Post Passover

I had a little private Passover Seder for myself on Thursday evening. I gathered up the things I needed: the lamb shank, the horseradish and parsley and saltwater and the roasted egg and the matzo, of course, the 'mortar' made of apples and cinnamon and almonds into a paste, the candles and the wine.

Since I'm not Jewish, I was thinking of this as more of a quiet, personal "Last Supper" with my own personal meanings attached to the ceremonial questions, etc. It was really neat and all was going well when suddenly I realized I had charred the Sacramental Lamb to the point where the smoke it created caused my fire alarm to go off! Now, my smoke detector is a cheapy one, and the only way to get it to shut off is to knock the battery out of it. But of course it's piercing shrieks make it REALLY hard to approach it, so over the years I've gotten good at throwing my shoe at the thing and knocking the cover off.

Alas, the first thing that came to hand was the box of Matzo. Hurling unleavened bread which is significant of the hasty departure out of Egypt by the Israelites at a claxon designed to train me like Pavlov's Dogs not to burn the Paschal Lamb under the broiler somehow made it all seem silly, if you know what I mean.

Fortunately the 4 glasses of wine required for the seder made it all a dim memory, and the feast portion, --lamb chops and potatoes and matzo ball soup--was so delicious I was happy to be a well-fed, safe, and non-enslaved child of G_d.