-from the 3 April 2007 diary entry of Karen Alkalay Gut
A couple of years ago Karen , fabulous friend and blogger extraordinaire, invited me and a foreign journalist friend to her family seder. She even arranged for her brother-in-law and sister-in-law to give us a ride up to her place, which is near Tel Aviv University. During the short drive, my friend asked about the history of the neighbourhood, which is called Ramat Aviv, and I started to explain that it was established in the early 1950's as a suburb of Tel Aviv, with housing preferences for army officers, but that now it was basically a nice, upscale suburb. Karen's brother-in-law interrupted and, waving his index finger waggishly as he smiled at us impishly in the rear view mirror, asked rhetorically, "You vant ze truth? Ze truth ees zet eet was an Ah-rahb veelage."
"Ah yes," I said, trying to keep up the banter, "We are now leaving the State of Tel Aviv and entering Zionist Occupied Territory."
But Karen's brother-in-law was too witty for me. "Not occupied," he said, with heavy irony. "Liberated!"
Passover is the holiday of freedom, but in the Middle East you are never really free of history. It's always there, confounding us and, in a way, enslaving us. Perhaps one day we will all be able to make peace with it, and even laugh about it as people do over issues that have been resolved and half-forgotten.
I used to be one of those annoyingly pedantic "sederistas" who was totally into discussing and interpreting practically every line of the Haggadah. Once, when I lived in New York and was but a callow youth, I hosted a seder at my apartment and invited a bunch of university friends - only one of whom was Jewish. The others spoke fondly of rolicking seders attended at their Jewish friends' homes when they were kids. But when they discovered that I had prepared a veritable graduate seminar on The Meaning of the Haggadah, they all found excuses to leave after the meal that divides the two halves of the seder was consumed. Um, I've gotta finish that research paper for Professor So-and-So, they mumbled, as they shrugged into their coats after dessert. But wait! I called out forlornly, We still haven't discussed the meaning of the four cups of wine...
I am sure, however, that they would have stayed for the whole thing if the ever-brilliant Nominally Challenged had led that seder. Take a look at his fabulous rendition of the Passover story for yet more evidence of his general, er, fabulousness.
I still think the symbolism in the Haggadah is fascinating, but these days I like to hit the highlights, belt out the old familiar songs, and focus on the company and the meal. I do think it's interesting, though, the extent to which those songs and symbols have been incorporated into the Israeli cultural references.
Chava Alberstein
Several years ago, my friend Ilan introduced me to the version of Had Gadya (also spelled Chad Gadya) that Chava Alberstein (never spelled Hava, as far as I know) composed at the end of the 1980's, at the beginning of the First Intifada. The original version, as it appears at the end of the Haggadah, is in Aramaic, with a few Hebrew words woven in; it's a cumulative song that my cousins, sisters and I used to sing at breakneck speed, laughing and stumbling over the words, at our family seders. Back then we didn't know anything about its many interpretations - we just thought it was fun to sing. Alberstein's version is in Hebrew, with just the chorus in Aramaic - and she adds her own ending, which caused quite a stir at the time. (There is also a version in Ladino, called Un Cavritico, which provided the soundtrack for Pelephone's Passover advertisement this year). The Hebrew lyrics of Alberstein's version are here, and my translation is here; you can read about the interpretation of the song - and the controversy it engendered - in this article. Click on the arrow in the pink circle, below, to listen to Chava singing.
