"[Isaac] had to teach us that it is possible to suffer and despair
an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter."
- Eli Wiesel, from Messengers of God
"We never enjoy the horseradish so much as when it brings tears to our
eyes."
- Ira Steingroot, from Keeping Passover
I remember many years ago, I guess I was around twenty, my dear grandmother
had a stroke that left her in a coma. The doctors all said she wasn't
coming back--that it was just a matter of time before she passed on--that
it was only the machines that were keeping my Mom-Mom alive.
Well, the family all got together to plan for the inevitable. Where
would the coffin be purchased? What color would it be? Who should
be notified? And, of course, most importantly, who would be making
what food for the shivah? "I could make a fruit salad," my Aunt Reney
said, "but we don't know when she's going to die, and it could go bad by
then." "Well," my mother said, "maybe if we told them we had a fruit
salad, they'd pull the plug?"
We all laughed. We all cried.
This year, for the first time, I helped my father prepare and run our Seder.
I've always participated in the Seder--but to actually have to figure out
what to skip and what to read and how to handle the rowdy crowd of hungry,
whiney Jews (just as Moses did in the desert), this was a new experience
that brought me closer to the holiday than ever before. I was stunned
by all the conflicting symbols of affliction and freedom, of laughter and
tears. One moment we're mourning the horror of slavery and the angel
of death--the next we're belting out Dayyenu in a way that would have made
God think twice before parting the Red Sea.
Laughter and tears, woven together.
So it is with Isaac having endured the greatest horror in the Torah, yet
whose name signifies laughter; with Klezmer trumpet and clarinet whose joy
is equaled only by its melancholy; with a loved one lost leaving a permanent
aching void, yet whose memory can still make us laugh and feel loved.
It is from this world that Breath arrived.