WIP Talk: Our Traditional Non-Traditional Seder

As a young girl in Gyula, Hungary, Anne Gabor Arancio sat in the Jewish temple in her small hometown looking down at the Rabbi and the religious services from the second floor. Why, she wondered, couldn’t she sit with the men and boys on the first floor? Why weren’t women and girls allowed to touch the Torah? The message she internalized was that females defile the Torah by touching it.

• Anne Gabor Arancio at her home in Oakland, California. •

She didn’t get her chance to break through that brick of bias until 60 years later when her oldest granddaughter fulfilled her Bat Mitzvah in Oakland, California. “Grandma, here, take the Torah!” It was being passed around among family members of the Bat Mitzvah. No, she thought, I’ll contaminate it. Then she grabbed it gleefully, realizing that she could, indeed, hold the Torah. Her past exclusion was based on her gender, not any real inferiority.

This memory came to Anne during this year’s Passover Seder when she got to the part of our rewritten Haggadah that said, “According to Orthodox Jewish law, women are forbidden to pray together in groups, to pray out loud or to hold a Torah.” Over the years, my sister C.J. and I have rewritten the Haggadah to include ourselves—women—and cultures around the world, drawing on a number of modern materials, such as The Women’s Seder Sourcebook. Our Seder is a celebration for everyone.

C.J. and I invited people we’ve known for more than three decades as well as recent friends whom we felt would enjoy our freedom Seder. The majority of our guests are not even Jewish. Some still observe their religions. Others have taken up new spiritual paths. Our community last night was made up of 21 souls, aged 11 months to 83 years. Together, we represented a mini-portrait of the Bay Area population. The eldest was Anne, my sweetheart’s mother, a Holocaust survivor married to an Italian-American Catholic. The youngest was Pasko, a baby boy with a Chinese-born mom and a Croatian-American dad. Our guests included teachers, musicians, social workers, artists and a body worker, with differing sexual orientations. Our desire is to create a space where our guests can relax, feast and reflect on the state of their lives and the world at large.

C.J. and I really enjoy planning the Seder every year. Our excitement builds during the final week as we update the guest list and finalize the menu. Most of the food we serve is traditional, but since C.J. and I dislike gefilte fish, C.J. always devises a clever alternative. This year, she ended up with a scrumptious smoked trout salad. During the reading of the Jewish exodus from slavery in Egypt more than 5,000 years ago, the sweet, rich smell of the slow-cooking tsimmes wafted through the room like cinnamon on freshly baked coffee cake.

After the symbolic feast, we went around the table and talked about a country or culture that was on our minds. Our choice of topics wasn’t random, but sprang from the age-old Jewish value of tikkun olam, repairing the world. Linda spoke of her troubled brother. Rashida Oji reminded us of the continued suffering in Haiti. Jackie spoke of the horrors endured by returning soldiers forced to witness or engage in killings and torture in Afghanistan and Iraq. Around the table we went…

A deep sense of connection resonated among us as we heard everyone’s concerns. Seven-year-old Marisa really got the meaning of the holiday when she followed her father’s personal connection to Fukushima, and said, “I’m sad because of what happened in Japan. I’m happy because I’m here.” Then, as a crowning touch to the Seder, she offered to lead us in making paper cranes for her Chinese class to send to Japan. Her compassion filled me with encouragement that this generation of kids will turn the world’s bitterness around.

As we sat sipping tea, I felt more hopeful than I have in some time. Our spiritual gathering felt like an antidote to the mean-spirited events happening in many parts of the world and a commitment to the innumerable positive actions that peoples are taking to claim their freedom. For me, hope lies in our capacity to tap into the empathy, artistry, diversity and creativity that makes us all human. Those qualities could very well set us on a path to tikkun olam.

Leanne A. Grossman is a San Francisco Bay Area writer. Enjoy more of her articles and images at portfolio-of-passions.com.