passing over

As I think is the case with anyone who has ever had children, tradition became more important once I had a kid. Where holidays were stupid or creepy or commercialized or boring or patriarchal before, they are now kind of... not so bad. This year saw our first Passover seder with George and my first Passover seder in a long time. Atheists can hang during most Jewish holidays, but Passover is heavy on God, the "reason for the season" looming too large to work around, the very basis of the celebration being so literally religious rather than cultural. No doy, right? It's a religious holiday. But so much of Judaism is about being Jewish, about being together, remembering, about righting wrongs and doing good and eating and having fun. If you don't like the closed-minded aspects of orthodoxy, you can leave them in favor of the easy-going, loving arms of Reform. All this is great until you start talking parting seas, plagues and killing firstborn sons; then, you lose me. Because I don't walk under ladders and I hold my breath as I drive past cemetaries, but smiting and miracles? God offing kids to make a point? No. Thus, I've always pretty much opted out of Passover.

But now? I have a firstborn son. A son I want to have a cultural identity and childhood memories to support that identity. I want to give him traditions to pass down, or at least roll his eyes about with his siblings when they go out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve. The gift of relative universality -- of being able to accept an invitation to a new friend's home to eat a nasty sandwich of horseradish and matzah, sing familiar songs and know without a doubt that you will leave wine-drunk -- it's no college education or heirloom jewelry, but everything we inherit can't be one of the hits. I'm learning that I can participate without agreeing. Say the words for their own sake. Swallow my indignation and suspend my disbelief while we tell a round-table version of one of the world's oldest stories, whose moral is of perseverance and vindication. I can teach my own firstborn who, according to legend, would've been spared, not to take his own privilege for granted. I can teach him that not everything requires such a critical eye. 

If George grows up liking once-a-year kugel and flourless macaroons, knowing the best places to hide the afikomen and able to sing songs in sloppy Hebrew, well, that may not be the explicit purpose of Passover, but it's good enough for me.