To life! L’Chaim!

This is the chorus I have heard at every Passover Seder, since I was young enough to be given grape juice instead of wine. L’Chaim! Literally, to life. To a life out of slavery. To a life full of love and surrounded by family. To a life you are excited and passionate to live.

For me, this is what Judaism is all about. Not the wine, but what the wine has come to symbolize.

Passover is a particularly special time. Four glasses of wine. That’s a bottle of wine per person! Now, consider that my Seder table usually seats about 20 adults and that we drink cocktails before the Seder and more wine with dinner, that’s… well that’s a lot of booze for one dinner table. And we do it every year. We slurp matzah-ball soup and read out loud in Hebrew (which only some of us are any good at) and ask questions. Dear God, we ask questions.

Are there ever any answers? Yes and no. My father keeps little notes in his Haggadah (that’s the Passover prayer book) about issues we’ve discussed and even writes down if we ever came to a conclusion. That way if some asks the same question next year, he can read off the minutes. This, of course, means that our Seder carries into the wee hours of the morning, but Quesitons and Wine are what are commanded of us on Passover and damn it, if we won’t deliver.

Traditionally there are Four Questions that must be asked and they are asked by the youngest person at the table… which is me more often than not. There’s a song you’re supposed to sing along with the questions and it’s embarrassing. I, and every other youngest kid in a Jewish family, hate doing it. But we do it.

Four questions.
1. Why, tonight, do we eat only matzah? Why not bread?
2. Why are we eating bitter herbs tonight? Why not other herbs?
3. Why are we dipping these herbs?
4. Why are we reclining while we eat, tonight?

Four questions that feel a little arbitrary if you’ve never been to a Seder. Really, it’s four symbolic rituals at the crux of the Seder that remind us that we’re free. But, as with all things in Judaism, we don’t just celebrate. We remember. It is not enough to say you’re happy to be free, because you must also remember what it was like BEFORE you were free.

Four glasses of wine.
The Haggadah says that the four glasses are for the four times, in Exodus, that God promised to ‘deliver’ the Hebrews out of Egypt.

I have another theory. Four Glasses for Four Questions. This is because remembering, when you get right down to it, sucks. We are a joyous people, but we are people that have suffered. And at the same that time we talk about how great it is to be ‘free’, we can’t do it without thinking of all the things we’re still enslaved to.

I am a slave to my iPhone. I am a slave to my passions. I am a slave to my workaholic nature. I am a slave to my need to please people. I am a slave.

And we remember… and there’s a lot to remember. I remember a grandfather that I’ll never get to meet because he died of lung cancer shortly after I was born. I remember people I’ve hurt throughout my life and people I left behind when I fabulously flew off on new adventures. I remember times I had to pulled out of my own bullshit and brought back to the life of the living.

Remembering sucks. It takes a question to get you started and it takes a glass of wine and the laughter of your family to help you finish.

To life! L’Chaim!