing to see it as this: we are asking what the next meal is because there will be another, we will persevere through whatever life throws at us.

So in this literal time of plague, let us persevere.

Chag Sameach to you all, but mostly to Bernie Sanders.