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“You want to do what?”
“Go to a diner and have matzo ball soup.”
“No Seder?”
“Nope. No Seder.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“But I thought, knowing your family…”
I met Jon last September. I knew I could get serious about him when he survived my family’s raucous Thanksgiving with his sense of humor unscathed. He enjoyed the way we drew straws for the honor of carving the turkey. I won this year and did my best as the family’s only graduate from the Cordon Bleu. He really loved the way the cooking was shared. Everyone participated – even my sister’s five-year-old.
Then my parents invited him to their annual Chanukah latke-fest and not only did he gobble up more than his fair share, he actually took a shift at the frying pan.
“I was so sure that your family would do a world class Seder.”
“Nope. The women in my family don’t do Passover.”
It’s not about being religious or not religious. We certainly do the other holidays – or semi-secular versions of them – but we just skip Passover and that’s it. Jon was mystified and I didn’t know how to explain it to him.
“We just don’t do Passover. I can’t remember a single one.”
“Your sister must be having one. She’s got a son getting ready for his bar mitzvah. She must be doing one.”
“No, Sue likes to send out for Chinese while her husband and kids go to the Seder at the temple.”
“This is weird, isn’t it? I mean, given the way your family pulls out all the stops.”
“I guess you’re right, but that’s just the way it is. My dad used to go to a friend’s house and that was it. He took me and my sister when we were little – that is until we decided to be like the other women in the family and skip it.”
“And you really don’t know why? You can’t tell me that you never wondered about it. It’s so strange. Don’t you want to know why?”
“I think you’re blowing this out of proportion.”
But Jon had succeeded in planting a tiny seed. I really didn’t know why my party and food-loving family skipped one of the major party and food opportunities in the Jewish calendar. I called my sister.
“Why are you asking me? Ask Mom.”
“She’s on that cruise.”
“You can call ship-to-shore – of course that’ll give her a heart attack when she sees the bill and…”
“I don’t have to show her the bill. I could just call or… I’ll just e-mail her. She’s bound to find her way to the computer room sooner or later.”
“Good idea. But now that you’ve brought it up – do you have any ideas about why?”
“No, you?”
“I really don’t know. It must have been something that happened before we were born, or when we were just too little to remember.”
I sent Mom an e-mail and then called Aunt Sara, Dad’s sister. She wasn’t home but her husband was. Uncle Nathan is her second husband. They’ve been married for more than ten years.
“Something happened way before I met your aunt,” Nathan stated. “I think it had something to do with her father. Why don’t you ask your folks?”
“Already sent an e-mail. They’re on that Caribbean cruise. The one the company gave her for selling the most, five straight years in a row.”
“Right, I’ll have Sara call you as soon as she gets home from work.”
I couldn’t help it. Jon had managed to spark my curiosity. Now I really needed to know why the women in my family avoid Passover. If it had something to do with my grandfather on my father’s side, than I really should have e-mailed dad in the first place. I rectified that, but doubted that my dad would answer his e-mail promptly. He just wasn’t that into it. He’d recently retired from the family’s Kosher catering business, leaving Aunt Sara in the top spot. She was enjoying her new prestige and Dad was adjusting to not working – for the first time in his life.
Both of them began waiting tables, put in their time in the kitchen and moved up the chain of command in the business. When I graduated and came home from Paris there was a lot of talk about my following in their footsteps, but I nixed it immediately, making the way for Sara’s daughter, with her MBA, and Sara’s son, with his borsch-belt fantasies, to take over. There was never any question about my sister. She has a law degree and specializes in international contract negotiations. She wasn’t an easy fit with my cousin’s updated aspirations for the family business – which includes a very successful line of Kosher vegetarian frozen entrees.
I waited and waited, wondering if there was a cousin or old friend of the family who knew the story, but I couldn’t think of anyone who was around since before I was born. And then Aunt Sara called.
“Your mother never told you about the Great Passover Rebellion of 1963?”
“Apparently not.”
“Lizzy, you come from a long line of hardworking women.”
“I know. Mom took fifteen minutes off to have us – or something like that.”
“And it’s not just your mother. Your grandmother on your mother’s side worked every day of her life in your grandfather’s clothing store on the Lower East Side and my mother worked her fingers to the bone in the catering business right from the start. I think your Dad and I started working when we were kids because it was easier for her to keep an eye on us if she brought us to work. That woman, no one worked harder than her.”
“I don’t remember her at all.”
“That’s because she died in 1963. You were only three. It would be really weird if you remembered her.”
“Did her death have anything to do with the Great Passover Rebellion of 1963?”
“Sort of. You see 1963 was a really important year in a lot of ways. There were changes brewing everywhere…”
“The boring old fifties were turning into the swinging sixties?”
“Yes, but it’s much more complicated than any of you young folks think. The 1950’s from the TV shows with housewives wearing pearls while vacuuming was bullshit. Women always worked and worked and worked. If you lived on a farm – you worked. If your husband had a store or any kind of business – you worked. If you were really lucky you had an education so you could teach, or be a nurse or a secretary. And if you were unlucky enough not to have a husband, or to have one who didn’t own a shop – you worked in a factory, took in laundry, baked pies for the neighbors, took care of other women’s children.
“As far as I’m concerned feminism wasn’t about going out of the house to work, it was about getting respect for the work we were already doing. And, if possible, getting the promotions and raises and decision-making opportunities that men had. 1963 was the year that the Feminine Mystique was published.”
“Betty Freidan, right?”
“Yes. It was a very important book. Your mother was the first one to read it. She loaned it to my mother and then to me. We passed it on to other friends. We talked about it all the time. I was tired of the way my father favored your father over me. I was really tired of that. My Fred was dying and I was putting in late hours at work followed by trips to the hospital. I had two small children who kept asking about their father. I don’t think I slept more than five hours a week and when your grandmother sat me and your mother down to discuss the who would cook what for Passover, I exploded.
“You have to realize the kind of man your grandfather was. He was mean and stingy but he was my father and I loved him. The thing I didn’t love was the way he treated my mother and me. We never received any praise – not even a thank-you when we’d gone above and beyond. We were just slaves.”
“And my mother?”
“When she joined the family, she became a slave too – at least on occasions like Passover when all the women were expected to spend days cooking and cleaning and…”
“But the business, the family business was catering why didn’t you just…”
“Your grandfather wouldn’t hear of it. We had to do everything, make everything ourselves. He said it wasn’t Pesach if he just brought the chickens home from the business or if we served gefilte fish from a jar.”
“You made gefilte fish from scratch?”
“Your grandmother did. She’d come home from a full day of work at the catering business and grind up the pike. Every year for days before the first Seder she’d be running on empty.”
“And grandpa?”
“He liked to be a king. You know that passage in the Haggadah about reclining in freedom?”
“Sort of. It’s been a while since I went to a Seder.”
“Well, it’s all about freedom -- the Jews leaving slavery and heading toward freedom. Your mother pointed out to me, and my mother, that every year we became slaves – kitchen slaves. At first we laughed. She was working in a department store at that point. She wanted to be a buyer in ladies dresses. She had taken a few business courses before she met your father, but we didn’t take her all that seriously. We didn’t think her work was as hard as what we did in the family business. But when we started to list all the things we’d have to do for the Seder –all the standing, chopping, slicing, grinding, baking, stewing, roasting, braising…. Father always insisted on chicken and brisket, his favorite braised celery, homemade honey cake – everything.
“That’s when my mother did something so entirely out of character that I thought I’d lost my mind. She took a deep breath and said – no Passover this year. If he wants to be King he can bring home the food and serve it himself.”
“The Great Passover Rebellion of 1963.”
“My father thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t. We told the men they could fend for themselves, cook, bring the food home, or go out, but we wouldn’t be there. The three of us went to a movie that night and then we went out to dinner. You should ask your father about it when he gets home from the cruise. He roasted a couple of chickens, brought home a few side dishes and cakes. He served, with a little help from my son who was eight years old, and made the best of it. My father was livid. He was ready to divorce my mother. It was the first and only time she’d stood up to him.”
“The next year there was no Passover again?”
“Mother died in early 1964. Spring came late that year and the night of the first Seder it was very, very cold. Your mother and I decided to go out for pizza. Your father took all the kids out. I don’t remember where. I just remember that my son enjoyed himself. It was the first time since Fred died that I saw him smile. At that point I didn’t care what my father thought about it all.”
“So that’s it then – no kitchen slavery on Passover. But we cook on Thanksgiving and Chanukah and…”
“We ALL cook then. The Passover Rebellion was about the men sitting and doing nothing while we became slaves in celebration of a holiday about freedom.”
“I get it. I think I’m going to have some matzo ball soup at my favorite diner.”
“Sounds like a nice plan to me. My daughter and I will be in Chinatown. If you change your mind, you’re always welcome.”
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