Tomorrow is the start of Passover, and for the first time ever, I’m doing nothing.
Nothing. As in bupkus.
To be fair, I guess that having my mother come up to Connecticut from Manhattan doesn’t really qualify as nothing, but compared to last year when my partner and I hosted a quasi-traditional Seder for 22 (meaning that there was a lot of explaining to be done: we were 3 Catholics, 1 devout Episcopalian, 2 Buddhists, 14 Agnostics, and 2 totally secular Jews), things seem very low key this Passover.
Certain years hit me this way, and I guess that this is one of them. Like the ancient Hebrews, my family is scattered to the winds: we’re in Connecticut, Ann Arbor, northern Virginia, Florida, Wyoming, Arizona, Boston. Some of us have children; some of us don’t. The older people in our family are mostly gone now, my father included, and Passover — with fifteen or sixteen of us sitting around my cousin’s enormous table with my father, aunt and uncle, younger cousins, and grandmother, trying to keep up with the readings, trying to remember from year to year who accidentally spilled the Manischewitz on the Ten Plagues of Egypt, listening to my grandmother’s hearing aids whistle while the four questions were being asked, and then helping the little ones search for the Afikommen — this Passover as I remember it doesn’t exist anymore.
We live in a world of distances, in spite of Twitter and Facebook and fleeting, impersonal contact so relentless that it can be maddening; I don’t want to listen to my four year old cousin Scarlett ask the questions in a 5,000 year old language all the way from Ann Arbor via speakerphone or Skype. I want her to be sitting next to me, on a phonebook, dipping the tip of her pinky into the same thimble-full of wine that her great grandmother gave me as a child. I don’t want to merely wish that my cousin Harris, who died suddenly and tragically last July, was sitting at the table on my other side, trying to get everyone to sing in the same key at the same time before explaining in exhaustive, Talmudic detail why the story of Passover is really just a metaphor for the triumph of light over darkness (whereupon he’d burst into the Louvin Brothers’ version of Amazing Grace, ending the song with a wry “um, sorry, wrong religion”). I just want him, and all the rest of them, here with me.
I want to eat my grandmother’s leaden matzo balls, which weighed in the neighborhood of a pound each; I want to drink the sweet wine that was so syrupy it’d make my teeth feel like they were going fly right out of my head like Chiclets; I want to eat the macaroons that came in the can, that could double as door-stops and make Laduree break out in a rash.
On Passover, I want to slow down, hit the re-wind button, and break bread with the ghosts. I do not want to buy someone else’s pre-fabricated, takeout matzo balls, or the over-salted soup that an anonymous line chef made according to a large-yield commercial recipe. Because to me, that’s just going through the motions, and frankly, there’s nothing worse than just going through the motions.
Tomorrow night, I’ll be thinking of all my cousins and my dad, my aunt and uncle and my grandparents, and everyone who should be with us around the Seder table; if I make only one dish, it’ll be haroset, a mixture of apples, nuts, and sweet wine. Traditionally, it symbolizes the mortar that the slaves used to build the pyramids. For me, it will be a reminder of our being stuck together like glue, regardless of where we are.
Haroset
There is no right or wrong way to make this dish; Ashkenazic Jews tend to stick to nuts and apples sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon and sugar, and then moistened with sweet wine. The Sephardim (Jews whose ancestors hail from the Levant) take that to another level, combining dried fruits–apricots, dates, prunes–with nuts that can include pistachios and almonds (and chestnuts, if you’re Italian), and then blending it with dry wine, or sometimes, brandy.
6 apples, peeled, cored, and coarsely chopped (I prefer Braeburn or Granny Smith)
2/3 cup chopped unsalted walnuts
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/4 cup sweet wine
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl; cover and chill for 2 hours before serving.
Makes approximately 4 cups
