Day 19 of Nat'l Emergency: Mah Nishtanah

“Mah nishtanah halielah hazeh mikol haleilot?”

Why is this night different from all other nights?

As they have for decades if not centuries before each seder, briskets will simmer awaiting the conclusion of the first part of the Passover story related in the haggadah. Matzo balls will swim in chicken soup. Horseradish will sit next to slices of gefilte fish. Wine cups await to be filled four times over.

The sweet voice of a grandchild singing the “Mah nishtanah”—what is different—should be lilting through my home next Wednesday, April 8, the eve of the first day of Passover. One of the youngest at the table would recite the Four Questions that distinguish the evening. It is how Jews have marked the seder for generation after generation, for millennia. But not so this year. 

The Angel of Death has upended tradition. Indiscriminate fear of the novel coronavirus will keep families apart. Our children and their families live in Massachusetts and Nebraska. Coming home for the holiday does not qualify as essential travel during a pandemic. Better to seder-in-place than risk contamination on the trip to Westchester from their homes.

Envy is a vice frowned upon by God. But I do envy my friends with year-round access to children and grandchildren who live nearby. Hugs and kisses are not meant to be limited to holiday visits and family vacations. Their absence at the seder table is all the more painful when catastrophic events prevent physical togetherness.

We will Zoom the Four Questions and the rest of our seder liturgy. It is better than nothing. We will see and hear them but won’t be able to touch our legacies. We will miss their frantic search for the hidden pieces of matzo, the afikoman, required to be eaten to conclude the seder banquet, and the squeal of joy when it is discovered. Perhaps we will have each family hide an afikoman in their own homes. Again, better than nothing.

Jews can find humor in almost everything, even life threatening, tradition-busting situations. Coronavirus is no exception. Making the rounds on the Internet—“Biblical Irony: Passover Seder may be delayed by a plague.” Of course, comedy is no match for reality. “Thousands of locusts swarm over Israel, Egypt — just in time for Passover,” headlined The Daily News on March 6. 

Growing up in Brooklyn my parents’ seder attracted 25-40 celebrants depending on how many guests they invited to augment the 18 in our immediate family of aunts, uncles and cousins. Led by my father and his brother, the seder was a raucous affair. Reading from the Maxwell House haggadah, the brothers would drone on in an Eastern European trope that befuddled my brother, sister and me and anyone else who tried to follow along in Hebrew (no English to be heard except for the chattering among my mother and her three sisters which prompted my father’s repeated unsuccessful appeals for them to be quiet). 

The seder back in the 1950s and 1960s was a time of family ingathering. Everyone lived in the New York Metro. By the time my wife and I took over seder chores some 30 years ago, family togetherness had dissolved. My sister had moved to Los Angeles. Her family stays there for Passover. My brother’s family in Maryland kept coming north until about 10 years ago. 

Our seder ritual has become more universal. Over the years, aside from incorporating English, themes covering the emancipation of Russian and Ethiopian Jews as well as the treatment of refugees from all zones of conflict have become integral parts of the haggadah we have fashioned. 

In an ironic way, conducting a virtual seder via Zoom reinforces a central theme of the seder to be kind to the stranger among us. It took Zoom founder Eric Yuan nine attempts to earn a visa to emigrate from China 23 years ago. He spoke little English. He might not qualify for a visa under the current, more restrictive, admission standards. Today, Yuan is a successful technology entrepreneur worth an estimated $3 billion.

As we peer into the Zoom-enabled camera of our computers, tablets or smart phones we must remind ourselves that the Torah admonishes us no fewer than 36 times to treat the stranger fairly because we, our ancestors, were strangers in Egypt. Not slaves. Strangers.

Passover teaches us how ephemeral the status of our existence might be. Originally invited by Pharaoh to live as guests in Goshen in Egypt, the Israelites were considered dangerous aliens by a successor. Though God smote the ensuing Pharaoh and his subjects for enslaving the Israelites, he commanded the former slaves to welcome the stranger, to treat him “as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. “  

It is a lesson to be imparted from generation to generation, in person and, this year, virtually. 

Day 6 of National Emergency, 3 Weeks Till the Seder

Three weeks from tonight, April 8, Jews will gather for the seminal holiday ritual of their religion. Or will they? While for many of today’s chosen people the seder remains a religious experience, for many others it is a secular reaffirmation of their primal heritage. More Jews gather to attend a seder than congregate for any other religious observance. It is so powerful a symbol that even in Auschwitz Jews assembled to observe the Passover seder.

Religious practice—the comforting rituals that have bound parishioners of all faiths to their chosen deity—has been traumatized by the coronavirus. Decades-, centuries-, even millennia-old protocols have been temporarily shelved as clerical and lay leaders improvise alterations to communal customs and religious ceremonies (https://nyti.ms/2vqXY5Y).

Barring a miracle as equivalent as the series of wonders that preceded the Exodus from Egypt, Jews the world over will celebrate the Passover seder in relative solitude, likely not surrounded by the usual numbers of family and friends for fear of viral transmission, unless they defy government and health authorities to gather in numbers larger than ten. 

(As a point of interest and information, the Torah made provisions for the inability of celebrants to attend a seder at the appointed time. Passover could be observed a month later. Of course, there is no surety the pandemic would be tamed by May 7.) 

My earliest memories of a seder are from my pre-bar mitzvah days. In our two floor row house in Brooklyn my parents would convert the ground floor into an open space with a U-shaped dining table that would seat as many as 40 participants depending on my father’s success in adding guests—second or third cousins, friends from Israel or from the “old country”—to the 18 members of our close relatives, aunts, uncles and cousins. 

Even when the seder moved upstairs to our living room after my bar mitzvah and shrank to a more manageable 25, the seder was a raucous affair. Reading from the Maxwell House haggadah, my father and his brother Willy would drone on in a trope that befuddled my brother, sister and me and anyone else who tried to follow along in Hebrew (no English to be heard except for the chattering among my mother and her three sisters which prompted my father’s repeated appeals for them to be quiet). 

Gilda and I took over seder chores about 30 years ago. By then family togetherness had dissolved. My sister Lee moved to Los Angeles 47 years ago. Her family stays in L.A. for Passover. My brother Bernie’s family kept coming north from Maryland until about 10 years ago. 

For more than 3,000 years Jews—religious and sectarian—have gathered from near and far for a seder meal, a symbol of congealed peoplehood.

Our children and grandchildren have joined us from Massachusetts and Nebraska. But will they this year? Is traveling hundreds of miles by car or plane an essential trip during a pandemic? I just don’t know.

Sharing Voices in a Chorus

On the eve of the 10th day from Wednesday, April 10, Jews the world over will sit down to a seder commemorating the exodus from Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. It has become a festival of nationhood, a symbol of freedom from oppression and bondage, a reminder that they should treat the strangers among them with dignity and fairness because, as it is written in Deuteronomy 10:18-19, God “befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing. You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

How far we Americans—Jews and non Jews—have come from this biblical ideal. 

Days after celebrating Purim, the holiday that rejoices in the foiling of Haman’s plot to annihilate all Jews inside the Persian empire because they were different, and days before the Passover holiday when Jews became refugees seeking a new life, the Trump administration has vigorously renewed its attack on legal asylum seekers. 

Trump has claimed there is no room in the United States for all the asylum seekers. He made that argument before a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas (on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, of all days). Of course, his facts were wrong (https://nyti.ms/2UpZ1hF).

Reportedly, the purge of officials at the Department of Homeland Security in favor of those who would implement a more repressive immigration policy has been championed by Stephen Miller, himself a great grandson of a Jewish refugee fleeing pogroms in Belarus. How shameful. Miller is a modern day Torquemada, whose medieval family converted from Judaism to Catholicism. Torquemada became a priest and led the Spanish Inquisition against Moslems and Jews who converted but were suspected of less than complete adherence to Catholic practices.

Facebook and Twitter are enlightening sources. Here’s a post from Jackie Calmes. Above a picture of Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis in 1939, Calmes wrote, “Never thought an audience of Jews would cheer words like Trump’s in NV on Sat against asylum, labeling migrants fleeing violence as threats & saying US is ‘full.’”

Under the picture, a link to an article in Smithsonian Magazine recounting the State Department’s long history of anti-Semitism. The headline: “The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies” (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/#V6QqrCfvfc4Ktrpo.03).

Lee Clark on Twitter wrote, “Trump went to Las Vegas and in front of the Jewish people used the same analogy against the South Americans that the country used against the Jews in 1939, the country was full and could not take in any more refugees. Refusing to let the Jew in sending them away Hitler killed all of them. The same thing Trump is doing to the South Americans.”

Words matter. Why is it that when Trump talks about Puerto Ricans or Jewish Americans it sounds like he does not consider them to be American citizens. Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he referred to Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu as “your prime minister,” suggesting that the Jews he was speaking to were not American citizens but rather Israelis, that their loyalty was, at the very least, divided.

The case is being made by some Jews that it is in their best interest to abandon the Democratic Party in favor of Republicans. It’s called “Jexodus”  https://nyti.ms/2Yc2yhO. 

I’m not buying it. I’m not turning my back on millennia of Jewish ideals, like support for human rights, equality, equality of opportunity, support for education, civil rights, community, respect for scientific knowledge.  

The noted astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in his 1995 book, “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,”  forecast the type of existence we find ourselves in today. Here’s a Twitter post of Sagan’s thoughts from his book from Dan Kaminsky via a Bret Thorn retweet:

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…

“The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

We deserve a leader who would help us reverse the decline, yes, to make us great again, not by dividing us into competitive camps but by uniting us toward a common goal. 

Instead, we are faced with the reality of another Sagan quote from his book: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” 

Will Trump's End Justify His Means?

Maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump has a sense of history. After all, despite all his bravura claims about the efficiency and accomplishments of his presidency, he has yet to claim he has “made the trains run on time” (editor’s note—for those unfamiliar with the claim, google it. You’ll find it under Mussolini or Il Duce). 

Seriously, though, The Trumpster has added fuel to a long simmering debate: Does the end justify the means? 

Are his bluster, his arrogance, his indignities, his lying, his disdain for anyone not a Trump, just for show, to be ignored as long as he secures his objectives? Or, do all his character flaws impoverish the office of the president and the heritage of the United States as the beacon of the civilized world?

For Trump, for all of us, the bottom line, the “end,” is his presidency. When will it end? In January 2021? In January 2025? Or sometime before?  

America used to be known as a country where protagonists debated ideas. Trump has reduced politics to a contest of name calling powered by personal animosity and vengeance. 

Too many respected observers of our political landscape, including former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, have issued warnings about the Trump effect and the world’s and our possible slide into fascism for their misgivings to be ignored (your choice of sources: an Op-Ed piece by Albright in The New York Times: https://nyti.ms/2EpFn8F or or an interview with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03/599120190/madeleine-albright-warns-dont-let-fascism-go-unnoticed-until-its-too-late).

To keep our heads above a fascist tide requires perspective plus a knowledge of history, science and basic truths. In the extraordinary teenage response to the Parkland, FL, high school shooting, what should we make of the use of the #NeverAgain hashtag? As repulsive as the killing of 17 students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was, does it compare to the six million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust often commemorated by the phrase Never Again? (http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Never-Again-From-a-Holocaust-phrase-to-a-universal-phrase-544666)

Let’s hope the new Never Again movement has more success than the last. Since first promulgated, the world has witnessed genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Syria, Chile, Argentina, Myanmar. Given the frequency of school shootings, I am not confident of more success. 

Perhaps the students, even the Jewish students among them, did not know of the Never Again association with the Holocaust. Chalk it up, if so, to the sad condition of American education. We’re seeing that sorry state play out in the teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. It is difficult to attract quality teachers for the poverty wages states pay.

When I started as a reporter in Connecticut back in 1972, my immediate supervisor resented teacher pay scales. He reasoned, as too many do even today, that teachers led cushy lives, that they had summers and holidays off, that their work day ended in the early afternoon, not realizing they spend evenings grading papers and preparing lesson plans. And that they often spend their own money to supplement the meager supplies they need to properly instruct their students.

Back then, teachers, like nurses, social workers, police and firemen, were thought to not need higher pay, that they received part of their remuneration in the positive feelings generated by their good works. Ha! Try paying your mortgage or your grocery bill with positive feelings!

Among the signs held up by a student at one of the Oklahoma teacher protests was one stating, “My textbooks are older than me.” Proper grammar would have taught him he should have written “than I,” but the sentiment was appropriate.

Our country’s history is full of less than noble chapters. Slavery. Near annihilation of Native Americans. Robber Barons. Jim Crow Laws. Segregation. Discriminatory laws against Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese immigration. Yes, we are a great country, but we must also keep in mind that dangerous precedents inhabited our past.

That’s why it is so important for our leaders to embrace the symbols of our diversity and greatness. Consider just two events of the past week. For the second straight year Trump chose not to attend a Passover seder at the White House. 

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump did not visit the monument to the slain civil rights leader a short distance from the White House. He merely tweeted a canned video praising King, but his unrehearsed comments of the last two years have exposed him as a bigot, a racist, a xenophobe and a sympathetic friend of budding, if not already, dictators around the world. 

“Instead of mobilizing international coalitions to take on world problems, he (Trump) touts the doctrine of ‘every nation for itself’ and has led America into isolated positions on trade, climate change and Middle East peace,” wrote Albright. “Instead of engaging in creative diplomacy, he has insulted United States neighbors and allies, walked away from key international agreements, mocked multilateral organizations and stripped the State Department of its resources and role. Instead of standing up for the values of a free society, Mr. Trump, with his oft-vented scorn for democracy’s building blocks, has strengthened the hands of dictators. No longer need they fear United States criticism regarding human rights or civil liberties. On the contrary, they can and do point to Mr. Trump’s own words to justify their repressive actions.”

Trump has used his bully pulpit, both in person and via Twitter, to harangue adversaries. His latest target is Amazon and its alleged sweetheart shipping deal with the U.S. Postal Service. Trump further claims Amazon is the reason many Main Streets across America have vacant storefronts (https://nyti.ms/2Gxtkfq).

Imagine that! Sen. Bernie Sanders agrees with Trump that Amazon is getting too big.

Amazon revenues last year totaled $178 billion. But what about Walmart? Its revenues reached $500 billion. Arguably, Walmart has done more to close down rival merchants than Amazon. To my knowledge Trump is not calling for a breakup of Walmart. Sanders, meanwhile, does criticize the Arkansas-based retailer for paying low wages to most of its associates.

Interestingly, while Trump bemoans the growing strength of Amazon he applauds the consolidation of local news outlets under the banner of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a steadfast supporter of his views. If Sinclair receives approval to purchase Tribune Media it will have entry into seven out of 10 U.S. households. 

Trump also says Amazon should be required to collect state sales taxes to even the playing field with brick and mortar stores. He’s right, but Trump should be the last person to criticize anyone for not exceeding the requirements of the law. For its direct sales Amazon need only collect sales taxes in states where it has nexus. It is not required to collect sales taxes from sales made by its third party vendors. 

As are too many of our fellow citizens, Trump is under the impression that America owes its greatness to settlement by Western Europeans. He fails to recognize the contributions of Hispanics and Africans to our culture and economic growth. He scapegoats them in appeals to white nationalists and those who live in fear of imminent poverty or financial dislocation because America has shifted first from an agricultural economy to one dominated by manufacturing and now to a service-oriented platform.

Trump promises a return to greatness without ever spelling out the time period he wants to return to. His roadmap to wherever and whenever presumes America needs no partners other than on Trump’s terms. 

Will we be willing fellow travelers? Trump wants to get reelected. So do congressional Republican majorities who have mostly sublimated their constitutional obligations in favor of coattail election politics. 

It’s the people, however, who will determine—even in heavily gerrymandered districts—if democratic values will outweigh a strong man’s bombastic rule and attack on  cherished norms of society and politics. 

A Father's Day Tribute to My Mom

Having just read Timothy Egan’s tribute to his father in The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/SRE4HZ), I considered writing one for my dad. But it occurred to me that when I write about my parents it is mostly about my patrimony. So, with the comment my mother used to make, that without her Kopel Forseter would not have been a father, here's a posting about my maternal heritage.

The second of four sisters and an older brother, Sylvia Gerson came to New York from Lodg, Poland, in 1921 when she was four. Her father, Louis, was a jeweler, successful enough to move his family to an apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx that cost her a boyfriend. With an air of upward social mobility she enjoyed conveying, my mother would relate that the boyfriend stopped calling on her because, he explained to her years later, she had attained an address status beyond his station.

A mutual friend set up my parents. Perhaps the story's apocryphal, but the way she told it, my father fell off a ladder in his store when he first saw her. It wasn't from her good looks. Rather, it was her wild and frizzy hair. They agreed, nevertheless, to go out that Friday night to a performance of Die Fledermaus, a comic opera. When Kopel came to her family apartment he didn't recognize her. She was all dolled up and beautiful. They were married six weeks later, Labor Day weekend 1942.

If six weeks seems like a whirlwind courtship, consider this. For several weeks they were apart because Sylvia went on vacation. During one of their times together my mother garnered one of her favorite stories.

Kopel took her back to an apartment he shared. Speaking Yiddish, his roommate asked if they would like to be alone, to which my father replied, also in Yiddish, “No, this one I am going to marry.” Unbeknownst to my father, Sylvia was fluent in Yiddish.

Their union was also a work partnership. As a full charge bookkeeper Sylvia ran the one-person office while Kopel ran the factory where they produced half-slips and panties sold mostly to chain stores across the country. For a little more than four years Sylvia stayed home to raise their three children. I propelled her back to work with my poor eating and an exasperating habit of flinging peas off of my high chair tray. Funny. Today peas are among my favorite vegetable.

Sylvia taught my brother and me to play ball. She made sure we went to Broadway shows and the opera. She took us to the Catskills. She enrolled us in private Hebrew schools and eight week sleepaway Jewish summer camps. She made our house the center of activity. Friday night poker games with my brother’s friends. Passover seders with as many as 40 participants. Overnight guests that prompted her to call our home Malon Forseter, malon being the Hebrew word for hotel. Her dinette table was never too full. Unexpected guests were met with the standard retort, “I'll just add another cup of water to the soup.”

Though I wrote earlier that my poor eating sent her back to work, truth is Sylvia was a woman ahead of her time. Not just a homemaker and club woman—head of the PTA and active in temple and social groups—she also was an accomplished businesswoman not content or fulfilled in a stay-at-home mother role. Because of their business my parents could not always vacation together. My mother was confident and independent enough to travel to Israel and Europe by herself in the mid 1950s when she was just 40.

These are memories from my youth. As she aged my mother's joie de vivre deteriorated. She chain smoked. She was diabetic. She suffered bouts of congestive heart failure. A little dementia. She had one leg amputated below the knee because of her diabetes. A few years later on the eve of an amputation of her second leg she died of cardiac arrest.

My brother sister and I don't dwell on the last decade or so of her life when she no longer was the vibrant source of our family life. It is enough to know that together with our father she molded us into the people we are today. And we are happy with the results.

Venus, Jon Stewart and Red Light Districts

CBS Sunday Morning did a piece on Good Housekeeping’s Seal of Approval a few days ago. If a product carrying the coveted seal does not perform as promised, the magazine—not the manufacturer or the retailer—will refund the purchase price or replace the product. Which brings me to today’s mail and a copy of a magazine-sized glossy catalog of women’s apparel from Venus of Jacksonville, Fla. It’s 96 pages of soft porn images of fetching young maidens in bikinis and otherwise come-hither fashions. The back cover headline is “Sexy Sunrises are on your horizon.”

By the way, this hot catalog was not sent to Gilda. It was sent to me! I’m flattered Venus considers me, or Gilda, sexy. But I can’t help but thinking Venus and others of its ilk should adopt a Good Housekeeping-like creed—if their products don’t turn you into the personification of sexiness (at least to your partner’s satisfaction) in say, 60 days, you should get your money back. Or at the very least, they should remove you from their mailing list.

Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is no Sandy Koufax. You’ll remember the southpaw ace of the Los Angeles Dodgers forsook pitching the opening game of the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins because it fell on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Judaism’s holiest day. (For the record, Koufax pitched and won two other games in leading the Dodgers to the baseball title.) Stewart chooses to ignore, and even mock, Jewish holidays, working on Yom Kippur and other holidays including this week’s Passover celebration. Most Jews I know have a liberal sense of humor about our religion, so we laugh along with Stewart’s comedic send-ups. 

Monday night, however, one of The Daily Show’s best puns went unappreciated by what must have been an audience with few if any Jews, given that it was the night of the first seder of Passover. There wasn’t even a hint of laughter when Stewart’s reporting on the president’s trip to Israel was accompanied by the caption, “Barack Atah Adonai.” For the non-believers out there, and anyone else Hebraically challenged, Barack Atah Adonai is a play on “Baruch Atah Adonai” which begins every blessing and means “blessed are you, Lord our God.” In Stewart’s version, the Hebrew translates to “Barack (Obama), you are God.”  

Uh-oh: Retirement may cost me about 50 bucks. Since I don’t travel out of LaGuardia Airport too often these days I was unaware traffic lights were installed on an overhang above the departure ramp of the main terminal. As I drove Ellie and Donny to the United Airlines door, I was softly questioned by my son-in-law about gliding through a red light. 

I stopped at the next one and noticed a camera stationed to the right of the red sphere. Dread descended. No doubt my picture was taken at the prior light. No doubt I’ll get a notice in the mail in a few weeks demanding payment for going through a red light. No doubt my defense that no lights previously impeded my progress down the ramp will not absolve me from having to pay for the infraction. Ah well, it’s a small price to pay for an otherwise enjoyable retirement.

Matzo Balls, Soft and Fluffy

For dinner tonight, Gilda and I polished off the last of the matzo balls and chicken soup left over from Friday night’s first Passover seder. Gilda boils light, fluffy matzo balls, just like my mother used to make. I know there are some who consider a matzo ball’s density the true test of culinary art. Suffice to say, I subscribe to the belief that hard matzo balls could substitute for cannon balls, while dissolve-in-your-mouth matzo balls are to die for.

One year during the seder in my parents’ home, the matzo balls almost turned into an orthodontic disaster. Without telling anyone, my mother hid a blanched almond inside each matzo ball. Her unsuspecting family and guests assumed they would easily melt inside their mouths. The crunch and resistance we all felt made everyone uneasy. Too embarrassed to say anything, we wondered if she had somehow mixed chicken bones into the matzo ball batter. When she finally noticed everyone avoiding finishing their matzo balls, she volunteered that she had hidden a “surprise” inside each sphere. Enlightened and relieved, we gobbled up the rest, and thereafter joked about it at all subsequent seders.

We had a small, manageable crowd of 18 hungry souls at the seder table this year. For the first time in many years my cousin Michael, with his wife, Mary, drove up from Baltimore. Michael filled the void created when his mother, the last survivor of our aunts and uncles, moved last year to Kansas with his younger brother, Steve, and his wife, Grace. It felt right to have someone representing Aunt Lily’s side of the family.

This was the first year Finley “participated.” He sat next to his mother, for the most part transfixed, intently watching and smiling as we performed various rituals and recited prayers. I think he most appreciated the grape juice he drank as part of the ceremony. He must have been enthralled with the proceedings as he stayed awake talking to his crib companions for about an hour after Allison and Dan put him to bed.

So far, Finley has not discovered the joy of matzo ball soup. But if he’s anything like his dad, he will. One of Dan’s lasting memories of my mother was her spoon-feeding him matzo ball soup when we’d visit her in Brooklyn. GG’s (Grandma Gilda’s) matzo balls are sure to find a soft spot in Finley’s heart in the months ahead.

Magic City Memories

Tonight, as family and friends sit around our Seder table, a nostalgic look at Miami Beach in 1959 airs on the Starz network. “Magic City” is a typical TV depiction of a bygone era, with beautiful people populating the picture.

I've been to Miami Beach many, many times, the first trip in January 1958. On doctor’s advice, my mother took my sister and me to the warmth of Florida. Ten-year-old Lee and our mother had just recovered from whooping cough, I from the flu.

It was Lee’s and my first time flying. We flew Eastern Airlines, a four-engine propeller plane. During the flight a stewardess allowed us to enter the cockpit and observe the pilot and crew. When we returned to our seats she pinned wings on my shirt.

In Miami Beach we stayed in South Beach on Collins Avenue, at the Surfside, an art deco hotel next to its twin, the Seaside (not sure of that second hotel’s name). The hotels served as sentinels flanking a shared pool, with the ocean a few steps down from the elevated pool area. My father’s friend Beno and his son Oscar ran the hotel’s food service, so we ate well. Except that eight-year-old Murray was a finicky eater, meaning my diet basically consisted of hamburgers and French fries, or anything else greasy. Every meal. Midway through our two week stay I developed a skin rash on my chest. The doctor informed my mother the rash was a reaction to all the fried food and grease I was eating. He counseled a change of diet. Knowing her pencil-thin son would surely vanish into thin air if she enforced this suggested regimen, she merely thanked him and relied on my discretion to not eat as many fries with each meal.

We did all the touristy things you’re supposed to do. We ate in Wolfie’s deli. We stopped at the Nosh-a-Rye, famous for its ice cream desserts. We gaped at the Fontainebleau Hotel. We saw a show at the aquarium, as well as at the Parrot Jungle. One day, I went with Oscar’s 12-year-old son to fish off the piers. This was my first time fishing, and I even caught a bone fish, a slim fish about a foot long with sharp teeth. But what I most remember about the fishing expedition was the return bus trip to the hotel. I’d been taking Brooklyn city buses for the better part of three years to and from school. However, I had never encountered a bus like the one in Miami Beach. To exit the back door, you had to wait for a green light to appear above the door and then you pushed the door out. My first embarrassment was just standing there in the stairwell, waiting for the bus driver to open the door. After being told I had to push the door open, my next, more devastating embarrassment ensued. Try as I might, I lacked the might to push the door open. How humiliating! Oscar’s son managed to thrust his arm above my head and push open the door. My excitement at catching the bone fish exited with us as we stepped onto the curb.

Lee and I agree our stay in Miami Beach was not too memorable, though I was a little ahead of the curve when push-door buses came to New York shortly thereafter. I wisely never lined up as the first one seeking to get off the bus. I’m recording “Magic City.” I don’t expect it to be as good as “Mad Men” as a period piece, but I’m sure I will feel a certain bit of pride and identification that I was there when it all began.

A Thoughtful Gathering

Passover begins Monday night with the first Seder, a time when Jews the world over gather to boast about their participation in one of at least three events: the shortest reading of the Haggadah on record; the longest reading of the Haggadah; or attendance at the largest Seder they’ve ever been to.

The annual communion of the clan (more than any other holiday, secular or religious, Passover brings Jews back to the tribal table), the Seder once was a highly structured ritual. Today, however, it has become more personalized for many households, with their own texts and innovative practices, yet all retain the core story of the struggle for human rights and freedom.

It is not a moment of tranquility. There are more than enough arguments to last a full year until the next ingathering of the extended family. Some may be profound tensions between parents and siblings, friends and relatives. But most are grounded in whimsy, with more than a dash of love and a sprinkle of nostalgia.

There is, for instance, the debate on who made the best gefilte fish. Or whether soft or hard matzo balls are better. Or whether the horseradish was strong enough to make your eyes burn and nose run or barely worthy of its role to make us remember the cruel life of a slave.

Or whether it is better to have the children steal the Afikomen or have them find it after it has been hidden (sorry, it’s too much to explain to non-Jews the concept of an Afikomen—Google it if you’re interested, which I hope you are).

How much to pay to redeem the Afikomen is a precedent-setting action. The first night’s payout sets the scale for the second night’s Seder. And do you compensate just the child who possesses the Afikomen, or do you extend the largess to the whole brood, with a little extra for the main claimant?

If no young children are present, there’s the taunting demand that the youngest adult read The Four Questions, usually resolved when a kind soul suggests everyone will sing along to relieve the embarrassment.

An old-fashioned Seder, complete from start to finish with the meal separating the two halves of the Haggadah, can take upwards of four hours. Newer versions can clock in at the same length, or longer. It all depends on how many tangential discussions are encouraged in the first half, how many songs are sung in the second.

Through it all, if you’re truly honest with yourself, there are more guests sitting around the table than just those before your eyes. The spirit of your parents, aunts and uncles who have passed away. Siblings and cousins, nieces and nephews, friends, perhaps even your own children, who live in communities too distant to bridge. Though we’re ostensibly gathered to celebrate the emergence of the Israelites from slavery and their birth as a free people, the Seder’s deeper purpose cements individual families, building generation to generation rituals of shared storytelling and memory.