My cousin who converted to Judaism when she married invited the family over for Passover dinner this past weekend. I just thought "dinner", cool, but then heard that there is some traditional ritual called a sedar that goes along with this, so I read up on it to see what it was all about. Apparently it's a celebration in recognition of the Jews' escape from Egypt and Moses and the whole "let my people go" stuff, and the proceeding wandering through the desert for a while, etc. Whatever. Little was I to know that by attending this Passover "celebration", I was signing on to suffering as closely to as the Jews did as they could possibly make me.

So there's like 12 of us and we're sitting in a circle. An empty chair is included for some kat named Elijah who is either invisible or a ghost or something, I dunno. But later on they open the front door for him to let him out or give him some air, I forget. Each person has the following items in front of them: A paper bag with your name on it, a little booklet about Passover, a wine glass, and a plate of raw carrot chips, one celery stalk, a sprig of parsley, a fish cake, and a hard-boiled egg. Hmm, okay. So all the men put on their yamulkas (I'm sorry, Jews of the world, but that will never stop looking ridiculous). My dad lucked out with getting the black one, or so I thought, until I realized that my cousin's husband CHOSE the pink one. I guess if you're gonna wear one of those things, it might as well be as bad as you can make it. The following proceedings went something like this:

5:30 PM My cousin starts talking about something jew-related and that we're having this thing because of something or other and blah blah blah - then she says "oh, just so you know, we're having 5 glasses of wine, for those who are driving you might want to keep that in mind". Hey, things can't be that bad as long as you're consistently being served wine, right?

6:00 RONG.

6:15 Most of what has occurred up to now is basically almost an hour of hebrew "songs" and lots of talking about some people and events I am blissfully ignorant of. This would probably have taken half the time if not for the fact that most of the reading is done by the youngest child in the household capable of reading. This was my 7 year old cousin who reads...... like..... this.... and..... it's..... pages..... and pages..... of Hebrew. I become aware that, in a room of Jews, I am the only one with long, dark, curly hair. I decide that bringing this up may not go over as well as I'd like it to, so I remain silent and enjoy the next glass of wine.

6:30 The fact that my 7 and 9 year old cousins are fluent in Hebrew is considerably impressive, but they had trouble moving things along. They kept stopping to ask their mom something random, as kids do, and she would always say "yes, honey?" instead of the preferable "ask me later, sweetie" or "um, excuse me, don't interrupt your brother" or "shut up and keep reading dammit". Her humoring them didn't help expedite the FEED ME NOW process.

6:45 It's been over an hour. At this point the only thing keeping me sane is looking at my dad in a yamulke. Hehehehe!

7:00 FINALLY we're allowed to eat something! And it's.... the celery stalk! FUKIN YAY. But wait! You get to dip it in salt water! Oh thank you, Jezebediahses or whoever I'm supposed to thank for this bountiful feast! (We were given the choice of the celery or the parsley, but evil Christian me decided to be greedy.)

7:15 We're given the third glass of wine. I pour and pass, resisting the urge to jump up and run out the door and down the street with the bottle, hastily taking swigs as I run, a la that scene in Sideways. But all I can do is eat the egg and the raw carrots. No salt provided.

Somewhere around this point I kinda stop paying attention, and it's then that I am made horribly aware that I am expected to take some part in the ceremony. Here and there I'd be asked to read a paragraph, no biggie, but suddenly now I actually have to think. My cousin goes around asking everyone what they would "set aside" of yours to give to... someone. I didn't catch who it was until later, which made my answer as ridiculous as it can get. When it came my turn, I was like "what? oh, um.... food's already been said? And shelter? And money? Um... I don't know.... stationary?" Wow. I couldn't believe I was saying it, but I really couldn't think of anything better. Everyone laughed, and I tried to change my answer to carpeting, which it turned out was just as ridiculous because apparently the people we were talking about giving something to were the desperate jews wandering in the desert. Oops. Okay well you could like... kill one of the sheep and dry its hide out and write on it with-..... nah, I got nothin'.

7:30More wine. Thank Moses. And we eat some matzah bread, which is pretty much just a tasteless bread wafer thing, but we're provided butter to spread on it if desired. Still no salt though. Now it's time to open our paper bags, which are filled with little trinkets representing the plagues. There was a red lai for the blood, a little toy dinosaur for the beasts, some alien finger puppet for something else and little Shark Tale stickers to put on your face to represent boils. Finally, behavior I can tolerate. I look around and see that I could have taken a much larger piece of matzah, and I'm regretful. The fact that I was unhappy not to have more of that is pretty sad. Not to mention that this booklet we had to follow is read with the pages going backwards. This is what I meant when I said they make you suffer as much as those wandering jews did: They starve, bore, and confuse you.

8-ishWE'RE FINALLY FED. And I certainly chowed. Turkey and spinach and this odd concoction of prunes and onions which sounds retched but was surprisingly tasty. We then had to finish up the ceremony with some more songs and chanting and stuff, but I was content at this point and had no problem humoring it. There's nothing wrong with celebrating your religion the way you please, I would just recommend to anyone going to a celebration hosted by my cousin to eat something first. My mom told her friend who is Jewish from birth and not converted like my cousin, about this evening and my mom's friend said my cousin is "the most jewish jew in the world".

Anyway, I'm fed and wined now and in no huge rush to move, so I listen to the rest of the jewing. My 90 year old grandmother, however, is just about to pass out and is still disgruntled about biting into the fish cake she thought was a piece of bread. Since my parents and I were her ride, we had her as an excuse to escape first. We were finally free, just like the Jews from Egypt, except we had a Toyota.