essays on life...by me

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Passover 2023 in a new place

This spring was the second time me and my J.A.P.S. have been able to meet to celebrate Passover since the world stopped for Covid 19. This year was different than previous years because we met in a new place – out in Skarpnäck, at a beautiful party house. Thank you, Carly, for offering to host us there. It was lovely. And as usual, I had a few words to say before we started our wonderful ritual of reminding ourselves of who we are and where we came from. 

I want to welcome all of you here to celebrate Passover with me once again. This year we are starting a new chapter, with a new place to meet. We have been doing this Passover thing for a long time now and it is always my wish that we can gather together to celebrate this holiday.

When we read our Haggadah, we discover that this holiday, Passover, is all about the desire for freedom – the wish to be free.

But you have to be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it, says a lot of memes out there on Facebook and the internet. While my mom never stressed me about it, I know that she really wished I would find someone and get married. Well, she eventually got her wish. What she didn’t expect was that it would be to someone who would take me all the way across an ocean. Be careful what you wish for, Mom.

As a curly red head, I always wished for straight blond hair…just like our curly-headed friend Barbara did. And about 5 years ago she got her wish, but it came as a wig and was due to developing cancer. Now, my reddish hair is grey but still pretty straight as long as if I keep protecting it from the weather and luckily Barbara’s curly red hair is once again growing back. But, we have to remember to be careful what we wish for.

I have been involved in Progressiv Judendom I Stockholm since 2006. And since Progjud started, the wish for having our own Rabbi has been at the top of the list. Well, now we have one and I find myself drowning in work for Progjud that I didn’t really expect. Be careful what we wish for, right?

For 2000 years the Jewish people had wished for their own homeland and finally in 1948 it happened, bringing with it both great happiness and great heartbreak. Be careful what you wish for because peace…is something still at the top of all of our wishes for Israel.

While wishing for things is not specific for us as Jews, we always need to be a bit careful. Wishing for family, and different hair, and Rabbis, and a homeland, and peace are nevertheless good things to be wishing for.

In the Haggadah story we are about to retell, we hear that in the beginning, the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt. They had started out as a small group of free people who because of famine had migrated to another land to find food. They eventually ended up there as slaves. The story tells us how Moses led them out of Egypt to freedom – how Pharoah was vanquished and the Jewish people crossed the red sea towards a new life. And that’s where it ends. That’s like me telling my mom, “I met a guy and I’m getting married” But I leave out the part that he is Swedish and I will be living in Stockholm. She got her wish…but… it wasn’t quite what she expected.

And so too the story in this Haggadah. Yes, the Jewish people were freed but… being free looked hard – many wanted to turn back, they had to wander through deserts, they didn’t know what they would eat, their leader disappears up a mountain and they don’t know what to do without him. Maybe freedom isn’t all its cracked up to be after all. You have to be careful what you wish for.

So, as we begin our seder, with the story about becoming free in our past, let us keep in mind what freedom, to be who we are today as Jews, means, both the difficulties and the joys. And we need to think about how we continue to be Jews, tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.

Because it all works out in the end- I got married, my hair is straight, Progjud has a rabbi, the Jewish people have a homeland – and here we are today still telling that same story and I find myself wishing that the children I see here today, will continue to do so, too.

Now…Let’s start our seder.

Passover 2022

Photo by Danielle Shevin

Finally after almost 3 years of isolation and pandemic, my group of American/Jewish/Swedish friends could meet in person and celebrate Passover together again. We gathered at the Party House on Reimersholmen as we usually have done for many years now and sat down to an organized dinner. It was so great to see all who could make it. This year our Seder plate had two additions on it.  I am generally a traditionalist and don’t like changing the contents of the Seder plate to suit current politically correct modernity but I made an exception this year. This year we added an orange and a beautiful sunflower blossom – the orange to symbolize women leading services once usually reserved only to men and the flower to remind us what is going on in Ukraine at this moment. 

Here is what I had to say before we started our service. 

It’s so nice to see all of you today. It’s been 3 years since we met to celebrate Passover in person. Technically it’s not really Passover any longer. Yesterday was the last day so I guess Passover has passed over us. Passover is over but here we are…

Here we are. Think about those words: here we are. We almost weren’t. I waited too long before trying to book the Party House and when I went to book our usual day, Good Friday, I discovered someone else had booked it before me. Saturday, påskafton was also booked, as well as Easter Sunday. Today was the only available day this weekend, so here we are.

This holiday which we celebrate every year, is especially apt this year, given what has been going on in the world right now. Passover reminds us how we had to pack up what we could carry with us and leave a land that we had been living in for many generations, at almost a moment’s notice. We didn’t even have time to let our bread rise.

A similar exodus is happening over in Ukraine right now. I can’t stop watching CNN show me how Ukrainians are being forced to flee from their homes and escape to other countries. While they aren’t being chased out by horse-drawn chariots and their bread comes in plastic bags from grocery stores, their hasty and dangerous exodus reminds me of the Passover story. It tells the tale of a people who want to be able to live in freedom and self-determination just like the Ukrainians do today.

The Passover story of the exodus from Egypt, 13 centuries before Jesus, was the founding myth of the Jewish people. But, it was just the first of many such expulsions. 7 centuries before Jesus, the Assyrian empire sacked the northern Kingdom of Israel and deported the Jews to Assyria. Then a little over a hundred years later Babylonia, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon’s Temple and carted us off to Babylonia. It took fifty years before the Jews were allowed to return to their homeland and could build a new temple. That Temple got destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and once again Jews were scattered across the ancient world far away from their home. This time the expulsion would last for 2000 years.

During those centuries Jews were given the choice to either leave or die, by cities or countries throughout Europe and north Africa. During the early middle ages, Spain became a haven of prosperity for Jews only to be ended with the devastating expulsion by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. I’m not going to list all the places that first welcomed us only to later expel us. You can look it up on Wikipedia.

But in spite of all that moving around, the Jewish People survived. We learned how to carry with us our culture, our religion, our history – to not tie it down to the place we were living in. In today’s world, forced migration is getting more and more common. Sometimes because of war like in Ukraine, or because of environmental catastrophes like forest fires in the American west or rising sea levels for island nations or desertification in sub-Saharan Africa. With each new place the Jewish people were forced to move to, we learned to live there within the new rules of the place and also as Jews and when we had to leave we took with us the influences from that place and incorporated them into ourselves without losing ourselves in the process. This ability to adapt and change and still remain true to our heart is something we can teach the rest of the world in these days of involuntary migration.

So, here we are, sitting here, today, as Jews still do, in a small building on Reimersholmen, remembering that very first move. Granted we are not all here –  some of us, from my group of J.A.P.S., couldn’t make it today. Hopefully next year we can all be here together once again.

So, let’s start the seder.

Take the first step

As some of my readers might know, I sit on the board of a small Jewish organization here in Stockholm. Within the auspices of the larger official Jewish Community we offer as an alternative to the other religious services here, a Reform/Progressive service. During Corona times we do our services via the Zoom app. Since the beginning of autumn we have been doing regular Friday evening services, called Kabbalat Shabbat services. For our services, we use the relatively new prayer book that one of our board members Eva Ekselius compiled, translated, wrote, and designed. I helped with the production of the book by creating it in InDesign from Eva’s design.

This past Friday, January 29, 2021, I had the honor of giving the short sermon that our one hour service usually includes. A sermon usually should relate in some way to the portion of the Torah that was read the same week on Saturday morning. Since this blog is the place where I put most of my short written pieces, I figured I would include this speech here too.

The first step

The first step

This week’s parashat  tells the story of how after leading our ancestors out of Egyptian slavery, Moses finds their way blocked by a great sea. In the Torah version, Moses obeys God’s command to “lift up his hands and the sea will part” – thus leaving dry land for the Israelites to walk across, on their way to finding freedom.

Now, that’s the Torah ’s version of events, the one we read aloud at our Passover seder tables. A spectacular miracle, to be sure, but something totally passive; missing the element of human purpose.

A different story is offered by the rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud. Here, in this version, the Israelites gathered at the water’s edge, Moses lifted his hands as God commanded… and nothing happened. The sea remained still.

Can you imagine the fear of the people at that moment? They were expecting another miracle by Moses to save them – and they get nothing bubkes.

Then, out of the crowd, walked a solitary figure:

The Chanukah lights

Now, I am going to say something that if someone else said it or I saw it written that someone else said it, I would think to myself, “Boy that is so corny.” But I am going to say it anyway. “My heart is filled with love.”

Tonight was the first night of Chanukah. The last Chanukah to be celebrated in this decade. My group of J.A.P.S.* gathered together this afternoon at the apartment of my friend Marina and her family. Between 3 and 4 pm people arrived carrying pans of latkes, cheese pancakes, sugar-coated stars of fried dough, fruit salads, cookies and cake. The homemade donuts were already there awaiting our arrival. People filled the kitchen, organizing the reheating of the latkes. Others were centered around the large oval table in the living room, arranging a multitude of hanukkiahs, the nine-armed candelabra used at Chanukah, with a bit of aluminum foil placed under each one to catch the drips from the colored candles. I spread boxes of matches between the silvery candlesticks and placed the Holiday Bag on the coffee table, ready to be filled with small presents as each new group of people came in.

Once everyone had arrived, we dimmed the room lights and gathered around the large table to light the shames candle which was then used to light the remaining other candle, symbolizing the first night of Chanukah.

Together we said the prayer over the candles.
Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Chanukah.”
Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah light”

As we waited for the colored lights to burn down, I went over to the coffee table and picked up the Holiday Bag. One at a time I took out a small gift and calling out the name written on the package, handed our young people their presents. Young people I must call them for they are no longer the small children they were when I first met so many of them long ago.

With most of the candles now burned down to ash, we moved them all to the center of the table as people gathered around a counter top filled with trays of different kinds of Latkes and choices of apple sauce, sour cream and lingonsylt to eat them with and cheese pancakes sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, and fruit salads and all the rest of the delicious and oily treats everyone had brought. We filled our plates and went to find a place to sit and gorge and talk to friends we hadn’t seen in a while. The apartment was large enough so that groups could form: the young people sat together around the coffee table and eventually started playing a board game my son had brought. The oldsters divided up into several groups and I circulated between them dropping in to the various conversations, all of them interesting. Finding something to talk about with these long time friends has never been a problem.

And then the first of two remarkable things happened. As my friend Barbara was making her way around, about to leave, she stopped and said she had something to say to the whole group. Now, because of my inability to remember conversations verbatim, I am just going to paraphrase what she said. She started off by telling us that she wanted to express her gratitude for this group, that we exist. That because of this group she has been able to stay in touch with her sense of Jewishness and the group has helped to contribute to her children’s sense of being Jewish too and she was very grateful for that. Then she turned to me, who was standing beside her, and said she wanted to thank me for forming this group and organizing all the gatherings and keeping it going and she wanted me to know how much she appreciated all my work and effort. She said a bit more in that line and then everyone clapped. Now I have to admit that I don’t mind making myself the center of attention but…when someone else makes me the center… hmmm…that’s different. I also have to admit that my first reaction to her words was to feel embarrassed. But then, slowly, as Barbara continued talking, this warm glow started to come over me and I found myself feeling so happy and yes…I will even use this very cliché word, joyful. And all I could say then was thank you.

On the way home with my son, as we sat on the bus together, I asked him if he had heard what Barbara had said about me. He responds by saying, “Oh, you mean when we all had to clap?”
“Yes”
“Yeah, I sort of heard what she said. But don’t let it go to your head.”

Later that evening, after Bevin and I had come home and decanted all our stuff, Håkan asks Bevin if he had a good time at the Chanukah party. He answers, “Yes. And by the way, I have Chanukah presents for both of you.”

As Bevin goes into his room, Håkan and I look at each other, practically in shock! Our son has bought Chanukah presents for us??!! He comes out and hands a beautifully wrapped present to each of us.

“When did you do this?” I ask him.

“Last Tuesday, when you went out with your friends. That’s why I wanted to know if you were going out that evening.”

I stare in shock at the present in my hands and then at him. I undo the wrapping and there is a book entitled Nonviolent Communication – A Language of Life by Marshall B Rosenberg. Håkan got a game for his Nintendo Switch.

“Pappa can read the book after you do.” Bevin says to me, with a big smile on his face.

So two remarkable things happened today: the people who I have been shepherding for the past 22 years said thank you and my son bought me a Chanukah present.

Truly the lights on the menorah are shining so very brightly on me tonight and I am filled with love.

*Jewish American Parents in Stockholm

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