By Kate McDermott
It came to me last week – the worst idea I’ve had in a long time – “What if I obey the Passover dietary restrictions this year?” It popped into my head out of the blue, and I couldn’t really figure out why. Was this the beginning of masochistic tendencies? Should I start looking for a good psychiatrist?
To clarify, I am not religiously Jewish. I’ve been in a synagogue twice in my life, once for a friend’s Bat Mitzvah and a second time when I played piano for a Jewish wine tasting (twenty bottles of Manischewitz anyone?). But I’m half Jewish ethnically, and it’s the right half even – my mother’s family fled pogroms and Nazis, coming to the U.S. to find respite, and losing most of their identity in the process.
From being at a college full of Jews or watching the best Rugrats episode ever made, you probably know that Passover is a time to remember the escape Jews made from slavery in Israel. It’s a time to remember ancestors, my ancestors. Perhaps my decision would be a little more ridiculous if I were 100% Irish. But I’m not. According to Jewish law, I am Jewish, end of story.
Still, when I asked practicing Jews what they thought of my decision, I got the general, “Why? Is there something wrong with you?” response. When I told my suitemate in the dining hall on Monday, the first day of Passover, she promptly took me to the soup of the day and handed me the ingredient card. I read, “Matzoh Ball Soup. Ingredients in descending order: Matzoh balls, water.” She asked, “Is this what you want to be eating every day?” I began to have my doubts.
But at my friend’s Seder that evening, I made the final decision to commit. The Seder was social justice themed, which meant in addition to the Haggadah, we also read passages from the modern era challenging us to honor the oppressed in our past by making sure there are none like them in our time (a tall order, to be sure). My favorite passage was a line by Leonard Fein, founder of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger. He said, “We are slaves because today there are still people in chains around the world and no one can truly be free while others are in chains. We are slaves because freedom means more than broken chains.”
With a noble purpose in mind, I set out on Tuesday to find Passover appropriate food for the first time in my life. I’ve heard the stories of misery - what if there’s nothing and I starve? Thankfully, I found meat and fruits and vegetables to sustain me. And I began to notice, as I was eating my supposedly meager meal, that I was immensely grateful for everything on my plate. It was just the beginning of the week, but I began to get a sense that maybe I wasn’t so crazy to try this experiment after all.
I went to a second Seder in the Calhoun master’s house that night, filled with food, wine, and friends who at this point feel more like family. This is the other part of Passover – giving yourself the time to relax, with loved ones close by, and always an immense sense of gratitude for the enjoyment life brings us.
But this Seder, as many do, left room for serious thought and discussion. At one point my friend, who was leading, explained that her grandmother who fled Nazi Germany always begins to cry over a specific passage detailing the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. At the mention of this, I started to understand why I’d felt this strange urge to connect to my past. For my friend’s family, just as the Seder has religious significance so too does the Holocaust, in their remembrance of the miracle God granted this woman and the ability of the Jewish people to survive.
For my family, things are very different. Not only was I not raised Jewish, but my mom was not as well. She also never heard a word about her father’s experiences in Nazi Germany before he escaped in 1937. He allowed me to speak with him about it once, but only because I needed to for a school project. I learned that he was attacked by a mob of students for touching a gentile’s books. I learned that his brother was nearly killed for removing a Nazi poster off their father’s storefront window. I learned that his brother had to flee to Israel, alone, without the rest of the family. I learned that my grandpa had to say goodbye to beloved friends and relatives, including his grandparents, knowing he would never see them again. I learned that when he reached the U.S., he refused to speak a word of German. I learned that when he read about the Holocaust in the papers, he felt immense guilt that his good fortune had allowed him to escape. And I learned never to bring any of this up with him again.
In many ways it feels right to reconnect with my past now, with more than a generation of calm to ease the pain that stripped me of Judaism. But of course everything must be redefined for me. I do not honestly believe that by not eating rice, bread, or corn for a week, suddenly all the hardship will be forgotten, and I will instantaneously become the Jew I should have been. In a similar vein, I do not believe that by abstaining from a few foods I will suddenly cure the world of all its social injustice. This has to take on separate meaning for me than maybe it does for other Jews. What I want, at least for this short moment in time, is to feel what my ancestors felt, maybe not so much because I want to connect to the slaves of Egypt but more because I want to remember the people my grandpa loved and lost. I won’t be able to tell him what I’m doing without bringing up a painful past, but I’ll be thinking of him while I’m doing it nonetheless.
It came to me last week – the worst idea I’ve had in a long time – “What if I obey the Passover dietary restrictions this year?” It popped into my head out of the blue, and I couldn’t really figure out why. Was this the beginning of masochistic tendencies? Should I start looking for a good psychiatrist?
To clarify, I am not religiously Jewish. I’ve been in a synagogue twice in my life, once for a friend’s Bat Mitzvah and a second time when I played piano for a Jewish wine tasting (twenty bottles of Manischewitz anyone?). But I’m half Jewish ethnically, and it’s the right half even – my mother’s family fled pogroms and Nazis, coming to the U.S. to find respite, and losing most of their identity in the process.
From being at a college full of Jews or watching the best Rugrats episode ever made, you probably know that Passover is a time to remember the escape Jews made from slavery in Israel. It’s a time to remember ancestors, my ancestors. Perhaps my decision would be a little more ridiculous if I were 100% Irish. But I’m not. According to Jewish law, I am Jewish, end of story.
Still, when I asked practicing Jews what they thought of my decision, I got the general, “Why? Is there something wrong with you?” response. When I told my suitemate in the dining hall on Monday, the first day of Passover, she promptly took me to the soup of the day and handed me the ingredient card. I read, “Matzoh Ball Soup. Ingredients in descending order: Matzoh balls, water.” She asked, “Is this what you want to be eating every day?” I began to have my doubts.
But at my friend’s Seder that evening, I made the final decision to commit. The Seder was social justice themed, which meant in addition to the Haggadah, we also read passages from the modern era challenging us to honor the oppressed in our past by making sure there are none like them in our time (a tall order, to be sure). My favorite passage was a line by Leonard Fein, founder of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger. He said, “We are slaves because today there are still people in chains around the world and no one can truly be free while others are in chains. We are slaves because freedom means more than broken chains.”
With a noble purpose in mind, I set out on Tuesday to find Passover appropriate food for the first time in my life. I’ve heard the stories of misery - what if there’s nothing and I starve? Thankfully, I found meat and fruits and vegetables to sustain me. And I began to notice, as I was eating my supposedly meager meal, that I was immensely grateful for everything on my plate. It was just the beginning of the week, but I began to get a sense that maybe I wasn’t so crazy to try this experiment after all.
I went to a second Seder in the Calhoun master’s house that night, filled with food, wine, and friends who at this point feel more like family. This is the other part of Passover – giving yourself the time to relax, with loved ones close by, and always an immense sense of gratitude for the enjoyment life brings us.
But this Seder, as many do, left room for serious thought and discussion. At one point my friend, who was leading, explained that her grandmother who fled Nazi Germany always begins to cry over a specific passage detailing the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. At the mention of this, I started to understand why I’d felt this strange urge to connect to my past. For my friend’s family, just as the Seder has religious significance so too does the Holocaust, in their remembrance of the miracle God granted this woman and the ability of the Jewish people to survive.
For my family, things are very different. Not only was I not raised Jewish, but my mom was not as well. She also never heard a word about her father’s experiences in Nazi Germany before he escaped in 1937. He allowed me to speak with him about it once, but only because I needed to for a school project. I learned that he was attacked by a mob of students for touching a gentile’s books. I learned that his brother was nearly killed for removing a Nazi poster off their father’s storefront window. I learned that his brother had to flee to Israel, alone, without the rest of the family. I learned that my grandpa had to say goodbye to beloved friends and relatives, including his grandparents, knowing he would never see them again. I learned that when he reached the U.S., he refused to speak a word of German. I learned that when he read about the Holocaust in the papers, he felt immense guilt that his good fortune had allowed him to escape. And I learned never to bring any of this up with him again.
In many ways it feels right to reconnect with my past now, with more than a generation of calm to ease the pain that stripped me of Judaism. But of course everything must be redefined for me. I do not honestly believe that by not eating rice, bread, or corn for a week, suddenly all the hardship will be forgotten, and I will instantaneously become the Jew I should have been. In a similar vein, I do not believe that by abstaining from a few foods I will suddenly cure the world of all its social injustice. This has to take on separate meaning for me than maybe it does for other Jews. What I want, at least for this short moment in time, is to feel what my ancestors felt, maybe not so much because I want to connect to the slaves of Egypt but more because I want to remember the people my grandpa loved and lost. I won’t be able to tell him what I’m doing without bringing up a painful past, but I’ll be thinking of him while I’m doing it nonetheless.
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