My Commonplace Book

Happy Birthday
sleepingwolf
and
Belated Happy Birthday
oniricwolf

Although technically Passover hasn't started yet (it begins this year at sundown on April 19), my UU congregation's Seder is today. (We've found over many years of trial and error that Sunday late afternoon is the best time for an event, and that it's unwise to compete with the real Jewish Seders because our mixed couples go to their families' Seders on the first and second night.)

I'm one of the main people involved with the Seder, so I have a bunch of stuff to do. In the past several years I've led the Seder, but I told the other member of the committee (yeah, there are only two of us) that I thought it would be better to have different people do it. (A traditional Seder is led by the head of the family, and in the past the minister has always done it, since they are the "head" of the church "family". But when I approached our current minister in her first year about starting to plan the Seder, she said she is "not interested." In fact, she has only bothered to even attend one Seder in the four years she's been our minister.

But my other committee member found someone else to do it this year, and I met with him yesterday to go over the Haggadah we use. He grew up in a Jewish family, but I was surprised to find that he remembers even less about his childhood Seders than I do. (He remembers that they had some, but nothing about them.)

At any rate, I'm delighted that I don't have to do it this year. But I do have to go shopping for the items for the Seder plate, and be there by 4:00 to help set up, so I'm off to the supermarket. (I already have my contribution to the potluck Seder meal.) Unfortunately my new med doesn't seem to be working as well as it had been, or maybe the higher dose is just causing more dopeyness. But it's not any worse than I've been, so I'll do okay, especially since I only have a small part (the "mother" who lights the candles) and can then relax and just enjoy the Seder like anyone else.