So I celebrated passover seder last night at Shana’s house which might strike some of you as incongruous since I will also be celebrating Greek Easter next weekend (“greaster” to people in the know, i.e., me). I’ve got to say, with the gentle (gentile!) hangover I have this morning, the Jews, they do holidays right. All the well-meaning people at the table kept saying that four full glasses, it’s more of a GUIDELINE, you know, but Noah to my right was very committed to the obligation and I took it like a man and drank (a minimum) of four half-full glasses of wine. Let’s say I stopped counting after Noah insisted that I pour him and myself a glass between two of the official glasses so when it came to pour an official glass, well, I poured another one, okay? And not Noah in the biblical sense, either – this Noah does kickboxing.
Tonight brings even more passover (2006! Now with more passing over!) because Barrie is hosting HER first seder and there will also be wine, because the Jews and passover, they love the wine, bless them for it. By tomorrow, I fully expect to be checking into Betty Ford but also maybe the JCC. My mother is reading this in horror about the Betty Ford part so let me take this moment to assure her, I will be a little more lenient with that four-glass guideline tonight. Maybe.
I don’t talk about religion on this blog because well, I don’t really talk about religion. I’m not really religious. I celebrate greaster with my father because it means a lot to him to have me alongside him in church, and it means a lot to me to be there alongside him, and I take Stuart with me because it means a lot to me that he’ll come with me to church in the middle of the night. And also because he’ll read the phonetic parts of the hymns with me and point out the words we know because we’re S-M-R-T. And he wasn’t even baptized like I was and sort of duty-bound to do this! My wonderful heathen husband, coming with me to church.
But if I were to open myself to a hailstorm of opinions, I would say that last night was really moving, even if I wasn’t bringing my own faith to the table. People talked about the traditions they’d had growing up, what being Jewish meant to them (as far as I can tell, a lot of it involved camp) and most of all, I could see how much it meant to Shana that so many people had gathered around her table. It’s not really about my faith or lack thereof – it’s about hers, and Barrie’s, and my father’s.
Plus, all that wine! I gotta tell you, that’s more wine than I usually encounter in Holy Week. Also, more loving sarcasm and more feminism. All good ‘sms. Plus, more wine tonight! Judaism, I gotta say, you’ve got it going on there. Although I am apologizing, inside, for the time last night where someone said a prayer that starts “with every generation” and I really – please don’t hate me for this – couldn’t help thinking “a Slayer is born!” I really don’t think Judaism minded, though, because I think Judaism knows that Buffy rocks.
On a sad note about tonight, though, I really made an effort to look nice. It’s important you know this because I’m currently wearing a black tee shirt and brown cords and sneakers, but I started OUT the day wearing this gorgeous shirt with brown heels. Brown heels that betrayed me half an hour into the day and made my heels bleed. THANKS, BROWNIE.
So when I got to work, I had no choice but to change into sneakers. And that left me with no choice but to take off the gorgeous shirt because I wouldn’t debase it by pairing it with sneakers. So now I’m wearing a black tee shirt and sneakers and I look about 200% less glamorous. I feel SO DEFEATED BY FASHION.
This, in turn, is okay, because I have saved ten of my American Dollars to go get Daisy Mae’s barbeque from the barbeque cart at 50th and 6th avenue and a jar of sweet tea that will sit on my desk all day, being all tea-like and making me happy and atoning for the craptacular outfit. So if you see fit to rain on my lunch break, heavens, SO HELP ME I WILL THROW DOWN. Now with more throwing down!
So, uh, that’s my Good Friday. Good being a relative term, right?

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