Retelling the Story
To the editor:
Celebrating Passover is indeed a challenge this year [“Year of the Plague,” April 9]. But such challenges are in fact central to the story of Passover itself.
It is a mistake to believe that reinventing the haggadah is a modern idea. My mother has for decades used one with different color inks to mark which words, and, in some cases, which letters in a word, were added over hundreds of generations. Its dozens of layers span generations of rabbinic interpretation like links in a chain, right up to the 20th-century additions of Miriam’s cup and questions for LGBT people.
Surely, as we sit trapped at home, we can appreciate freedom in a way that we never could before. As my 14-day quarantine after a visit to my family in New York City ended on the first night of Passover, the transition from slavery to freedom was clear to me.
As for the wine spilled from our cups during the recitation of the ten plagues, the rabbis teach us that, even as we celebrate our freedom, we must lessen our joy by reducing the cup of wine, because real people suffered real harm. Acknowledging the suffering all around us in the midst of the joy of the seder is profoundly important now, lest we become complacent in the safety of our own homes.
My family gathered around our laptops and dinner tables and spent four hours singing, laughing, and enjoying the retelling of the Passover story via Facebook Portal. I found it enormously moving, given the circumstances. That is precisely the point of the seder: reconnecting not just with family but with a tradition that offers connection both with the past and with our present, finding new layers of meaning in ancient and modern text alike.
May we all celebrate and enjoy our holidays together again soon, regardless of tradition or text.
Jay Gurewitsch
Provincetown
Passover Seder 2020
To the editor:
On the improvisational nature of the Passover seder — I felt this to be especially true as we stumbled our way through our “virtual seder” with varying degrees of comfort with the Zoom technology.
The sense of loss and of connection was strong as I watched my sisters, their husbands, their children, and my parents going through the ritual of symbolic foods and essential questions. When my nephew asked why we recline on this night and not on other nights, I silently answered that, personally, I was reclining because of the symptoms of the virus causing me physical misery.
But finding humor even in the midst of misery is a distinctly Jewish trait, so when the seder was over, I sent my father a meme I knew he would appreciate: “Commemorating not getting killed by a plague during a plague that you hope you’re not getting killed by is probably as Jewish as you can get.”
He returned the favor by reminding me of my favorite Passover joke, about the blind man who picks up a piece of matzo and exclaims, “Who wrote this shit?”
Montana Miller
Bowling Green, Ohio
The Time for Scrutiny
To the editor:
I subscribed to the Independent today because I just heard Truro Select Board Chair Jan Worthington attack something you wrote as “irresponsible” and say, “now is not the time” for such critical news stories.
It is the second thing I’ve heard from Ms. Worthington in the past month that offended me — the first being her automated phone call to my home in Truro telling me I shouldn’t be here.
Now is exactly the time for news people to scrutinize the actions of government. Please keep at it, and thank you.
Damon Katz
Boston and Truro
Kudos
To the editor:
I am proud to be a new subscriber to the Independent. Particular thanks for your editorial about the Truro Select Board’s statement on “outsiders.”
Courageous, well thought out, and well written.
Curtis Hartman
Truro
