Rant #2,382: Celebration!

Tonight at sundown is Passover, one of the most joyous holidays celebrated by Jews the world over.

This year, when we ask the four questions beginning with "Why is this night different from other nights?," we will certainly have an answer to that question that we never thought we would ever have in our lifetimes.

We are celebrating the eight-day holiday--which begins at sundown tonight--with seders that will be quite different from any we have had before.

Due to the coronavirus and social distancing edicts, this most joyous of family holidays will be celebrated in isolation from our loved ones. Instead of having friends and family at our Passover table, we will simply have those who we are closest with, figuratively and literally.

In my house, where my parents live on the first floor and my family lives on the second, we are going to have two seders. Sure, the five of us--myself, my wife and son, and my parents--do interact with each other, we feel it is safer, in particular since my wife is on the front lines as a bank teller. My father, in particular, is susceptible to just about anything due to his recent physical problems, so we feel it is better just to celebrate alone this year.

And just to put off any fears you might have for my father, he is actually doing quite fine with his health in recent weeks. We simply don't want to push it, and we simply don't want to push it on my mother, either, who has the regular aches and pains you might expect from an 89 year old, but is otherwise healthier than all of us.

Here is what I wrote about Passover in Rant No. 1,185, dated April 14, 2014. Although edited a bit, it still stands true today:

"For Jews around the world, tonight is the first night of Passover, which means tonight is the first seder that we have, the first of two during the eight-day observance.

Passover celebrates the Jews' flight from Egypt in Biblical times, and it also solidifies the fact that the Jewish religion remains a strong one.

It is a family holiday, one where young and old alike gather to go over the traditions of the holiday, first and foremost, and at the center of the celebration, the recitation of "The Four Questions."

Matzoh signifies the most visible link to the holiday.

When the Jews, who were kept in slavery by the Egyptians but were later expelled, fled Egypt, they had to do it quickly. Whatever foodstuffs they brought with them had to be used quickly, and thus, any materials that they used to create bread did not have time to rise, and became a cracker-like food known as matzoh.

So matzoh, rather than bread, is eaten on this holiday, and personally, I love matzoh, and for eight days, that is what I exist on.

Matzoh may be the most visible link to Passover, but the most important link during the holiday is known as "The Four Questions," when the youngest children attending the seder ask the adults "Why is this night different than all other nights?"

Actually, anyone can read "The Four Questions," but the younger people usually do it. It is the real centerpiece of the celebration, and it is something that all participants look forward to.

The first two nights are the seder nights, with families gathering to look at the Jews' flight from Egypt, and the modern seders are real family gatherings, with the traditions reinforced.

Modern influences are also included, and new Kosher for Passover foods are always being created to whet the appetites of all who are present.

And other things permeate the seder, including world events.

The holiday takes lots of preparation, lots of cooking, but it is all well worth it.

For my non-Jewish friends, this is an interesting time of year, as the holidays for Jews and non-Jews kind of run into each other.

Palm Sunday recently passed, Good Friday is on Friday, and Easter Sunday is coming up this Sunday.

To Jew and non-Jew alike, these holidays ground us, and really bring into focus what is truly important in our lives.

We all need this affirmation of the family as the most important thing in our lives, and these holidays give us the forum to not only celebrate the holiday, but to celebrate the strength of our families.

So when I am all matzohed out, I really don't mind, because I am with my family, and that is the most important thing, isn't it?"

I would like to add one more thing to this, something about the holiday that connects what the holiday stands for and what we are going through today.

The existence of the coronavirus has forced us to quarantine ourselves to a certain extent, keep ourselves away from others so that the disease does not spread.

I had forgotten up until recently that an element of the flight of the Jews from Egypt was also a quarantine of sorts.

According to the Bible, God released the various plagues on the Egyptians, payback for treating the Jews so badly. These 10 plagues included water turning to blood, and the increase of pestilence on the Egyptians, including a barrage of lice and flies.

But the final plague was the deal breaker, the one that convinced the pharaoh to release the Jews from bondage: the killing of the first-born children of Egyptian families.

The way that Jewish families alerted God that they were Jewish and should be protected from this final plague was that they were to sequester themselves in whatever dwelling they had, not go outside for any reason, and put animal blood on the entrances, all to alert God that they should be protected from this most horrible of the plagues.

The Jews did this en masse, the Egyptians were struck, and they saw the might of a God that the Jews loved and trusted, and thus, the pharaoh had no choice--with his own son dead from the plague--to release the Jews from bondage.

And thus was a central point of the entire Passover story, that the Jews, like our society today, quarantined itself and came out in a better position to fight the ills that befell them.

Sure, it is a ancient story, and it should be taken as such, but that is one of the central themes of the holiday, and why we can ask ourselves, "Why is this night different from other nights?"

The answer back then and the answer now might be slightly different, but the one thing that was true back then and true today is that we are doing what we are going for our overall betterment.

Happy Passover to all my Jewish friends, and speak to you again tomorrow.