Passover in the Time of COVID-19

by Steven B. Orkin

A version of this essay first appeared in the March 2013 edition of a temple newsletter during my tenure as Co-President of the now defunct, sorely missed, Sinai Reform Temple in Bay Shore, NY. I have revised and expanded it for my purposes here.

~~~

Though all holidays, Jewish or not, have their charms, I have to say that Passover has always been one of my favorites.

But not without complaint.

Passover is problematic. First off, it can be a lot of work. In prior years, we switched over dishes, cleared space in our cabinets, thoroughly cleaned everything up. We generally do at least one Seder at our house, generally for at least a dozen people. We try to stick with Kosher for Passover foods for the week but though the selection has expanded significantly over the years, it’s still somewhat limited in certain respects, even more so in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Between the seder(s) and a week’s worth of Kosher for Passover food, it can get pretty expensive. Further, I find that no matter how wide of a selection of food we have, after three or four days, I’m ready to strangle a puppy if it would mean I’d end up with a bagel instead of a piece of matzah.

In light of this, what would possess me to call Passover one of my favorite holidays?

Because the good stuff far outweighs any negatives, even now, isolated as we all are.

Growing up, Passover was always a very special time. Thinking of our extended family seders in my grandparents’ apartment in Brooklyn, at which we’d have (incredibly) as many as 30 people attending, always brings a smile to my face. It was the one time each year we’d see many of those relatives, and tables would meander through the living room, into the dining area, and end up right next to the apartment’s sole exit. We’re probably lucky a fire marshal never wandered by or they probably would have shut us down.

More than anything, however, it was the sense of love and kinship I felt during those classic seders: joking around with my brothers, cousins, and other relatives, listening to the various passages of the Haggadah (the special prayer book used only during Passover) and reading some of those passages aloud myself as we progressed through the service, passing the reading baton from person to person. I can still remember the feel of some of that language on my tongue, the unique, often poetic phrasings. I remember the cloyingly sweet taste of the Concord Grape Juice (which I later discovered didn’t taste any differently than the Concord Grape Wine¹). I remember my brothers and cousins and I negotiating with my grandfather over the missing afikomen² (one of the ceremonial matzahs used during the service). When we were very young, the prize, as I recall, was a silver dollar coin (if only I’d kept them…). In later years, it was a far more commonplace, but equally appreciated, crisp $5 bill. I remember that exciting, magical moment when we opened the door to welcome in the spirit of the mysterious and mystical prophet Elijah (kind of the Gandalf of Jewish history and lore. And did his ceremonial cup of wine lower ever-so-slightly as he took a sip? I like to think it did…)³. I remember our custom of competitively reading the verses of the Passover songs ‘Chad Gadya’ or ‘Who Knows One?’ in a single breath at the end of the service. The smells and taste of the food, as you might imagine, were divine. My grandmother was an inspired cook and she pulled out all the stops for Passover.

Second Seder at my parents’ home was a similar affair. My mom was a formidable cook herself and never failed to impress, especially for holiday meals (she was always a good sport when we teased her about her geometrically pristine matzah balls).

Though I don’t recall us having quite as many people as my grandparents had, we nevertheless had tables winding through our tiny dining room and into the living room. In fact, due to the cramped layout of the house, guests sitting on the far side of the main table near the kitchen would actually have to exit the house via the side door and walk around to the front door to be able to get to our sole bathroom (the only other option would have been crawling under the table). We often wondered whether the neighbors thought walking around the outside of the house on Passover was part of some arcane Jewish ritual.

At some point during his adolescence, my older brother Milt employed his artistic talents (such as they were) in one of our Haggadahs and drew representations of the ten plagues on the page that listed them. In subsequent years, it was fun to see who got the lucky book. No one cared that some of the other books acquired wine stains or matzah crumbs from the previous year. It was part of the charm of the experience. Those books have lived long and interesting lives.

On Passover mornings, Mom would often treat my dad, my three brothers, and I to her immaculate matzah brei (a delicious combination of matzah and scrambled eggs). Over the course of the week, we’d have the leftovers from our seder dinner, we'd have gefilte fish, dried apricots, nuts, macaroons, chocolate marshmallow twists and chocolate ring-gels, among other delicacies associated with the holiday. It was fun using our Passover dishes. When I was very young, we actually used separate dairy and meat dishes and utensils. All these different customs, foods, and family made for a special, memorable week.

Now, so many years later, my grandparents, an alarming percentage of those relatives, and even my parents, are gone. Two of my three brothers live out of state and it’s been decades since all four of us sat at a Passover Seder together. Some of the other relatives who attended those seders have likewise scattered across the country. Some have created their own customs and now spend Passover with their families. Seder duties, initially split between my mom and my aunt after my grandmother passed, later fell solely to my mom when my aunt and uncle moved to Florida. Nancy and I initially provided support to her and in recent years, took on Second Seder. With my mom’s illness and subsequent passing in 2018, we took on both of them.

This year is even more different. Physically gathering with family and friends is not only irresponsible in the time of COVID-19. It’s dangerous. Instead, we’ll be meeting ‘virtually’ using video conferencing platforms. There will only be three of us in physical attendance: Nancy, myself, and my daughter, Julianna.

Does it suck? Totally! Am I struggling to generate enthusiasm about it? That’s a big yes! It would be easy to become maudlin about it. But time marches on. Life swirls with change, evolution, possibility, hope.

Yes, it’s different. Yes, even under non-COVID-19 conditions, attendees at our seders have numbered closer to ten than thirty. Yes, many of the people who gathered for them in those hallowed halls of memory aren’t here to do it anymore. But finding meaning and joy in Life is a matter of perspective. It can still be fun. Old customs mix with new to create something unique and beautiful. We’re blessed with wondrous technology that allows us to share the holiday with a semblance of unity. My daughter remains passionate about her Jewish heritage and loves celebrating it. Even as she approaches the age of 19, I remain able to re-embrace the rites, rituals, and remembrances of Passover by filtering them through her enthusiasm. New memories bloom like the finest flowers of Spring. New history forms like wind and rain etching patterns in ancient stone. Life evolves, flourishes, endures.

I don’t purport to know all that much, but I do know this: Life moves on. It moves forward

And so will we.

Regardless of what faith you follow, I wish you a Passover filled with love, joy, and tradition!

Thank you for reading.

 ~~~

Footnotes

 

1. There’s a hilarious scene in an episode of the sitcom, ‘Frasier’ in which the aristocratic, decidedly non-Jewish Frasier pretends to be Jewish in order to placate the mother of a woman he's dating (who at first believes him to be Jewish as well). Frasier convinces his brother and father to play along to typically disastrous effect. During one scene, Frasier and his brother Niles are preparing drinks but are stymied by the fact that Manischewitz is not part of their wine repertoires. In desperation, Niles dumps two heaping teaspoons of sugar into an otherwise normal glass of red wine, briskly stirs it and offers it to Frasier, who takes a sip, scowls, and declares, “This is dreadful!” Niles replies, “It’s perfect!"
2.  Contrary to standard tradition in which the seder leader hides the afikomen, the children find it, and are rewarded for their efforts, our family tradition was for the kids to hide it and then bargain with the seder leader (my grandfather) for its return. On describing this custom to Nancy many years ago, she gave me one of those slightly bemused, slightly dismayed expressions that every person who has ever had a significant other has at some point seen from that significant other. Then, with typically hilarious sarcasm, she said something like, “I see. So, you’re okay with our daughter stealing a valuable item necessary for use during a religious service and extorting you for its return? Such a great lesson!” Once she put it like that, I became a staunch proponent of the standard custom…
3. At one such seder before my time, the participants arrived at this pivotal moment. Someone rose from their chair to open the door to welcome in Elijah, only to find Agostino Gualitieri, a family friend, standing in the doorway with his fist raised to knock on the door. He was just dropping by for a visit; had no idea it was Passover…

Orkin's Law of Premeditated Density

by Steven B. Orkin

So, I came across the following meme¹ on Facebook:

This meme illustrates a fundamental flaw in the way we present and evaluate information. It is symptomatic of the deep and powerful current of misdirection and misinformation that is destroying the fabric of our nation.

Though it seems like a valid contrast between these two individuals, in fact, they have very little to do with one another. Let’s start with Dr. Judith Curry.

The facts listed above regarding her are correct. She has been an esteemed climatologist with some other legitimate, even impressive credentials who has indeed published 140 books and papers. In reading a recent article of hers, I found her to be intelligent and articulate. She’s not some ranting, raving, right-wing conspiracist. Based on what I read, I think it’s a reach to say she thinks that climate change is “all a hoax”, but she does raise some valid points about the issue that merit consideration. Here's why:

Based on her experience and research, Dr. Curry doesn’t believe climate change is as significant an issue as it’s been made out to be. She questions the degree of influence humanity has had on climate change and feels much of the research supporting the notion of a ‘climate crisis’ has inconsistencies that have caused the scientific community at large to make the pieces fit into the puzzle rather than making the puzzle the sum of its pieces, if that makes sense.

Looking at this issue from a purely procedural perspective, I can appreciate those concerns, to an extent. Whether the scientific community at large is right or wrong about the climate crisis is irrelevant. Even if they are indeed completely correct (and I believe they are), it doesn’t give them the right to fudge inconvenient data to make their case or otherwise obstruct or deflect the truth.

That said, I’m not sure that 100% objectivity is possible as long as there are humans involved in an equation. There’s no way to fully account for all possible variables and variants of those variables in a given research topic. At some point, researchers elect to take one direction over another for any number of legitimate reasons. Regardless, once that happens, objectivity is technically compromised.

Getting back to Dr. Curry, I have concerns about some of her concerns. She accuses the scientific community at large of ‘tribalism’. Merriam-Webster defines this term as “strong, in-group loyalty”, but her connotation goes beyond that. The impression I got was that she feels that members of the scientific community have essentially clotted together like blood corpuscles in establishing their position on the climate crisis because all the other kids are doing it, because it’s ‘politically correct’. I do believe that tribalism occurs to various degrees in a wide variety of circumstances, but certainly in this case, that doesn’t mean that the underlying theory driving that ‘tribalism’ is wrong. Consensus does not equal tribalism.

Just to use an extreme example, I can state with conviction that 99.9%+ of mental healthcare workers believe that sexually abusing a child is destructive to that child’s wellbeing. It’s not reasonable for a mental healthcare worker, however esteemed, who feels otherwise to say that the rest of the mental healthcare community is being ‘tribalistic’ by believing this. Decades of research resolutely confirms that sexual abuse is indeed destructive to a child’s wellbeing.

However, if we did enough digging, I’m confident we could find research that implies or even states outright that the data about the destructiveness of sexual abuse is inconclusive, that if we as a culture didn’t put as much moral judgment on it, if we even went so far as to normalize the behavior, the child would take those cues and the trauma associated with sexual abuse wouldn’t be significant. If such studies exist, they may have followed objective scientific protocols to draw their conclusions and may otherwise have an internal consistency that at face value, makes sense.²

That doesn’t make those conclusions correct! The bottom line is, no matter how empirically-driven the research may have been, it’s less than a drop in the bucket in relation to the colossal volume of other objectively evaluated, empirically-driven research concluding that sexually abusing a child is destructive. The fact that some researchers may have cut corners to draw their destructiveness conclusions doesn’t make the underlying, globally-concluded assumptions inaccurate. The fact that 99.9%+ of the mental healthcare community agrees that sexual abuse is bad doesn’t make them guilty of tribalism. It means that the data overwhelmingly suggests that sexual abuse is bad! Conversation over!

The fact that there may be some degree of doubt within any given issue doesn’t delegitimize the significance of the rest of the data about that issue, especially if that data prodigiously supports a given notion³. There are virtually no sure things in this life. At some point, we have to accept that something is the case and move forward accordingly until we have overwhelming evidence to suggest otherwise. In the case of sexual abuse, we can continue to monitor the statistics and anecdotal evidence. If a sea change in that data occurs, we can reevaluate how we perceive and treat the issue, but for the indefinite future, we accept the general consensus that ‘sexual abuse is destructive to children’. Again, conversation over.

The climate crisis is the same thing. Various sources note that 97% of the scientific community accepts that the climate crisis is real. I’m a little skeptical that the number is quite that high, given the generally contentious nature of humanity. Even so, my uneducated guess would be somewhere in the high 80’s to low 90’s. So, let’s knock 10% off that 97% number. What the hell, let’s be generous and knock off 20%. That leaves us with a minimum of 77% of the scientific community believing that the climate crisis is a thing. That’s three quarters of a relevant, educated, well-informed community. I don’t know about you, but in my mind, even 77% classifies as “very compelling.” Is it possible that Dr. Curry and other scientists who feel the way she does are in essence, Galileos or Einsteins, swimming upstream against the tide of established scientific thought, that they are absolutely correct in their empirically-driven beliefs that there is no climate “crisis”? Yes. It is possible.

But it is very unlikely.

It’s possible that Harrison Ford is going to walk into your living room in the next ten seconds.

But it is very unlikely. You may safely proceed with your life under the assumption that he is NOT going to appear.

Let's look at it in another way. Maybe there is no climate crisis. Maybe, after mobilizing the world population to take steps to address the matter, it will turn out to be, as Dr. Curry suggests, not that big a deal. But we can't take that chance! We’re not going to be able to just snap our fingers and fix the planet once we reach a climatological tipping point. The problems that come with that will be so enormous, they won't be able to be solved after the fact. Once that tipping point occurs, it will be far too late to do much, if anything about it.

The ONLY downside to switching over to renewable power and resources, among other realistic but decisive steps toward reducing carbon emissions is that multi-billion dollar corporations might not make quite as many multi-billions of dollars every year. I don’t know about you, but that’s a loss I’m willing to take if it means saving the planet.

In terms of misinformation and misdirection, there is also this: the media is notoriously (and ineptly) dedicated to providing ‘opposing viewpoints’ of an issue. In the case of the climate crisis for example, they may have Dr. So & So, a devout advocate of the climate crisis concept, a person who believes that if we don’t act immediately to curb humanity’s carbon footprint, disaster will strike within our lifetimes, on one side. For the opposing perspective, they bring in Dr. Curry. Two sides of an issue, one person representing each side. That seems fair, right?

Only, it isn’t. “Seems” is the operative word. If we have Dr. So & So on one side and Dr. Curry on the other, the implication is that both perspectives hold the same weight. They don’t. Even just using our lowball 77% model from above, we’d need at least three scientists representing the “climate crisis is a thing” perspective to accurately illustrate the ratio of accepted truth vs proposed truth. Anything less is giving too much credence to a – let’s face it – largely fringe perspective on the issue.

Now, let’s talk about Greta Thunberg.

She is indeed 16 years old. However, I think we’re safe in establishing that she is no ordinary 16-year-old. She is poised, motivated, passionate, informed, unpretentious, and articulate. I’d say the likelihood is high that her IQ is well above standard. That puts her in a class beyond ‘typical’.

She is indeed not a scientist. She never said she was. Indeed, NO ONE ever said she was.

If you want to call prepared notes a “script” then okay, maybe she reads from a ‘script’. But “script” implies that she had no role in creating the material, that it was something handed to her, that she in fact may not even care about it, that she’s just a fresh-faced poster-child vacuously reciting information to capitalize on photo-ops and sound bites. Whether you like her or agree with her or not, I’m sure we can agree: that’s absolutely not the case.

She does indeed get a lot of media attention, but to say she gets “24/7 media coverage” is an exaggeration. She does use social media to get her message out to the public. Like most 16-year-olds, she’s pretty good at it, and what she can’t do herself, she gets help with. The definition of a smart person, my friends, is not someone who knows all the answers, but knows where to find those answers. Greta Thunberg is a very smart person.

Here’s the thing. If this girl was stomping all over the planet insisting that she “knows better” than the scientific community and that everyone needs to listen to HER, we could still admire her passion and initiative, but her message would have limited credibility. She’d be a typical teenager, trying to make her voice heard. Again, admirable, but she’d be kind of swimming in the deep end of the pool. She’d be out of her depth on a world stage talking about a global issue.

That’s not what she’s doing! Greta Thunberg may not be a scientist, but she’s done her homework. She’s well-informed on the issues surrounding the climate crisis. She generally goes out of her way to say, “DON’T listen to me. Listen to the SCIENCE!” She’s not making this shit up! She’s relaying existing, well-founded, well-researched information to the people who need to hear it, whether they want to or not. She’s deeply invested in what she’s talking about because her generation is first in line to get hit by the climate crisis harder than any other generation before hers. Dealing with the fallout of that crisis is going to be primarily her generation’s responsibility. She’s trying to get people to pay attention and do something about climate change NOW rather than wait for ecological catastrophe.

To compare her credentials to Dr. Curry’s in the way the meme does, to essentially dismiss her and her message because “she’s just a kid reading a speech” or “she's just being used by liberal activists” is misleading, denigrating, and ignorant. The “She’s a nice girl but she doesn’t understand how the world works” response she’s gotten from many world leaders (notably Trump and Putin, though Putin was smoother about it) is likewise condescending, dismissive, and ignorant. If the world doesn’t “work” in a way that ensures a future for all of us, we need to change it. That’s exactly what Miss Thunberg is endeavoring to do.

We can talk about the timeline, severity, and other details, but the discussion about whether there IS a climate crisis or not is over. The climate crisis is real. If we continue on the path we’re on, the world will not be “working” at all. Actually, strike that. The world will be just fine. It’s humanity that will be driven to the brink, maybe even over the edge, of extinction. As things stand, the planet would be a lot better off without us, unless we fundamentally change our way of doing things. 

As a friendly reminder, the Earth doesn’t belong to us. We’re nothing but temporary caretakers, and we’re making a terrible mess of it.

So. In conclusion, I leave you with this: 

 Let’s be smarter about this stuff. Let’s be discerning. Let’s not content ourselves with safe or easy answers. Let’s not fall prey to manipulative propaganda that exploits our fears rather than inspiring our hopes. Let’s not be so quick to take a metaphorical hatchet to a 16-year-old girl because her message contains, as Al Gore puts it, “an inconvenient truth”. We’re better than that. Let’s move into the future together. Let’s face the challenges of that future with conviction, ingenuity, unity, humility, and gratitude. Because if we don’t, there’s not going to be much of a future waiting for us when we get there.

Orkin’s Law of Premeditated Density: Avoiding facts, manipulating information, or otherwise being deliberately obtuse to justify your own position is not a valid ideological path. 

Thank you for reading.

~~~

1. I hate using ‘meme’ for this stuff. It’s a much broader term defined by Merriam-Webster as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” Most dictionary sources now include a secondary definition along the lines of M-W's “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online, especially through social media” but I feel this secondary definition has been constructed to address the common but improper usage of the word rather than created as an authentic definition. Yeah, I’m a logophiliacal purist. Sue me.
2. I obviously want to be emphatically clear that I do not believe a word of this hypothetical research, and find its premise morally repugnant. I’m using it solely for illustrative purposes to make my point.
3.  On a side note, this is how OJ Simpson got away with murder. His defense team was successful in equating ‘reasonable doubt’ with ‘NO doubt.’ They established that if there was even an infinitesimal probability of doubt about whether their client was guilty, the jury could not convict him. It worked, despite all the other evidence against him. The flaw in that supposition is that absolutely anything is possible, but some things are more possible than others. See the Harrison Ford reference above.