What will we say next year?

Letter from Away — April 30, 2024

I am in the midst of helping a friend host her first Seder. We’ve known each other for most of her life; she came of age around the corner from where we lived when our kids were growing up. She’s been to quite a few Passover celebrations through the years, most of them with Auciellos, and has been consulting me as she plans a ritual meal with lots of food rules, stories and, if we’re lucky, songs.

My friend and her sweetie want their families there, and so her Seder will happen during the weekend that falls somewhere in the middle of the week-long observance.

I am hosting a much smaller Seder on the first night, the Monday before. Just me and those members of the Auciello family who live in Maine, maybe the last-minute stranger who is invited to these things. Being Passover, which from here on I will call by its Hebrew name, Pesach, the amount of food preparation involved doesn’t radically decrease as the number around the table grows smaller.

A few days ago, when our conversation about the menu yielded the fact that some Jews eat rice and peanuts during the holiday and others don’t, my friend hinted that she was unsure what type of Judaism I practice. Yeah. Me, too.

My mother’s family observed what is called Conservative Judaism. It covers a lot of ground and sits somewhere between Orthodox and Reform in terms of history and practice. Jews may also identify as Haredi or Reconstructionist or in other ways that fall somewhere in a wide spectrum of affiliation.

Somewhere in the 1970s I started thinking of myself as a secular Jew. I do not engage in daily practices of specific Jewish rituals. I do not attend Shabbat services every week. I view Judaism as a home-based practice and appreciate the observances and practices that take place here. I generally light candles and say a prayer on Friday nights. I host or participate in celebrations for Pesach and Chanukah. If I remember to buy poppy seeds I make Hamataschen for Purim. I light Yahrzeit candles and sometimes even say Kaddish to honor loved ones who have died.

I listen to Kol Nidre online once in a while at home, and go to the synagogue when I am moved to join others, fasting on Yom Kippur or dancing with the Torahs during Simchat Torah, which is also my mother’s birthday.

It’s the food I take most seriously, a legacy that has been passed on to me through countless generations of Jewish mothers. Some tastes and smells bring my grandmother, my Sabta, right into the room with me. Last week as I slowly rendered chicken fat and skin, adding in chopped onions to make schmaltz and grebenes, as I mixed and chilled the ingredients for matzo balls, as the soup finished its two-day simmer, the sense of sufficiency that is central to the Pesach ritual rose in me.

Aside from the holidays named above, most of my spiritual ritual is earth-based. Common Ground Country Fair to celebrate the harvest, May Day to sleep on the ground, cook at an open hearth, and feel the earth warm and come alive.

This year, the first Seder comes at the end of Earth Day, which I like to spend outside or at least with windows open, listening to birds or the sounds made by wind, inhaling whatever scents the planet offers, when the smells of exhaust and off-gassing laundry detergent are not too strong, feeling the ground under me.

Since the 1980s, when people ask my religion, my usual answer is Judeo-Pagan. I believe all life has spirit and value and that the workings of this Earth are too complex for the human mind to comprehend, let alone control. I am the kind of Jew who tries to be good and uses ritual as a way to explore my place in life, the kind who seeks connection and empathy.

There is a difference between a religious requirement and a cultural tradition. At Pesach, we are required to refrain from eating foods with leavening agents, but must eat bitter foods, dip herbs in salt water, not once but twice before eating them, and sit comfortably — reclining at the table. We must tell the story of Moses and of the slavery of the Jewish people in Egypt and of their escape to the Sinai desert where a burning bush gave Moses some words to carve on stone and teach to future generations.

Culturally, I grew up sitting on regular chairs while my grandfather, and later my uncle, sat with cushions and led the family Seder. We told the story a particular way, considering it complete when we had consumed four glasses of wine, opened the door for Elijah, stolen and returned the middle matzo, asked the four questions, and sang a rousing chorus of Chad Gadya. The last thing we did was to offer the diaspora wish, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

I am the sort of Jew who never learned the words to all the songs. When leading a Seder, I stop during the four questions and ask the table for their answers. When we raise the matzo, calling it “the bread of affliction,” I often consider the call to “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” by reaching out to find strangers to invite to the table.

When we dip parsley in salt water I suggest that, while the first time it is for the tears of our ancestors, the second is for those of Pharoah’s subjects who died, during the final plague and in the closing of the Red Sea. And if I mention Jerusalem at all, it is as a prayer of peace.

This year, as in most years, I bought matzo that was made in Israel. But this year I had to think about it. Those with little power must exercise it where we can, so I avoid putting money into the hands of those whose actions feel wrong to me. Earlier this month, while in the Boston area, I shopped for a few Pesach essentials — the religiously required matzo and the culturally traditional gefilte fish. The holiday’s floating nature means that supermarkets near me do not always carry the things I need at the time I need them.

I am the sort of Jew who tries, through my actions, to be part of a world in which a messiah would feel welcome and safe and unnecessary. Standing in front of the display at a the Whole Foods, I crossed two lines in my ethical universe. I gave money to Jeff Bezos, which I avoid, and also to the State of Israel, which has recently lost my political and commercial support.

I have been to Jerusalem a few times. It is beautiful and inspiring and complicated and frustrating. It is not a place that should have the flag of any nation flying on its ancient walls. Its streets are filled to bursting with people of dozens of religious disciplines and cultural traditions and they mostly get along. But the peace is not universal. Relationships are fragile and the Palestinian merchants in the street often go home to communities that have been pushed so close to the margins that they sometimes end up behind wire-crowned walls.

I love the old city and the land that surrounds it. I love those of my family that live there and wish them health and safety. While I sat under the light of the full moon with family, in the safety of American hegemony, cousins and strangers around the world set Seder tables for the 133 hostages still missing after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. I do not know how to heal them but I am tired of revenge.

If telling the story of the Exodus only feeds our anger and not our compassion, I am the kind of Jew who wishes she had skipped the really tasty organic whole wheat matzo this year. It is never supposed to taste good, the bread of affliction. As some of us celebrate the end of oppression, the dry taste of suffering should remind us that there is still much to do, once we drink the last cup and rise from the pillows.

Shlomit Auciello is an award-winning writer, photographer, and human ecologist who has lived in Midcoast Maine since 1988. Letter from Away has appeared online and in print, on and off since 1992.