Passover Festivities

We were all pretty lethargic and no one in our family ventured into the synagogue on the eve of the holiday. We spoke about it, but it never happened. I invited an assortment of people to join us in the lengthy meal we call a "seder", but everyone was busy. I ran out of Jews to invite and invited every Moslem friend that e-mailed me or left me text messages or who had called me to wish me a happy holiday, but they all had other plans too. I called up Mahmood who was working on a "big Hollywood film" being filmed on the Mt. of Olives, but he was actually going to an open Seder that was being run by this guy who ran Seders up in Daramsala, India, where the Dalai Lama lives. It'll probably be far more interesting than ours, but ours will have better food. I thought how odd it would be for any Arab sitting at my table, while we tell the story of the "evil Egyptians" and celebrate their demise and our Exodus from Egypt.

Then I thought of all the Israelis travelling to Sinai for the holiday thinking how inappropriate that is because you're supposed to be leaving Egypt, not running to it during Passover.

So in the end it was just us. I thought of being inventive like dressing up like a biblical character and playing out the Exodus. I told Hubby about it, and he said he'd like to dress up like Cecil B. DeMille. So much for my creativenss.

I tried to bring a big of originality to the Seder. I read from the book we all read during the Seder called the Haggadah. I bought one that a friend had written, called the Holistic Haggadah, which brings in stuff from other religions and tells you to "eat the matza in silence, remembering the times you felt restricted and felt like a slave." Hell I feel like that every time I have to wake up at 6:00 am to go to work. I read from the book, thinking my grown-up children would appreciate the stories and continued reading "Not yet, not yet......" And my kids roared with laughter mocking me in Russian, "Nyet, Nyet....Slava! Slava!"

My entire family was drunk with laughter and I was the only one drinking 4 cups of wine. Go figure.

And tomorrow I hope to go to a New Age Festival called Boombamela. Apparently 50 Palestinians from Gaza are invited for a dialogue. I've got to be there to participate. This is, of course, the holiday of freedom. And we've got to give them a taste of it too.