Passover 2022 begins at sundown on April 15 and ends at sundown April 22.
Passover, the celebration of the Exodus from Egypt, from slavery to freedom, is perhaps the central holiday of the Jewish people. We remember the Exodus by eating no leavened products, since the Israelites had to leave Egypt in a hurry and didn’t have time for their bread to rise. The central ceremony of this holiday, the seder, is not held in the synagogue — rather, it is a ritual meal held in the home, to which we invite friends and family. There are two seders, held on the first and second nights of the eight day holiday.
I have attended seders since I was in grad school in the 1970’s, where one year I decided I wanted to attend one, and went to Hillel to see what they were doing. The Hillel at the U of Chicago, instead of holding a communal seder had local families sign up to host one or more students. I hadn’t grown up with seders — my mother, who completely transformed our kosher kitchen for the holiday, prepared the meal, but we had no men in the family who could lead a seder the way my mother remembered her orthodox father leading them. This introduction to a modern family seder was transformative, and even when I was doing nothing else at all religious I tried to find seders to attend.
For the past two years, I have attended virtual seders on Zoom. The first year I attended one held by the JVP chapter in Seattle (I live in Tucson). Last year I wanted to be with people I know, so I attended one led by a member of my synagogue.
This year my synagogue held an outdoor in-person seder (the safety committee has only allowed eating out of doors) and I decided to attend. So many people signed up that we were divided into four groups, each with its own leaders. Sometimes it was antiphonal, with different parts of the seder being heard from around the courtyard. I was with a group of people I know from the Zoom classes I’ve been taking during the pandemic, and it was led by the same woman whose seder I Zoomed in on last year.
It felt weird. I was seeing so many people in person whom I only knew as boxes on a Zoom grid, as well as some I knew before COVID but hadn’t seen in several years. One person came up to me and said that she’s never met me, but she knows me from the things I say in class, and it’s true — very deep and intimate things come up in our classes.
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