A Seder to Remember

Lauren and Josh are all smiles after announcing we'll

be needing another chair at next year's Seder!

I’ve written much about the ghosts that take part in my Passover Seders, a spiritual link that connects me with both my ancient ancestors and family members who have died in recent years. Interestingly, this holiday season it wasn’t the past that offered up a cosmic connection but a glance into the future.

The first night of Passover, the lovely Miss Wendy and I attended a Seder at the Nathan’s – that would be Barbara and George, longtime friends of our machatunim – along with other family and friends. We spent a few minutes shrugging off the evening’s chill and warming up with casual chit-chat, then settled in for the night’s high ritual and festive meal.

So it came as a small surprise when Josh, my son-in-law, shushed the expectant crowd and asked for everyone’s attention. He stood silent for an instant then casually mentioned that Passover had been a very special time for him, especially in recent years when good fortune and grand adventure had become part of the holiday.

Five years earlier, Josh recalled, he and Lauren had gotten engaged. Wendy and I were hosting 30 of our closest friends and family for the first night of Pesach that year and were madly dashing about taking care of last minute details – honey, where did you store the matzo balls?

I was in the process of adding additional sugar to the bottles of Manischewitz – hey, you can’t be too rich, too thin or have too much sugar in your Passover wine – when Lauren called and asked if she and Josh could drop by to, ah, check out some pillows! For a normal person, the pillow talk should have been a clue that something was up; but I was deep into Passover madness.

So it was that the happy couple dropped by, stood in the foyer making small talk as Wendy and I whirled and swirled around in a prepping frenzy. After 15 minutes or so they mentioned they needed to be off and, yet, they still stood and waited. Lauren kept waving her hand about and I kept wondering why they hadn’t checked out the pillows upstairs.

It was in all this misdirection and hustle and bustle that the word “engaged” finally captured my and Wendy’s attention and we took note of the glittering diamond Lauren had been waving around frantically since she’d arrived. The diamond sparkled; Lauren and Josh beamed.

And so, it’s been five wonderful years, Josh was saying at the Seder the other night, and I thought how nice it was of him to celebrate the moment. But then I noticed Lauren. She was, well, beaming – again! I forget exactly what Josh said in the next few moments; something about needing an extra seat at next year’s Seder! What I mostly remember is everyone laughing and crying and hugging. I’m pretty sure I even heard the oh-so festive melody of Siman Tov Umazal Tov quietly in the background. After all, my yiddishe ghosts travel with me.

It turns out that for Lauren and Josh; Janice, Steve, Wendy and me, Passover will now always be about the future. If I recall my high school biology, Lauren will be doing the heavy lifting – after all, she’s the one who’s pregnant – but I’m pretty certain we’re all expecting!

Passover bittersweet reminder of our ancient roots

I see ghosts at my Passover Seders. Many of them are key players in the ancient story Jews recall each spring, detailing the miraculous journey of the Children of Israel from slavery to freedom.

Their names – Jacob and Joseph, Moses and Miriam – have become part of Western culture, and their story remains a moving testament to the transcendent power of faith. But there are others who linger lightly in the air, spirits who fill me with melancholy and loss.

In years past, I've seen them flitting about as my wife, Wendy, busies herself setting the holiday table, breaking open the first boxes of matzo, grating a snowy layer of egg over a sculpted mound of chopped liver.

I spot them again as the guests arrive – my daughter and son-in-law, one of my brothers and his wife and children, a friend from my synagogue and a stranger, new to the city and with nowhere to go for the holidays.

My friends and family always spend a few minutes saying hello, catching up with all that is new at work and at home, slowly finding their spots around the table. There's the muffled scraping of chairs across carpeting, the tinkling of glasses and silverware, the rustle of linen napkins. And then, just like the first few seconds before the opening of any major performance, an expectant hush falls over the room.

My wife stands and lights a pair of candles. She slowly moves her arms above the flames and buries her face in her hands, whispering a prayer that "commands us to kindle the light of the festival day." The flickering light of the candles casts shadows across the room, and I momentarily lose myself in the vast sweep of time we're about to explore in the Seder.

I reach for a nearby Haggadah, the special book of psalms, stories and songs for Passover, and begin to read. And for a brief moment my words become the echoed words of others. The ghosts have returned.

There's my great-grandfather, living in a modest home in the Pale of Settlements outside Minsk, Belarus, his family spread about him at a vast wooden table. There's my grandfather, who joined tens of thousands of other Jews from across Eastern Europe and made his way to America around the turn of the 20th century.

And there's my mother and father, first-generation Americans who came of age during the depression and World War II.

For an instant their voices join together, a euphonic blend of the ancient and old, all retelling the story their fathers had told to them. So it's with a lump in my throat that I begin, repeating the opening lines of the Exodus tale that had been repeated to me.

"And there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. . . ."

Many Jews – the unaffiliated, the secular, the indifferent – know little about Joseph and even less about Passover. Yet many of them attend family and community Seders. Maybe it's because of the food. Maybe it's a way to connect with friends. Maybe it's the tug of their personal ghosts. Or maybe they understand that it's important each year to listen to an ancient story and hear once again that freedom is never to be taken for granted, always to be cherished.

This year I’ll be celebrating the first night of Passover at the home of friends. Wendy and I will be hosting the second night Seder at our house. Both events will be filled with the rituals, traditions, food and song that define the holiday experience and I Know I’ll be on familiar ground each night. After all, my ghosts travel with me.

It’s Rocky by a knockout in Stallone’s new flick

After glancing at our schedules and realizing college football is really done and over for the year, the lovely Miss Wendy and I were hunting about for something to do. We were both too lazy to head out to the gym and too bored to spend time in front of our TV.

Fortunately, Rocky offered up a fun and amusing way to spend a few hours just a hop, skip and jump away at our neighborhood multiplex.

Sylvester Stallone’s latest flick, “Bullet to the Head”, opened over the weekend and I managed to talk Wendy into joining me in a little mindless fun. That pretty much is the kicker to anything else I might write about this film.

The story – okay, it’s really much too lame to be anything more than a plot outline – has Stallone, a New Orleans hit man, teaming up with a DC cop to bring down a batch of really bad guys. So “Bullet to the Head” – hey, you really gotta love that title, right? – is sort of a buddy flick, mashed up with a police procedural, wrapped together with a fish-out-of-water subplot.

The bottom line, at least for me, is it mostly works because Stallone mostly gets everything right. This time around he’s playing that oh-so strong, silent guy, who, when he talks, says something pretty funny. He can also still throw a punch and, let’s be clear here, there are lots of punches thrown.

There are also lots of fights, shootings, knifings, explosions and one smashing car chase. The really good news is that director Walter Hill does a nice job of making it all come together while tossing in a few surprises along the way.

So, if you have a little free time and are looking for some mindless fun – I did mention that already, right? – there are cosmically worst ways to spend an afternoon.

Hey, Barry, this one’s for you!

Barry Manilow greets his fans following a show

recently in New York. It's been nearly a quarter

century since he last played on Broadway.

If, as the aging Borscht Belt Joke Suggests, one of the smallest books in the world is a compilation of Jewish Sports Stars, then I imagine one of the largest would be the tome focusing on Jewish Entertainers.

For a moment forget about all the “members of the tribe” who are producers, directors and actors; TV personalities and broadcasters; comics, impressionists and clowns. Even push aside all the iconic Jewish composers and musicians – from Berlin and Bernstein to Heifetz and Perlman – and focus on that tiny group of talented entertainers labeled as singer/songwriters.

Add the sub-category of pop culture to the mix and we’ve now whittled our list down to a toe-tapping group of mega-stars that would have to include Arlo Guthrie, Carly Simon, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Cass Elliot, Bette Midler, David Lee Roth, Gene Simmons, Neil Diamond and Billy Joel. That’s the short list – the very short list!

I mention all this as a long and rambling way to share a recent adventure my wife Wendy and I had in New York. We like to visit the Big Apple in the winter, when the temperature is frigid and the smell of roasting chestnuts and hot pastrami fills the air.

We stayed busy this trip eating our way through several delis, taking a special food tour of Chelsea Market and the Meat Packing District and purchasing a few babkas at Zabar’s on the Upper West Side – and, yes, food is a big part of all our trips north.

We also generally manage to make it to one or two shows on Broadway and this time around was no exception. In search of something a little different, we took a chance on the Tony-winning musical “Once”, a bittersweet story filled with boisterous production numbers and melancholy ballads. It was splendid!

Then there was Barry Manilow. He’s the entertainer that I think might be found snuggled up between Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan in the mega-star list above and, it just so happened, he’s playing Broadway once again after a 23-year absence.

Manilow is what you get if you stir together equal portions of pop music, pop culture and a little twist of yiddishkeit. He’s sold over 80 million records and in the years between 1975 and 1983, the kid from Brooklyn had two dozen top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including “Mandy,” “Could It Be Magic,” “Looks Like We Made It” and “I Write the Songs.”

Those are exactly the tunes – along with a dozen or so more – he offered up for me, Wendy and the 1,700 other fans packed into the St. James Theater, just around the corner from Times Square.

Given the mega-sound systems and pyrotechnics at the heart of most concerts these days, I’m pretty sure Manilow seems a bit of a snoozer these days. I’m also pretty certain that the people rocking out in the aisles, waving light sticks and screeching like they were at a Taylor Swift concert, weren’t asleep.

From the moment the lights lowered and Manilow stepped onto center stage, the St. James became a joyful, riotous celebration. For people of a certain age, the songs he sang are the songs of our lives, melodies inextricably linked to first loves and first heartbreaks.

Time, well, boogied to a stop and for a moment we were all kids again, swaying and cheering and singing along to the fading memories that filled the theater. After all, many of us once had the same disco hair and disco duds that a youngish Manilow sported on album covers that were part of the show – just one additional way to sweep away the years.

Much of the show's magic, in fact, was lingering in the past. That became clear when Manilow slowed things down a bit and offered up a few warm memories of his yiddishe grandfather, the man he credits with first recognizing his musical potential.

He used a scratchy old recording that he and his grandfather produced decades ago, along with a little video of a man and child walking together and a lot of sentimental schmaltz to euphonically blend it all together.

Then it was back to the waving and swaying; singing, dancing and cheering. It took Manilow himself to help it all make sense when he shouted out to the crowd, bathed in their loving adulation, that, gosh, “I was the Justin Bieber of the 1970s!”

I’m guessing that’s a good thing.

 

What can you say about a 13-year-old dog who died?

The first time I met Joey he stayed busy following me about. He wasn’t alone. He and his doggie sisters, Maggie and Ella, were all pretty much underfoot.

Joey, a golden retriever, and Maggie, a black lab, were two hairy and huge freebies that were part of the package that brought Josh into my daughter’s life. Lauren, meanwhile, had a little canine of her own, Ella Rufus.

So it was that when Lauren and Josh said “I do” four years ago, about 250 pounds of unconditional love was part of the equation.

Joey was majestically special. He reminded me of the older brother in many large families – the quiet, brooding, protective type. At times he seemed indifferent to all the Sturm und Drang his younger – and smaller – siblings could cause and stoically went about his business.

Yet he was always there, ready to push his weight around if there was a little extra kibble to be had or – even better – a friendly pat on his noggin was available. Truth to tell, there was a world-weary melancholy that hovered about Joey, a sense that in some doggie fashion he comprehended stuff that was just outside the realm of human understanding.

A few years ago, when Lauren and Josh were out of the city, the lovely Miss Wendy and I were handling dog-sitting duties. Wendy begged off after the first night and I found myself, literally, bedding down with three hairy hounds one evening.

Ella nuzzled up against my side and Maggie rested her head across my chest. Joey stood off to the side of the bed, examining his options and, apparently, waiting for a special invitation. I did mention he was huge, right? If he stood up on his haunches my noggin would be the logical place for him to rest his paws.

I glanced his way, lifted an inquisitive brow and in an instant he was standing over me. For the next few minutes he did that little doggie dance of slowly chasing his tail, looking for that special, elusive sweet spot before settling down across the foot of the bed.

He let out with a contented sigh, rolled over on his side and began snoring. And this is the crazy thing about it all. The little twitching and murmuring and, yes, even the snoring was bizarrely comforting. Go figure.

And so it’s with apologies to Eric Segal that I finish this remembrance by paraphrasing the opening line of his sappy novel, “Love Story”.

What can you say about a 13-year-old golden retriever who died? Well, actually, lots of stuff. But mostly, at the moment, I’m thinking the important thing is that he was loved.

What guns might say if they could only talk

I was feeling good. Once again he had his hands wrapped around my slender butt and life was grand.

He gently caressed me, then held me out at arm’s length, whirling me about in a feverish dance. I was too much in the moment to even notice that he was showing me off to the small crowd in the distance.

He actually seemed to be, well, aiming me in their direction. No matter, I was all oiled up and ready for action. And then he cocked me and gently pulled my trigger – again and again and, yet again. When the smoke cleared and I saw the carnage all about, all I could do is smile.

After all, guns don’t kill people.

Hot, Cold and thinking about the Falcons!

Life is grand, here in the Land of

Cotton; temps are high and the

Falcons are soaring!

PHOTO / Nor Grebnief

Apparently someone forgot to tell Mother Nature that it’s winter. Here we are in the middle of January and the temperature is hovering around the century mark!

Okay, not really; it just feels that warm! If my high-tech inside/outside thermometer has it right – and that’s not a given – it’s in the low 70s here in the Land of Cotton.

I’ve been staying cool and calm most of the morning, dashing about in gym shorts and a tee-shirt. Another few days of these unseasonably warm temps and my azaleas will start budding and the weeds in the lawn will start stretching out their tendrils! Can you say yard work – sheesh!

What’s particularly bothersome is the vibe is all wrong for the Falcons – I’m referencing football here, not the feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic, egg-laying, vertebrate animal. The, um, birds will be taking the field tomorrow to face off against the Seahawks – yes, another football reference.

I imagine the feathers will be flying, in one fashion or another, and today’s warm temps will grow even warmer inside the Georgia Dome.

And just to carry all this weather talk to its logical conclusion, I’m thinking it will be a cold day in hell before the Falcons actually make it to the Super Bowl!