Make Mine Mike

It’s Passover, my favorite Jewish holiday. Yeah, I like the Seder meal even more than the gifts of Hanukkah. Although I also like Tu Bishvat ‘cause it’s fun to say Tu Bishvat.

I’ve attended Seders with different members of my family, friends’ families, and even strangers who’ve taken me in, like when I was living in London. And I’ve noticed that Passover is the same wherever you go, with only minor variations. Like the father in the English family shouting to his wife, “Oy!” to which I had to ask, “Was that a British ‘oy’ or a Yiddish ‘oy’?”

The Passover meal often involves the number four. There are four questions, and four sons who ask the meaning of Pesach. All of this was nicely summarized in Green’s post.

Here are four types of people at any Passover dinner, and the questions they ask:

1. The Seder Stickler, who insists on doing every single ritual: “How you can have the bitter herb? We still have 19 pages of the Hagaddah to read.”

2. Weinstein the Wino, who drinks his four cups of wine in the first five minutes: “Can we Irish up this Manishevitz a little?”

3: Cool Hand Puke, who believes in celebrating our freedom with the freedom to consume excessive amounts of hard-boiled eggs, or other dishes: “Who dares me to snort this whole bowl of horseradish?”

4: The Roamin’ Afikoman Hunter, who uses the game of searching for the matzoh as an excuse to snoop throughout the house: “Mrs. Shapiro, if unleavened bread has no yeast, why do you have fungicide in your medicine cabinet?”

Happy Pesach!