I’ve at all times cherished Passover. Okay, not at all times; my three-quarters Jewish, largely atheist household and I didn’t throw seders once I was rising up. However ever since faculty, I’ve been coming along with mates to learn the Haggadah (albeit one with a queer, feminist, decidedly trendy bent), break matzah aside, dip parsley in salt water, ask the 4 Questions, and cheer on the youngest on the desk as they discovered the afikomen. When Bernie Sanders dropped out of the 2020 presidential race on the primary evening of Passover, I quietly mourned, imagining what it could have been wish to see somebody within the White Home sharing in these historical traditions, and never only for PR factors.
A serious part of Passover, I realized as I grew up and graduated and made extra Jewish mates—some, raised far more observant than I used to be—is the ritual of protecting kosher all through the pageant’s eight nights. Leavened bread is verboten, which mainly means pasta, cereal, pancakes, cookies—or “carbs,” as I realized to consider these meals in center faculty, when the specter weight loss plan tradition first taught me to eschew them—are off-limits. I can’t assist however consider the frustration that chef and creator Gabrielle Hamilton recounts in her 2011 memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter, upon taking a job cooking at a summer time camp and discovering out that most of the women had been “eight years outdated and already bizarre about wanting a bit of bread.” I felt that frustration myself, figuring out it was the epitome of bullshit to disclaim myself the meals I cherished, however feeling too seduced by the mirage of thinness to dwell some other method.
Anxious partial Jew that I’m, I’m at all times on the lookout for methods to “affirm” that I’m doing issues appropriately on Jewish holidays. (Severely, simply ask me about my challah sport.) However as somebody who has struggled with disordered consuming—and, particularly, binge consuming dysfunction—for over a decade, I’ve at all times recognized that reducing out any meals, even only for per week, and for religious causes, would probably lead me proper again to the worlds of bingeing, compensatory calorie-counting, and obsessive exercising I’d labored so, so exhausting to go away behind me.
All that modified this yr, most likely as a result of my relationship with my religion has modified. At the same time as I mourn the violence in Gaza, the continuing Israel–Hamas warfare has made me really feel extra related to my Jewish religion than ever. I wish to yoke myself extra tightly to its traditions, if solely to remind myself (and the family members I observe Passover with) that Judaism encompasses way over any nation or ideology or navy ever may. I’m not snug with my connection to the Jewish religion being merely “cultural”; I wish to observe a few of the customs my ancestors did, like fasting or protecting kosher on particular holidays, to tether myself to what it means to be an lively, open-eyed Jew on this world, one who learns from the ache of the previous whereas additionally combating for a liberated future.
