I was in a foul mood at the beginning of the seder. I’d discovered that there were Israeli wines being served, including one from the Golan Heights. When I sat down I said petulantly I’m not drinking any wine from the occupation and pushed the glass away from my place and put an empty glass there and didn’t drink any wine, just water.
Subsequently I felt bad about the outburst, as I had my own passivity to blame, and the original source of my passivity seated a mile and a half across from me at the table is a beautiful woman now elderly whose vast powers I should have come to terms with long ago. I have contempt for gray men disfigured by parental issues and resolved not to say anything more of a political nature during the seder, I’d said enough, maybe I should listen.
I was in my niece’s crew. She had brought out a bunch of her friends from college, five of em. The guy wore a kipa in his tangled locks, the rest were women. To my niece’s credit, it was a very diverse group, racially, religiously, the one unifying element was strong purposeful women (and men who can abide them); that is my niece’s arrowlike spirit.
The one next to me was an Arab-American with incredible eyes. So perhaps the seating was a gesture to me, I thought later. She has lived in her parents’ country and in this one too, she studies international relations. We talked about the Arab spring, and would Syria go? I did not bring up The Issue. In my 50s I am finally learning to read people and I sensed that her politics and mine would not align. She is from a Christian family, and I sensed some hidden sympathy for Israel. The politics of the Middle East is complex, eh.
On my other side was one of my sisters, the funniest one, Chaucerian and extroverted. She asked the woman a bunch of questions. Where would she like to work, and where does she see her future. In the United States, the woman said. She dreams of working at the Carnegie Institute. Why not in your home country? my sister asked.
Because, she said, she prefers the American scene for women.
