“THE GENTILES SHALL COME TO THY LIGHT”¹

Greetings From the Most Jewish Gentile in Existence

I even like gefilte fish

I love Passover. I’d invite all of you to my place for one of our two — count ’em, two! — Seders, but even with our monster table that would be tight. Besides, I have to clear everyone I do invite with my wife, her being the Jew of this partnership. If I get the OK they need the talk.

Part one: don’t bring food. Food served at Passover Seders has to meet very exacting requirements² which, after 31 years of interfaith marriage, I still don’t understand. If you really feel that bad about not bringing food to an event that, like all Jewish events, is about food, bring flowers, but know that your presence is gift enough.

Part two, for Christians only: Jesus has nothing to do with this. This should be obvious, but unbelievable as it may seem, it actually became an issue with one of my best friends.

He brought some cans of something or other which I whisked away before my wife saw. I thought we were good but at some point during the actual Seder he said something about something in the Seder prefiguring something in the life of Jesus.

The looks he got could have frozen Gehenna itself. He is now banished from our Seders for life. I blame myself for not warning him, so I now provide fair warning, along with an introductory “I’m not saying you would, but…” lest I offend my prospective guest with the implicit assumption that they don’t know this most obvious of things.

Back to the important part, the food. Specifically, the two foods most associated with Passover — matzoh and gefilte fish.

I know you can’t imagine anyone, Jew or gentile, actually liking gefilte fish. For the sake of simplicity let’s stick to the kind you buy in jars only manly men can open, as illustrated above. We will save for another time discussion of Aunt Sadie’s homemade gefilte fish, which you claim you actually like, or at least can tolerate.

Once a handy ubermensch has opened the jar, the sight that greets you is, I admit, not the most appetizing on earth. Every fellow gentile I know has the same reaction: “Oh my god do you know what it looks like?” Yes, I know better than you what it looks like and no, I do not need another scatological gefilte fish metaphor, thank you. It’s as if gentiles all over the world belong to a super-secret cabal which exists only to gross out Paul Hossfield. Let’s be friends, OK? Nothing about rabbits, dogs, goats, or horses having eaten too much in the way of milk products. Thank you.

The mild taste of Gefilte fish bears nothing in common with any form of excrement. G-d mercifully decreed that excrement taste strong and vile to us. Otherwise we would pick up even more pathogens than we already do, and yet more would make that jump from animal to human which caused us all such grief these past two years.

If you can get the aforementioned metaphors out of your mind long enough to give gefilte fish a try you will find it mild and rather sweet. If mild and rather sweet is not to your liking try the tradition of slathering it with white horseradish to the point of it becoming an effective home remedy for sinus congestion.

I will grant you haters this: That glop the blobs of gefilte fish swim in? Both my wife and my ex have stories of relatives that downed it like it was matzo ball soup but I gag at the very thought.

As the final day’s sun sets on the first Passover in two years with actual Seder guests I realize I will also miss matzoh, that other Passover staple gentiles love to hate. True, if you eat it plain, it is indistinguishable from the box it came in, but what kind of stupid goy eats plain matzoh? Even at the Seder we don’t do that.

Well, just the first little bit, for the sake of ritual. Thereafter we have the good sense to put something on it. We begin with an actual chunk of horseradish. If this is your first Seder do be careful! By this point you have chugged two glasses of wine. Don’t humiliate yourself. Later we add maror to form a “Hillel Sandwhich.” Don’t ask.

The Festival Meal is next, during which you will stuff yourself with foods that seem almost normal. It is quite acceptable to overeat and swill the wine, so party on.

Happy Passover!

Special thanks to Susan Brearley for the topic suggestion, and to Amy Sea for the inspiration. I hope your Passover has been as wonderful as mine.

¹ Isaiah 60:3, KJV

² I searched “Passover meal” on Stockvault and turned up pictures of shrimp, for G-d’s sake.