Blog

This year, after six years of interruptions due to various medical and logistical issues, I finally hosted a Passover seder again.

I also had to come to the conclusion that it’s going to be my last one.

Logistics

Before I go over the reasons for my decision, let me discuss the seder itself.

There were four people there, including me. One of them was B, who has attended every single one of my seders since I started hosting them in the mid-90s. Most of the seders have been held at her home, where there’s more physical space at a dining-room table than is available in my apartment.

The meal itself was good. I’ve hit a groove in terms of the dishes to serve and how to prepare them. I know a professional chef would not be impressed with my recipes or my cooking (my chicken-broth recipe is horribly inefficient) but it works for me and my guests.

However, the logistics of the seder turned complicated. In past years, I worked out a schedule of preparing the seder in a way that allowed me to sit at the seder most of the time, even as I prepared the final touches to the meal. I have everything laid out in a spreadsheet.


6:00 PM Set up latkes
Spinach and kugel to casserole pans
Make matzoh balls

10:00 PM Done!
Oven to 350 degrees
Kugel in oven, 45-60 min (brown top)


This year, B asked that I prepare the roast using a method called the reverse sear. She extolled the virtues of how the roast tasted better, and those folks who wanted their meat cooked to medium and those who preferred rare would both be satisfied.

I should note:

• B is a more experienced cook than I am.
• We held this seder at her home. In my mind, that gives her some say in how things are done.

But…

She holds my cooking spreadsheet in some measure of contempt. It works for me, but the concept doesn’t sit well with her. To her, making a change in how you cook a roast is something you adapt on the fly.

For me, I need the schedule. Yes, if I were a better cook I might not need it, but for a meal that I cook at most once a year, I become utilitarian: it works so I want to stick with it. I have to save becoming an expert chef for another incarnation.

As I’ve mentioned before, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t serve a roast at all. For B, serving meat is a key component of every meal, and preparing it properly is important.

When she expressed a desire for a reverse-seared roast for last year’s seder, I reworked my spreadsheet for her new cooking instructions. That seder never happened, so this was the first year I tried it.

The roast itself? It came rarer than I would have preferred. Well, we all live and learn.

That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the logistics of fitting the reverse sear, oven temperatures, handling pots and pans and trays, and other juggling associated with food preparation.

It didn’t help that she deviated from the spreadsheet. She looked at the times (which I’d prepared based on what she’d told me the year before, and reiterated the days before the seder) and changed them. This had a ripple effect on every other dish in the meal.

The net result is that I spent half the seder in the kitchen, instead of at the seder table.

If I were to host Passover seders in the future, I’d have to negotiate with B.

What do I mean, “If”?

In the weeks leading up to the seder, when it became clear that only four people would be there, I’d come to the conclusion I mentioned near the start of this essay: This would be my last seder.

If you look over my series of posts on Passover seders, you’ll see a pattern. (No, not my whiny complaints about recipes!) The pattern is if I hold a seder on a weekday night, it’s not well-attended. My big seders happen when they’re on a Friday or Saturday night.

Over the years, almost every one of my friends who’d attended one of my seders would tell me how much they enjoyed them, how they were “better” (I hate this comparison; seders aren’t a competition) than other seders they’d attended, how they looked forward to my next one.

Since 2013, I’ve sent out a “save-the-date” email about my seders in January or February, well in advance of the actual date in April (or occasionally March).

For the uninitiated: Passover seders are held the same day every year… in the Hebrew calendar. Because that calendar is lunar, as opposed to the solar Gregorian calendar that most folks use, Passover falls on a different Gregorian date each year. That’s why I send out the “save-the-date” emails: Unlike a holiday like Independence Day (always July 4) or Thanksgiving (always the fourth Thursday in November), Passover appears to “move around.”

Folks had advance notice. They could potentially do what I do, and mark their calendars and not plan to do anything the following morning.

This year, there’d be only four people on a seder that would take place on a Saturday night. Two of them would be me and B.

One of the other guests was my friend Sabrina. Decades ago, she introduced to me the idea of social capital: networks of relationships that form a give-and-take between people; e.g., I attend your Thanksgiving if you attend my Christmas.

This seder was on a weekend. There’d been some built-up anticipation for my next seder over the past few years. But when the time actually came, folks didn’t or couldn’t make it.

In the context of the murder mystery that didn’t happen, the conclusion is inescapable:

My social capital is spent.

There’s an obvious cause: the pandemic, coupled with my medical issues. I simply can’t put in the “face-time” for in-person events anymore. I might not be able to do either your Thanksgiving or your Christmas… or your New Year’s, your wedding, your mother’s funeral.

When I look ahead in the calendar, I see:

• Passover 2026 will be on a Wednesday.
• Passover 2027 will also be on a Wednesday.
• Passover 2028 will be on a Monday.
• Passover 2029 will be on a Friday.

The next Passover seder at which I’d have a hope of anyone attending is 2029. Even then, if I have any lingering social capital, I’d be more inclined to spend it on a mystery party in December 2029 instead of a seder in April 2029.

How do I feel?

Sad, of course.

My seders have been a practice I’ve kept up for about four decades. Before that, seders go back to my childhood; add a couple more decades.

The message of Passover, at least as I present it, has to do with freedom and the struggle to earn it. This message may be more important than ever over the next few years.

However, childhoods end and life changes. Folks will find their own matzoh-ball soups, inexpertly-prepared roasts, latkes, dinners, comradeship, discussion, finger puppets, and messages about sacrifice and preparedness and hope.

They’ll do it whether or not I’m there to remind them.