tonight is the second night of the shiksa pandemic passover. to remind yourself what a shiksa is (hint: me) and why i make my attempts at these holidays, see my post: the shiksa hanukkah. if ever a time called for a re-telling of the passover story, it is this time. a real worldwide plague is upon us. and i’m guessing that even my vegan neighbors would be willing to smear our front doors with lamb’s blood if it meant that the curse would pass us over and not harm ourselves or any family member.
unlike hanukkah, most christians know the story of passover from sunday school or from the 1956 movie by cecile b demille, the 10 commandments, starring charleston heston as moses—in some ways the apotheosis of gentile (if not shiksa) passover. in the shiksa version, moses would be played by meryl streep. many christians are aware that the last supper of christ was a passover seder (“seder” is what the sacred meal of passover is called).
our american moses, bernie sanders, took himself out of the race for president yesterday. to me it feels like he left us in the red sea to drown. how i long for the wilderness to which he was leading us.
although passover, like hanukkah, is celebrated over many nights (7 in this case). my shiksa passover is usually only produced on one night. although i sometimes attend other public passover seders–oh how i would love to this year.
for the past several years, there have been passover seders that you can “attend” online. of all the things being celebrated online these days, it would seem that passover might be one of the most difficult. it is all about food, and being clustered around the table eating certain foods. there are so many different foods to prepare. i have come to love to cook all of it, but going to the trouble of making charoset and all the separate foods just for me and my husband doesn’t seem worth it. my favorite dish to make, totally a shiksa passover staple, is vegetarian “chopped liver.” it is a moosewood green bean walnut paté, similar to this one.
but passover is also, as we have reminded ourselves above, a great story told in a script that is used at seders, called a “haggadah.” several years ago i adapted a children’s haggadah into a metaphysical haggadah that takes us through a great passover feast in a spiritual but not religious sense. because it is based on a children’s haggadah, the whole thing can be done in an little over an hour (whereas the typical adult passover is a very drawn out affair. a former boyfriend’s standard response to the passover question “what makes this night different from all others?” was “because i’m fucking starving).
here is that haggadah for your use now: Metaphysical Haggadah. also if you’ve always been curious about a what a real seder is like. here is a link to many many online seders happening around the globe today alone.
