The good news is that you don’t have to sit next to Uncle Morty again this year and hear the same story about the time he found that inheritance seal that was worth 300 times what he paid for it in 1987. You can just silence it in Magnification.
The bad news is that there is always the next year.
Easter in a pandemic year seems a little, well, redundant. The holiday, which begins at sunset on Saturday, March 27, and lasts seven days, celebrates – you guessed it – the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This refers to the bread that Jewish slaves made to support themselves along Egypt’s escape route, which they did not have time to let up. Thus, the constipating matzo was born.
Easter is not as exciting as, say, Christmas, which celebrates birth with a big man who sneaks into your home, or Holi, the beautiful Hindu festival of colors to celebrate love.
We Jews tend to be a more cynical people. The happiest holiday we have is Rosh Hashanah, the new year, and we celebrate with an apple and continue with 10 days of excuses and fasting. Or there is Purim, where we muffle the sound of a bad man’s name by turning metal noises that can pull a finger out.
Easter celebrates the story of Jewish slaves escaping their Egyptian owners and running through diverse landscapes such as the desert and a magical sea that opened up so that they could cross and escape from their captors. It has been celebrated since at least the 5th century BC, but it seems less strange now than ever.
In a year in which emergency mode has been our standard, learning about the plagues that make up the Easter story while experiencing a real-life plague is a bit like looking in the mirror. Some of the plagues in Easter history – grasshoppers, boils, cattle diseases – do not seem as bad as the contagion of Covid-19 that we have been fighting. Can I exchange a deadly virus for a little hail? Joyfully!
Instead of Moses asking Pharaoh to free Jewish slaves and wreak havoc with 10 plagues – through the guy on the top floor – when he refused, we have Dr. Fauci asking the United States government to implement 10 measures to ease the forcefulness of Covid -19. Instead of a burning bush where God speaks to Moses, we have Twitter. It’s all parallel.
My Bubbe, also known as a Jewish grandmother, lived until she was 96 years old and did not stop irritating me for a moment. Sigh. She would have some wise advice for those of us who are still on this Earth and who live during an Easter pandemic. After all, she survived the last global pandemic in 1918, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the repressive ’50s, Vietnam, the recession of the’ 70s, bad hair from the ’80s and neon and troll dolls from the’ 90s.
I channel it here for your benefit and education. Here are Bubbe’s main lessons for going through a pandemic Easter.
Chicken soup really cures everything
In a year in which we had to give up human contact and live in a state of almost constant panic about losing our health, our jobs, our sanity, Bubbe’s claim that chicken soup cures everything is not far off. Called “Jewish Penicillin”, chicken soup is an Easter tradition served at the seder, or meal you embark on during the holiday. The herb broth sprinkled with shiny carrots and celery looks like the warm embrace we haven’t received in over a year. Drop a matzo ball there for good measure and feel it sitting in your gut like a cement brick for the balance of the day.
Don’t eat the seder plate
At the center of the table at Easter is a plate of seder, or a carefully prepared dish divided into six sections with symbolic food. The ritual items – the leg bone, karpas (a vegetable dipped in salt water), chazeret (bitter herb), charoset (chopped nuts and apples and wine), maror (another bitter herb) and egg – symbolize parts of the Easter Story : sacrifice, tears, the bricks that the Jews placed as slaves. In fact, they represent the suffering of the Jewish people in enduring slavery and then a life on the run to guarantee their freedom.
You’ll be hungry to endure the whole seder – or ritual history and prayers – before it’s time to eat, but I guarantee it’s not fun to consume the items on the seder plate. Just admire. From a distance.
Suffering is in the eye of the beholder
You can complain about being stuck and not being able to compete in that football tournament or meet your friends for a happy hour in the new bar, or you can be grateful to be alive enough to look forward to those simple pleasures that we had to give up. Bubbe says to stop complaining, or she will give you something to complain about. I can say from experience (hi, my tuchas) – she is not kidding.
Guilt will take you far
This is not an Easter tradition, but a strategy to manipulate people to get what you want. Guilt is a powerful lever that you can pull. Bubbe says that all you need to do is pucker your lips the next time you ask for something and add, “If you love me, you will …” before any request (unless it’s your boss or the person next to you) you at the bus stop).
We must help each other
Moses did not like to speak immediately, but when asked by the greatest influencer of the time, he stood up to help the most marginalized. Jews have been slaves more than once in history. Many other groups as well. We should look at Easter as a reminder to all those who inhabit the identity categories of the majority to defend others.
Don’t question the gefilte fish
I tried. Bubbe hit me over the head with a newspaper. Seriously, what’s in those things?
Whether you are celebrating Easter for the first time or for the 68th time, this year brings the time-honored holiday into a newfound relevance as we sail a veritable plague as we tell the story of how others survived long ago. Perhaps a thousand years from now, people will sit around a table (on Mars?) And tell the story of people on the great planet Earth in the year 20 of the 21st century who survived a plague with toilet paper and starter yeast.
For now, however, we raise a glass during this Easter pandemic, as many did for hundreds of years before us, and say “l’chaim” to life. And be honest. Bubbe would have liked that part.