At the head of the table, a man nearing the end of his middle years sat in starched shirtsleeves; a dark grey sport-coat hung on the back of his chair. One square cufflink glittered gold as he picked up a sprig of parsley from the plate before him.
“Why do we eat parsley on Passover?” he asked.
One of his children from the extreme other end of the table chirped: “It reminds us of spring!”
“Very good. And why do we wash our hands—without the blessing—before eating the parsley?”
Another voice: “It encourages us to ask questions.”
“That’s right,” said the father. “Rabbi Sherman was saying last week: ‘The Seder is a transformative experience. We begin the Seder as slaves and we end the Seder free.’”
About halfway down the table, sitting in a chair set between the chandelier and one of the heavy-curtained windows, the correct answers thumped unbidden inside someone’s head:
Because it’s customary to begin a Greco-Roman symposium by rinsing your hands and eating green vegetables.
Because, in the northern hemisphere, parsley is often the first green vegetable this early in spring.
Not everyone foregoes saying the blessing on washing the hands.
A woman in her mid-twenties; a guest of the eldest son. She had told her friend two weeks before about her plans falling through. In truth, she did not have enough money to get back to Pittsburgh, nor to take the extra two days off from work. But also she was curious about his parents. About how he, and they, lived. Now, having seen—silk sofa cushions, prints and paintings framed on the walls—half of her wanted to retch; the other half felt like a pebble among pearls. Gerry, sitting next to her, did not have a job to take two days off from. That thought came unbidden as well, but...
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