It’s that time of the year again, and preparations for Passover are in full fury at my home.

I have descended, along with every other Jew in my community, on my local supermarket, clearing its Pesach aisle out before the last snowfall. I have stocked up on the fake Cheerios, the crumbly chocolate chip cookies, and the virtual noodles — the barebone necessities upon which my kids will survive for the duration of the holiday.

I have turned my house inside out, become a demon about
restricted chometz zones, and transformed my kitchen into a
sea of silver foil that lines every shelf and counter space available.

While much has been written and said over the years (mostly
by men) about the “spiritual cleansing” that is a byproduct of
the arduous physical cleaning for Pesach, I find little comfort
in metaphor while scrubbing my refrigerator at 1 o’clock in the
morning.

But there are definitely parts of the process that I do enjoy.
This coming week, for example, I am expecting the following
holiday inventory to arrive in my home: two seder plates, two
cups of Elijah, two matzah covers, one afikomen bag, and one
Haggadah.

Together, these items are valued at well over ten thousand
dollars, since that is how much we pay in tuition for our two
young artisans to make these handcrafted seder ornaments.
And let’s not forget, these items come on top of similar items
brought home last year and the year before that, jewels that are
stashed away at the end of each holiday to be stored until the
following year.

And oh, the productions that accompany the presentation of
these projects! The solemnity, the excitement with which my
kids unveil each treasure is more precious to me than the items
themselves. Each product comes with a story — how it was
made, which teacher supervised and what purpose its serves
on the holiday.

What is the etiquette in the matter of preserving these artifacts?
Clearly, this year’s fashions are the ones we must use
during this year’s seders. But no self-respecting parent can
then discard the seder plates of yesteryear, now can they? For
how many years does this go on? My mother still uses the
Haggadah covers I made when I was six. Is this extreme?

Of course, the question of how long and under what conditions
to save your children’s projects is not unique to Passover.
My oldest is still only in kindergarten and my house is already
overrun with projects ranging from elaborate representations
of the alphabet to a family tree in honor of Tu B’Shevat. All
sorts of more non-descript items come home on a weekly basis.
My refrigerator door is only so big.

But Pesach, somehow, is in a category by itself. At the end
of the holiday, everything is packed away, from the finest crystal
to the most humble afikomen bag. When you unpack these
same items the following year, you unpack your memories.

Each one of my dishes, most of them given to me by my
mother, holds within it memories of Pesachs past. Each pot, it
seems, has its own story to tell. And now, so do my children’s
home-made Elijah cups. When so many of us come from families
that started out with nothing in this country, these are our
family heirlooms.

And this, of course, is what Passover is all about. It’s about
stories and memories and going over the same material, over
and over again. It’s about making the past come to life, through
the retelling of a tale, using the visual props that constitute our
seder centerpieces.

We always say that the telling of the Exodus story each year
is for the sake of the children, so that they shall know our
history. And all the unusual and different objects that we use
at the seder are to keep the children awake and sustain their
interest.

But I have discovered a little secret about this educational
process. It actually works both ways. “You wanna hear something,
Mama?” my four-year-old son asks me, as he unveils the
vividly green cardboard frog that he made in school.

He then proceeds to tell me, wide-eyed, the most amazing
thing about frogs jumping around in Pharoah’s bed. He shares
this story with me in a rush, like a hot news item, letting me
in on his discovery, confident that I could never have heard of
such a thing before.

And, in a way, I never have. I have never heard his version of
the story. When he tells it to me, it is fresh, it is spontaneous,
and it is interpreted by him. The Haggadah tells us that no
matter how well we think we know the story of the Exodus, it
is incumbent upon us to recite it every year and to see ourselves
as if we too were redeemed from Egypt.

When we hear the story told to us by our children, no matter
how simply or how fantastically, it really is as if we have
never heard it before. And when our children have internalized
our history and are able to tell it back to us anew — this
truly is redemption.

 

(Originally published 1998, in The New York Jewish Week. Reprinted from Life in the Present Tense).