Passover Follies

Passover starting on a Saturday night this year, I had the opportunity of being with my family for both seders. That’s particularly nice now that our traditional first night seder with my father’s family takes place at the Jewish Home in Worcester, the nursing home where several of my great-grandparents spent their last days, site of some of my earliest memories, and my grandmother’s current residence.

For those of you who don’t know, a seder is the ritual meal that begins the holiday of Passover, during which we retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Think of Thanksgiving dinner with a 45-minute religious service tacked on to the beginning. Like any essentially-family-oriented event, it gets a little odd when it’s conducted in an “institutional” rather than a family setting.

If you can picture the following, you’re halfway there:

A group of geriatric Worcester Jews being asked to sing “Go Down Moses” to a Muzak-style “reggae” beat pumped out of a portable karaoke system.*

The seder leader singing the aforementioned in a voice that (presumably unwittingly) is an eerily precise echo of Ana Gasteyer’s middle-school music teacher from Saturday Night Live.

Constant feedback from the sound system, exacerbated by the leader shouting into the microphone, while one attendee shouted from the back that he couldn’t hear.

My offering to sing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” for the crowd after my sister sang the Four Questions.

My Mom was convinced we were going to get kicked out. Of a Passover seder. At a nursing home. Believe you me, cognitive dissonance ain’t in it.

*”Go Down Moses” has, however absurdly, become a seder staple. Sure, the subject matter is appropriate, but Lenny Bruce’s opinions aside, I’ve always felt that Jewish singing lacked something in the way of what’s conventionally called “soul”. I realize that I may be in the minority opinion here.