I have been in a frenzy, as I realized just how disconnected from the timecycles of Judaism I've gotten. I looked up and saw: ten days until Passover. Ten days before the first Passover I would ever experience during which I could neither travel to a family celebration in L.A. nor go to a friends' house for a Chavurah seder. Yes, we hope to video chat in to the L.A. celebration, but I need the hands-on experience, the interactive learning system the early rabbis put in place in the Mishnah over 800 years ago.
I am looking at the reality of my life here in Japan. And yes, I have been very bad about sharing it via a blog, or even regular letters and emails. Sorry again about that. I look at my studio apartment, my "fun-sized" fridge, our bed that takes up most of our room. I wanted to invite lots of people, make a big thing, teach a lot of people about Passover, and make it a magical experience. I wanted my first seder to be . . . you know, perfect.
I am a little separated from my student teaching now (eight months, now), and even though I am still teaching, I forgot the basic lesson of failure every teacher should know.
No matter how well you lesson plan, that lesson is well over 50% better the
second time you teach it.
So I am looking at what is realistic. Getting a room at the Community center and trying to cater an event for a ton of people? Out of a tiny kitchen in my apartment and with no access to a kitchen on site? Or inviting two or three people to our home for a smaller but more "real feeling" seder with wine, laughs, and a read through the haggadah (even if it's printed off the internet)? A seder that really affirms that the Jewish
home has taken the place of the Temple, as much as the synagogue?
I always want to do more. I only have been to seven seders, and I wanted one to leap, fully-formed, onto a table to provide an educational, inspiring, moving experience to a large group of people with no prior knowledge of Passover. I want to know more than I do, especially all those songs that are listed in every Haggadah, which I have either never heard or never learned.
But Pesach is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Sure, there's the historical/reconstructionist reason for that - the Jews and the mixed multitude left Egypt without time for their bread to rise, so they baked it flat and took it like lembas into the desert. But with Judaism, there's always the three other meanings (at least) below the literal. I'm not much of a scholar, but I know one of them.
Leavening puffs things up. The miracle of fermentation creates gases which bubble up, creating mysterious sounds and smells in the wheat, cabbage, grapes, milk, or whatever you're fermenting. Being puffed up, literally full of gas, is how I am most of the time. I am so blessed to have supportive, loving friends and family, who tell me often that I am great. A lot of the time, I even believe them. I am vastly contented with myself much of the time, and need to be shaken out of it.
Leavened bread is puffy, and squishy. (Don't get me started on Japanese bread - it is so glutinous that it is difficult to tear, and chews like marshmallow.) It is blown up past the necessary. But what is it, at the base? Excluding the yeast, which is included to make the puff happen by converting sugars into gases. Flour, salt, and water.
It is stark, and basic. It is bread at its least fancy. It is hard, and sharp when you break it. But it is good. It survives, and nourishes. It is a constant reminder throughout Passover of the experience we're meant to remember. The point is remembering, and telling the story. So even if my seder doesn't have a lot of courses, or if I have to make my own matzah, and so can only make the minimum, I can live with it.
I want to do the most, and be petted and praised for it. I want to throw a seder worthy of Martha Stewart in a studio apartment. I want to be big, and puffed. But having a humble seder is also a way of remembering, and being literally in exile, even from the "exile" of living in the US, surrounded by other Jews, may be a more thorough immersion into the Exodus story than ever.
Plus, dining around a kotatsu makes the injunction to recline while eating pretty easy.
TPR!
