A Seat at the Table

Peering over the edge of my grandparents’ antique piano, I watched my mother and grandmother rush around the kitchen, frantically preparing food for Seder dinner. This ritual meal marks the beginning of Passover—eight days for recounting the Jews’ escape from slavery in Egypt. I had arrived at my grandmother’s house hours earlier after leaving Ms. Forte’s third-grade class. As the scent of decadent brisket, rustic matzo ball soup, and crunchy potato kugel wafted through the air, I grew impatient.

“Dinner!” my mother and grandmother announced in unison. Although the prospect of eating was divine, I knew that dinner would not be served for many, many hours.

As I ambled into the dining room, I glanced at my grandfather—Dr. H. Eric Stern, OBGYN extraordinaire—and quickly put on my kippah—a hat in the Jewish faith that honors God. The table was decorated with my great grandmother’s silver candlesticks, a plate of unleavened bread called matzah, and the Seder plate. The plate was a silver platter that held small symbolic dishes: eggs, representing life in a new land; horseradish, signifying the bitter years of bondage; lamb shanks, the lamb blood splattered on Jewish door frames; haroset, the bricks used to make Pharaoh’s pyramids; and parsley, renewal of the spring festival.

Everyone sat in their chairs, leaned, and slouched like butter melting on baked rugelach. This was not abrupt laziness but a symbolic requirement. At Seder, the Jewish people lean to signify their ability to relax after escaping slavery. My grandfather then stood at the head of the table, sporting a white robe called a kittel, opened his prayer book—the Haggadah—and started Seder.

After a few prayers and blessings over the matzah and wine, he broke off a small piece of bread called the afikoman, which represents the Passover sacrifice, and placed it off to the side. As one of the kids, my task was to secretly steal the afikoman and hide it around the house. Because Seder cannot officially end without eating the sacrifice, my grandfather would have to either find it—this never happened—or buy it from me. And let’s just say I don’t come cheap.

“Why is tonight different from all other nights?” my Grandfather asked.

I continued, “Why, on this night, do we only eat unleavened bread? Why do we only eat bitter herbs?” In order to answer these questions, we followed the Haggadah, reading Hebrew and English passages throughout the night.

Around three thousand years ago, when the Jews were slaves in Egypt, Moses asked Pharaoh to release the Jews from bondage. With each of Pharaoh’s refusals, God sent a plague—blood and frogs, vermin and beasts, cattle disease and boils, hail and locusts, darkness and slaying of the firstborn.

In honoring this history, my grandfather instructed us to sip and place one drop of Manischewitz wine on the plate for each plague that he read aloud. Reaching under the table, my mother pulled out a box of puppets, each one corresponding to a different plague. She danced them around the table in a feeble attempt to regain my attention, which had drifted off into my rumbling stomach.

My brother, sensing my impatience, started to read the next line in the story. “During the holiday, we do not eat leavened bread because when the Jews were thrust from Egypt, they did not have time for their bread to rise.”

I continued, pointing to the bitter herbs and unleavened bread, and I said, “We eat a sandwich in order to observe the literal words of the Torah: They shall eat the Passover offering with matzah and bitter herbs.” And with those words, the meal began.

After the brisket was distributed and soup spilled, I felt good. Perhaps too good. “So, Herbie, how was your day?” I asked, with a coy grin. My mother quickly hit my thigh because she didn’t like when I referred to my grandfather by his first name. But who could blame me, I had a whole sip of Manischewitz.

“That’s the Godfather to you, and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up with a horse’s head in your bed,” he responded. I laughed—like always—even though I never watched The Godfather. Despite the spiritual reason for gathering, our family conversations never seemed to drift into discussions about religion. We just talked and told stories. My grandmother recounted how her grandfather would read the prayers and cry. Although she didn’t know why at the time, she now understood.

The holiday is mournful, not because of the sufferings in Egypt but because it forces us to remember the past. I can’t help but think of grandparents and their grandparents before them reading from the same Haggadah. Of my grandmother’s pencil marks that lined the book’s margins before I was born. Of the aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, nieces and nephews that turned the same yellowed pages, discolored by spilled soup and wine.

Even this year, I remember when my younger cousins flew in from Georgia, and I turned the table into a makeshift Imagination Stage. Plush locusts and frogs launched a surprise assault on unsuspecting beasts and cattle. Toy blood droplets rained from the sky, landing on my cousins’ heads. The angel of death landed on my brother Jared’s placemat, where he played possum. Their faces swelled with joy, and the air filled with laughter as my intricate, five-minute pièce de résistance brought Seder to life.

While the Seder rituals serve as symbols of the past, for me, the holiday is a celebration of the present—a reminder to be grateful. As we struggle through our daily lives, we often take our family for granted and assume that they will always be with us. But, as COVID-19 has shown us, life is fragile, even to the most healthy. Passover reminds us that in all of our turmoil—cancer, disease, fear—that we deserve more. More than grief, more than loneliness, more than loss. We deserve the time to relax, reflect, and heal—now, we have that time.

At yesterday’s sunset, Jewish families around the world joined in celebration of Passover, remembrance of family, and prayers of gratitude. They, like us, are reminded that whether locusts or disease, sometimes it takes a plague to bring a community together.

Chag sameach!