20 april 2005

I am a little excited right now.

I am not excited about my lab work, which is predictably repetitive, lonely, and not particularly relevant to my landscape architecture life. Try as I did to make my intentions clear to my supervising professor, he either did not understand me or did not choose to listen. I just wanted to learn about contaminated soils. But instead I am learning lots of other things about soils, and nothing about contamination. Sigh.

Instead I am excited about Passover. Passover is my favorite holiday. It is the only Jewish holiday I have brought with me into my nonreligious adult life. It is a holiday of feasting and drinking sweet wine and telling stories and singing, and I love it. Admittedly I have tweaked the holiday a little, so that for me it has become more of a politically geared Thanksgiving, but hey. Cultural adaptation.

Passover also has a big neat-o factor. As in, I think it is a cool holiday for non-Jews to attend because it is full of ritual and symbolism, but it is also (at least in my incarnation) friendly and positive. At least, as friendly and positive as a day marking the slaughter of first-born children can be. So it is also thought-provoking.

Beth and I hosted Passover at our house in Eugene. It was a lot of fun, especially last year when the early spring allowed us to move the dinner to our backyard, surrounded by candles and our garden. It gave us a chance to invite people together who we knew from many different contexts. There were always one or two Jewish friends who enjoyed celebrating with us.

When I realized I would be away from Eugene for Passover this year, I was sad. I felt how I imagine people feel when they can’t get home for Christmas, but without any of the ambiguity about seeing extended family in close quarters. Eventually I decided to host a Passover dinner here. And now it is in three days.

My guest list so far has at least one person each from Spain, Italy, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Venezuela, and Turkey. My guest list so far has no Jews. My guest list so far has no one who has ever been to a Passover Seder before, or even, I think, even heard of one.

My guests are being very brave. They are cooking tsimmes and haroset and kugel and macaroons, and they have no idea what these things are or what they should taste like. There are no Jewish sections in Amsterdam supermarkets, so I tried to find recipes with no matzah or matzah meal or farfel. In emergencies I will just tell them to use breadcrumbs. No one will know.

I am worried if everyone will like the Seder. I think it might be confusing, because the English is strange and antiquated, and English is not the strong suit of all my guests. I am worried that this single event will be, for many of them, their only impression of Judaism; that this contextless and heavily adulterated Passover seder will expand for them to become their entire idea of a whole religion.

I am worried about feeling a little ridiculous singing Da’yenu by myself as twenty people watch. What if you went to a Christmas dinner and one person sang the carols solo while everyone else listened quietly? That would be very, very strange.