Let's Get Free

Passover/Pesach was always one of my favorite Jewish Holy Days. It's all about slavery and liberation, struggle, work, and exodus. It's also about hubris and genocide, zionism and violence, and i've always found in the various Hagadd-whatever the plural is (Josh?) a great deal to wrestle with (to steal a phrase from Erin Scharff.) Over the last four years, Passover became even more important - a time to spend with new friends and surrogate family and think very critcally about organizing, social justice, Judaiism, and matzoh. (I LOVVVVE matzoh. I could eat it all year. But i don't.) Sometimes, the seder even became an act of protest, as with the one Josh and Katie led at the Better Way Village, with like forty or 50 people sitting in a huge circle on Beinecke.

So it's odd and a bit disappointing not doing a first seder because no one in my family really cares enough to organize one. And tonight, returning to the bizarre (and bazaar) family seder zoos at my great aunt and uncle's on 94th street, with thirty or so people each year shouting out feminine pronouns whenever masculine pronouns are employed by whoever the author of whatever the Haggadah by great uncle's used for the last four decades is, will be hard as well. At some point, all the adults who've been doing this seder for more than ten or fifteen years will start singing the University of Illinois fight song. (This has historically been when i leave the room in mock embarassment. It's actually kind of endearing. You sort of have to be there, I guess.) But after making passover something else, something which held a great deal more meaning for me, this feels a little like failure. And there will be lots of fucked-up family drama I really don't want to have to deal with and shouldn't get into here. Alright. Enough whining. I hope all di yidn who read this, and the goyim too, have good passovers.

In happier news, i may have found some work doing some research for one of my professors, which i'm happy about.