Living in Coronavirusworld 258: Passover 2021

 3/27

Passover

Passover 2021

And now our second Passover in coronavirusworld.   No extended family gatherings. Just our “core four” get together.  ZOOM with the cousins and inlaws for awhile. Sara asks us “what is your Egypt, what are you trying to leave, what holds you back?” I consider all the deeply personal things I could say, things I am so painfully aware of and my son whispers “you don’t have to go so deep…” I nod as if to say “I got this.” I say, ‘I understand Egypt to be mizraim, the tight place. This virus has been a very tight place. It has kept us inside. Restricted our lives. And now, things are slowly starting to open. Again. But we don’t know…we don’t know…what’s holding me back? Uncertainty. Uncertainty…”

I spent yesterday shopping. No matzohs at the Harlem Whole Foods. Rumors of shortages all around. I'll have to go to Zabar’s to finish my shopping. I miss the old “Best Market” on Fredrick Douglass with its barbecue counter and seasonal Chabad displays in a store that knew its neighborhood and its needs well. 

The knife I saw in the Zabar's catalogue, I wanted to buy as a gift, well, not there…looks like online only.

After hosting  our every Friday virtual open mic, I start my cooking. Last night  it’s  Greek charoset from the Hania community on the isle of Crete. Tomorrow, after a wedding (‘Can we take our masks off?,  the couple asks…"of course", I say...), and planning a much delayed memorial service, I’ll make a Moosewood spinach, mushroom, cheese and matzoh casserole and New Orleans style “dirty Matzoh” stiffing to go with the main course lamb meat balls with tzatsiki. 

As we eat, we remember and talk about the seders we experienced in the past, before...... And accept the quiet of this one for what it is.

Sunday, l join  my friend Steve’s Congregation Sim Shalom “virtual” seder with people from around the country. (And even world.) I share the old spiritual ‘Pharoah’s army got drownded…” with the Arlo Guthrie verse,
“Moses was the first to get the notion that the world is safer with the army in the ocean cause Pharoah’s army got drownded…”

On Passover in 2021, the plague continues, the  Angel of Death has not yet passed over.  Our vaccinations and masks like marks above our doorways toward off the Angel. . Our lives are still stuck in the  narrow place like a super container ship in the Suez Canal. Ironically, the numbers of our dead are helping to move us towards immunity. Everyone has suffered losses. We’re standing at the edge of the Red Sea. Placing one foot in the water. Waiting  for the waters to start to part as we wade deeper.  The Promised Land is a long way off.