When life gives you marror…it is okay to cry.

Tonight is Passover. Passover is the time we celebrate the Jewish people’s freedom from slavery in Egypt.  It is the second one I am celebrating without my grandmother. The last Passover she was alive, I was in Israel. She was sick and I was worried sick about her. We FaceTimed everyday. I would wake up and frantically check my phone to see how she was doing. Miraculously, she was well enough to go home from the hospital for Passover. I got home April 25. She passed away May 7. My mother said she waited for me to die. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t think I was deserving of that honor. But if it is, I am grateful. Because when I got home, one of the first things I did was run to her apartment, the one with the wooden round table and the sun streaming in through the windows circling around it. The one that made you feel like were inside a hug. She was sitting on the recliner chair and when we saw each other, we shrieked like teenagers.

I have so many thoughts connected to her, and Passover and I can’t seem to collect them all but I will share what comes to mind.  

 The Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, which comes from the root word metzar, which means constraint. Passover is the time we celebrate and lean into the freedom from constraints, whether they are self imposed or imposed by others. We are boundless potential, and we make ourselves small. Passover is a time to break free from that restriction. The world needs your gifts and your greatness. My grandmother personified this energy to me. She was an 18-year-old girl in Auschwitz, working under the smoke which she was told was the remains of everyone she ever knew and loved, and that she would be next. Her friends said, “we are going to heaven from here”. She said, “you can go to heaven, I am going home from here”. They said she was crazy, that she was in denial, that she had to face reality, but she didn’t care. She so badly wanted to live and no one, not even Hitler could take that choice away from her. She wasn’t realistic. She wasn’t down to earth. She knew she didn’t need to be. She went after what she wanted. When she was pregnant experiencing complications, the doctor told her, “if you have this baby, I will eat my hat”. She said, “doctor, you better start chewing”. She had that baby, who had me, and when I watch my children splash in the pool with all of their cousins this pesach season, I am grateful she wasn’t “in reality” or “down to earth”, but rather let her dreams and potential explode from her into the reality I am living in now.

 She made her own Passover until she was 95 years old. My very lucky husband was chosen to shlep the four boxes of Passover dishes, pots and pans from my mother’s garage to my grandmother’s apartment. He went over to her and said, “Bobby you can just come to us why do you have to make pesach. You have so many kids and grandkids who want to have you”. She said, “don’t tell me what to do, I want to make pesach so I will make pesach”. That is Passover. Freeing ourselves from the constraints of other people, of our bodies, of our minds, of our doubts, and doing what our souls want to do.

Seder means order. An order of events. The Pesach Seder brings to mind the importance of story telling, especially to children, the importance of asking questions, and the importance of having hope. It is a visceral experience. We eat marror – bitter herbs to remember the pain the Jews felt in slavery. We dip the vegetables into salt water to experience the tears they cried. We eat matzah because the Jews were taken out of Egypt so fast, they didn’t have time for their bread to rise We eat leaning sideways, to experience the royalty they felt when they were free. I loved the Seder with my grandmother. I remember one Seder, when I was a kid, my father was talking about the hardships that the Jews had to endure as slaves in Egypt. My grandmother said, “the Holocaust was worse.” She bit right into that marror and cried.

This year has been a hard year. It’s been saltwater and bitter herbs for everyone. And we don’t have to pretend it wasn’t. When life gives you marror, its okay to cry. We cry for the hostages who need to be set free. We cry for all the innocent people who lost their lives. We cry because things are not the way they were meant to be. But we take our tears and keep on going, one step in front of the other, following the Seder. Because before we know it, we will get to the good part so fast, we wont even have time for our sourdough starters to rise.

That for me is a comfort and I hope it can be a comfort to you.  

Wishing all who celebrate a very happy holiday, and wishing you all love, joy and freedom