Familiar Stories
On Passover, literary deep-dives and the kind of friendships I love most
People started arriving after 5:30 and kept walking in until well after 6. The table had been set the day before, the apples and walnuts chopped and mixed with cinnamon and sweet wine in the morning, and the sun cascaded over the yellow tablecloth like gold pouring from the sky.
I look forward to hosting the Passover Seder all year long, and then in one night, it’s over, a dream I wake from with a smile on my lips. This year, we had 20 people around our table, the room bursting and packed full of beating hearts and eager eyes.
This holiday is a challenging one, full of restrictions and rules, but what I love most about it is the storytelling. Of course I do. It’s through stories that I see the world and understand pretty much everything. I am a born storyteller and in some way or another, storytelling has been the backbone of all my professional endeavors.
But this…this is a familiar story that becomes new every year. I remember my jovial grandfather in his sport jacket and smiles at the head of the table. I remember my grandmother’s warm kitchen and quiet presence. I remember my father and my uncles racing to read Had Gadya, One Little Goat, faster and faster, egged on by their father-in-law and all the rest of us laughing as the words stumbled over one another.
Now, I sit at the head of the table. I pore through different versions of the Passover story and make a detailed list of pages to turn to, with powerful parables and intriguing insights to try to fulfill the mandate to make this story of deliverance from slavery, of new freedom and peoplehood, relevant in the 21st century.
All our guests stayed until well after 11 o’clock, so I think I succeeded in creating an interactive, thoughtful experience for each and every person. But where I think this holiday grabs me most, and perhaps my guests, too, is in the depth of connection.
When, on a regular day, in a regular fast-paced, digitally-centered life, do you connect in deep thought and winding intellectual debate? I mean, really? Next to never, I’d say.
Except, that’s where I live, in the depths. I don’t have the patience for surface, although I’ll readily admit that anytime I’m walking down a street or stopping into a store, I flash a smile at any human I pass and say hello. That’s surface, but it’s also kindness, and I think we need heavy doses of it to keep going.
But the people I invite to my Passover Seder are some of my favorite friends. The people I most like to spend time with. And when we go out as couples or one-on-one in regular time, we connect semi-deeply anyway, so it’s not a stretch to go even deeper with the help of an ancient text made relevant for modern minds.
And then, the day after the Seder, I spoke to a small group of readers about my essay collection, FOREST WALK ON A FRIDAY: Essays on love, home and finding my voice at midlife. The essay topics sparked other conversations, about where we find meaning, what we believe, and the stances we stand firmly in despite having flawed or inaccurate information.
(P.S. This book is now available on all audio channels, including Audible!)
It was honest and endearing, and that makes for real connection. There were a few women I knew already, and others I had just met, and by the end, we were all hugging because when you connect in a meaningful way, you can’t help but feel close.
My friend, Kim, who hosted the book discussion, and I are talking about hosting a salon to further those deep conversations. To talk more, to connect on a real level. Because, as she says, sometimes we get stuck in our own little worlds and only talk in an echo chamber to people who agree with us. It might be nice to shake things up and have the hard conversations, but come out of it with a sense of kinship and love.
I am 53 years old, and I’ve read, recited, recounted, remembered, and retold this Passover story now 106 times in my lifetime. Maybe more. I distinctly remember, when I was a journalist at a Jewish newspaper in suburban Washington, D.C., writing an article about a Seder held in a Black church that celebrated the similarities of deliverance from slavery for the Jews from Pharaoh in Egypt and the African-Americans in the United States. We felt a sense of connection and similarity back then, and it was one of my favorite stories to write because it had at its core a sense of connection over redemption.
We all deserve to be redeemed, in every time and in every generation.
Each time I come to this story, I am different, the world is different, and so the story is different. It conveys new meaning and opens my eyes to a unique way of looking at the world, which I thought had grown old and familiar to me.
We always have a chance to become new, to become wise, to become aware.
What familiar stories in your life might you look at with new eyes? Tell them to a rapt crowd and see them anew?
Perennial Themes for Writing
It occurs to me, as I reflect on the Passover story, that there are tropes to religious storytelling. Redemption from bondage or slavery. Being saved. Becoming a people & the importance and power of community.
Personal salvation, driven by reflection and repentance. Personal salvation bound up in collective salvation.
Looking out for others, one saving many, almost selflessly or at the expense of the self.
The drive to inspire others to see truth and meaning.
Atoning for sins, vowing to do better, being forgiven.
A benevolent, generous higher power—something or someone bigger than us, all-knowing, whom we turn to in difficult times.
My challenge to you: take one of these old-as-time themes and write your own version of it. Write your story.
Join Me for the Launch of a New Novel
My third novel and 12th book, I LOVE YOU, CHARLIE TANNER, is launching on June 12th! Please join me for the virtual launch that day at 12 p.m. (register here) or in-person in Michigan that night at 7 p.m. (details below).
Thanks for reading Lynne Golodner’s Substack, A Look in the Mirror. Look forward to a new issue on the 1st and the 15th of every month. Thanks to all paid subscribers who generously support this newsletter! If you know someone who might appreciate the message here, please share. All love, Lynne
I’m enjoying your essays. Thank you for bringing meaning to my day.
What a beautiful post. I have had the privilege of being invited to share seders three times in my life. Each time, the heart-felt ceremony and the familial hilarity has moved me to tears. Ritual is a way of enhancing life, personal spirituality, and literary imagination. You spoke to all three. Thank you.