Pesach Next Week

My Bar Mitzvah haftarah, HaGadol, gets recycled this shabbos.  It will be a virtual shabbos, though with other synagogue online participation, I get a more graphic impression of why our Congregation has become a niche product not very attractive to anyone else who might be in quest of our logo: embracing-engaging-enriching.  For me it was none of those things, though the other people on Zoom cyberspace encounters were decent likable people.  What was imparted just seemed dull and pedantic.

But with HaGadol comes Pesach, my favorite Festival.  I've given up on the American Rabbis' platitudes of Freedom but the season of renewal, of hitting the reset button, never loses its validity.  I can prepare what needs to be done, wash a refrigerator or floor that I would make excuse to neglect the rest of the year, plan menus with the enjoyment of others in mind, at one time maybe buy some new clothes in parallel with the Easter traditions, take out an inherited Elijah's cup and my lantzmanschaften kiddush cup awarded to my grandfather when my father was just one year old.  In another era, I would be off from school most of that week.   People gather for Seder and for services and toward the end, for Yizkor.  The most endearing of traditions.  And it's almost upon us.

Passover 2011

Less than an hour until the closing days of yontiff.  I did not get to take the yom tovim off due to obligations of the new job but I got a long weekend for Good Friday, one of the fringe benefits of working for the Catholic Church.  I recycled my Bar Mitzvah Haftarah for Shabbat HaGadol, had a relatively placid though late First Seder with the G's but without Bob and Stanley.  Second Seder a sedate and minimal frills effort, just Irene and me.  Good Friday a little stressful making dinner and trying to keep from having to drive to Mercy for an urgency that could have been easily handled by telephone.  Shabbos morning at AKSE where my shacharit went OK though a little off-form perhaps, the Rabbi got miffed when the Cantor departed the Bimah for the mixed Shir Ha-Shirim, a quiet not too stressful afternoon at the hospital on Saturday afternoon and a restful Easter Sunday.  There was a fair amount of stuff open but I did not stop anywhere except the Gulf Station.  I needed the rest.  Next long weekend not that far off, Memorial Day.