Warner Family Seder Ruined by Berkeley Grad

Since food dominates my life, Pesach is usually the longest week of the year. It’s not that plenty of food isn’t cooked or that it isn’t good. I eat more during Passover than I could even begin to during Thanksgiving. But I want pizza. I want french toast. I want peanut butter cookies. I want Gatorade. I want my kinda kosher diet back! But the closest I can come to satisfaction is matzah pizza and Passover-approved Coca Cola… the corn syrupy goodness is replaced by sugar. As much as it sucks, it’s still better than Diet Coke. So it happens I tried to get a few forbidden items in before sundown yesterday, hoping greatly that my mum would be none the wiser. But no sooner had I taken a bite did she materialize out of thin air to pop me in the mouth with the back of her hand… wedding ring included  I dropped the Coke can and thanks to the stinging pain, my jaw fell open and the cookie fell out before I could swallow. She then scolded me about struggle and deliverance, redemption and remembering, and the fact that she’d cleared our house of chametz and wasn’t about to have that screwed up by my lack of will power and respect for the past. I thought about asking if I could skip Seder altogether since I just got the lesson but thought better of it. After my apology, she gave me an apple, patted my head, and told me to go outside to play… though one day I’m sure she’ll realize I’m not 5 years old, I doubt the revelation occurs this week. A couple hours later, my family had arrived and the Seder got started. All was well until it was revealed that I would serve my 18th year on Kasha patrol.  For the uninformed, that’s the four questions and they’re read by the family’s youngest child. While that ought to be my five year old nephew, he’s not quite grasped the trilingual presentation of Hebrew, Yiddish, and English and I got hosed yet again. Alejandro seems like the type of kid that’ll shirk this duty until he’s under the pain of death to perform, so I could be doing this stuff until I’m 30.

In any case, we only had one person that I’d consider a guest – my cousin’s coworker, Eric. Aunt Rosa insisted he be invited under the belief that a little spirituality would do his life some good. Eric was (or is, rather) an atheist Berkeley grad.. one of those stereotypical granola breath Birkenstock types that drives a beat-up VW bus while bitching about how humans betray nature and the environment. He thinks belief in I would say the tolerance for this type of individual isn’t high at my house, so he was already at a disadvantage. We hit our first snag while I was asking the second question. Once I spouted out the English (always the last of the three), he said, "Yeah that’s completely nuts… Jews should definitely spend less time wondering about that and more time trying to figure something out about how to treat Palestinians right in Israel" I can’t quite communicate the collective horror but there wasn’t time for silence, as my Zayde said, "Why I’m gonna put my foot in–" My Bubbe stood up and sat him down. I continued with the questions. His next move was to throw in an amended line from The Big Lebowski, "Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax to the Warner’s Seeder party!" There was silence and then he asked questions about Charlton Heston. "Is he Jewish?… Does he have a role… if he has a role, maybe he could step in and stop your Zionist killing but hey, with the NRA and all, he’s probably as psychotic as the rest of you." These comments were topped with, "When are we watching the Ten Commandments movie because that whole thing where he magically opens up the ocean was AMAZING!" But it didn’t stop there. Five minutes later, he went back to Lebowski and asked if we roll on Shabbos. My father grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out of the house, down the drive, and dumped him in the road while my Uncle hotwired his van, which didn’t have keys to begin with, and left it in the street. I think it’s safe to say he won’t be coming back for dinner this evening… or any for that matter.  

If I wasn’t a Jew and was just looking to do the most obnoxious things ever, I might think about taking Eric’s route.. I’d brag to my friends about how I would make Sandy Koufax jokes… my wit would be on point while I ran my mouth about matzah and rabbis but never could I fathom actually going through with such things. So while a tiny part of me wants to give the guy credit for having the nerve to rip on Jews while they sat around him, the rest of me hopes his van breaks down in the barrio tonight and he gets shot in the face. Stupid fuck.