Last days of Pesach. Focusing on the redemption, the crossing of the sea, Miriam and dancing, the Ball Shem Tov meal at the end of this holiday. This holiday where matzah shortages in chain supermarkets in California made the news. This holiday where Obama and Clinton duked it out, with Basketball and Hockey playoffs, and hundreds of religious Jews praying mincha at Disneyland together. This holiday that people speak of in the past tense while it is still going on. As in, “my Passover was great” when they mean the seder, and not the holiday. Or do they mean the holiday. This holiday that converged with Earth Day, meaning you could eat your matzah and represent for the earth – it was the convergence of all things crunchy. This holiday where I explained that the cup of Eliyahu is not really for Eliyahu, but that it represents the fifth cup – not four – that some rabbis in the Talmud believed needed to be included in the seder. The argument was solved by the compromise of the fifth cup. And they wrote that when Eliyahu comes to herald the Messiah and this and other questions will be answered, we will know how many cups we were to drink at the seder. Hence it became Eliyahu’s cup. Not Eliyahu in the some Santa Clause kind of way, swooping down on the Jewish homes to swig some bad kiddush wine. I mean what kind of junk did we teach our kids, and what did they feed us? And this holiday where the Muslim Student Union at UCI unveils another outrageous campaign against Jewish students by proclaiming that there is a Holocaust in Palestine and how can Jewish organizations think this meshugass is going to go away by playing patty-cake with the chancellor – it won’t – its gonna get a whole lot worse before you kick these shmucks off campus. And this Holiday where the Hebrew Hammers powered only by sheer will won 14-6, by not swinging the bat. Where they partied on Matzah Pizzas much like the one pictured here. This holiday where all kinds of clever marketing gimmicks were in the works, but the Matzah Song hit a chord. This holiday where we came to the realization that we are all slaves to high oil prices. This holiday where Amy Winehouse is sitting in jail again. This holiday where the weather is wacky and and the stars of aligned, and the Tigers win four straight games. This holiday where you cling to the hope that you can change the world in some significant way by speaking about it at the Seder Table, but you know, deep down, that talk is cheap, and words cheaper, and that the only thing to do is act. Mitzvah. This holiday is about the act. The act of redemption. This holiday where you come up with wonderful ideas because you are elated and high on life, and that you realize that you’ll never get everything done in your life that you hope to. Happy Passover. Happy Redemption Days. and Shabbat Shalom.
Matzah Pizza courtesy of Ben Perelstein
