Seidemann: Just four questions? I've got more

Posted

From the other side of the bench

by David Seidemann

Issue of April 8, 2010/ 24 Nissan 5770

Sometimes the people you encounter in the hours before Passover and the people you share the Seder with make just as big an impact as the Seder itself.

We like to say that there are “four questions” but there are so many more. Among them are two that have always presented some difficulty to me:

First, if karpas, the vegetable that we dip into salt water, is meant to stimulate our appetite as some commentators suggest, why do we ingest it two to three hours before we actually eat matzo and the meal? Typically, the appetizer is served right before the meal and not hours earlier. Try doing that at a dinner or function — follow the appetizer with three hours of discussion and then serve the meal. That’s the last dinner your organization will ever hold.

Second is the dichotomy between two lessons of the middle matzo — is it the bread of freedom commemorating our sudden and miraculous departure from Egypt, or is it the poor man’s bread, the bread of affliction that we were forced to eat as slaves for 210 years? And whatever it symbolizes, what’s the point of breaking it, of hiding it, then having it reemerge at the end of the Seder as the afikoman?

The people I encountered before Passover, and those I shared the Seder with, helped answer the questions. Trust me, my memories of them and their experiences will linger long after the taste of the matzo, the wine and the bitter herbs have dissipated. For the point of all of this is not commemorative in nature but experiential. The whole point of the Seder exercise, of all the pre-Passover toil, and all of the intellectual discussion, is to feel in the year 5770 as if we have somehow been liberated from those demons that possess us and prevent us from embracing our G-d, our religion, and our people with a full heart.

So whose experiences accompanied me at the Seder this year?

She’s 22 years old with one child and more on her plate than one could ever imagine. She has no money, no job and no support from a soon to be ex-husband who doesn’t understand his responsibilities. He hides behind misguided rabbis who I would hope would never let someone treat their daughters as they watch this man treat his wife. For 2 1/2 years he has refused to support his wife and child and refused to give her a Get, releasing her from her modern-day slavery. She tried this rabbi and that rabbi, this Bet Din and that Bet Din and nothing seemed to work. She came to my office two weeks ago and we put a plan in motion. Without going into detail, less than 24 hours before the first Seder, she received her Get and was set free. Her bread of affliction became her bread of freedom.

I shared my Seder this year was a man who just lost his wife. We had shared previous Seder’s with him and his wife; his bread of freedom had become bread of affliction.

We shared our Seder this year with a woman who, at age 40, was experiencing the first Seder of her entire life. Her bread of affliction was becoming her bread of freedom.

Also at this year’s Seder was a 17-year-old boy from Poland whose family is one of just 10 observant families in Warsaw. Though he wished to join them for Passover, it was not meant to be. He knew that his experience as a yeshiva student in the United States and joining our Seder, provided an experience without parallel in Poland; one he could not duplicate in Warsaw. His matzo was simultaneously the bread of affliction and of redemption; his charoses was bittersweet.

Another 17 year old, a young man with Asperger’s Syndrome, rounded out our invited guests. I witnessed him view freedom in a way I never could have imagined.

So we all shared the holiday meals together. Those tasting freedom for the first time; those tasting freedom again for the first time in a long time; those whose freedom was accompanied, at least in part, by a wish to be elsewhere; and a man who longed to share another Seder with his wife.

And because we were all there together, those of us with whole matzos realized that others, inches away from us, were trying to pick up the pieces of their broken ones. And that there can be no Jew who eats a whole matzo so long as there are Jews next to us, a few blocks away, living in Warsaw, chained as an Agunah, trying to pick up the broken pieces of the matzo that masquerades as their life.

Those are the people with whom I broke matzo this year. Their lessons of life are not written specifically in the Hagadah; they are written below the surface, underneath the wine stains and between the crumbs that fill the binding. They are there all year long waiting for those of us that are more fortunate, to make them whole, if not by solving their problems than at least by breaking our own complete matzo, letting them know that as long as they are lacking we cannot be whole.

Yes, sometimes the people you encounter in the hours before Passover and the people you share the Seder with make just as big an impact as the Seder itself.

David Seidemann is a partner with the law firm of Seidemann & Mermelstein. He can be reached at (718) 692-1013 and at ds@lawofficesm.com