The Best Spiritual Writing 2011 by Philip Zaleski

Author:Philip Zaleski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

These days we trade off, one year at a hotel with my family and the next at a different hotel with hers. Though the location may change, there is an essential sameness to these holidays. The Jews in shorts. The all-you-can-eat midnight dessert extravaganza. The meat hangovers. The jogging in penance, the hours spent in hot tubs, boiling like flanken, futile attempts to sweat out toxins. The vows to go light at lunch, just some fish and egg salad and perhaps a tiny tiny tiny slice of cheesecake. And fruit.

When I am honest with myself, I will admit that there is something I love about these programs. I love them in the same way that I love Las Vegas, the same way that I love the movies: as a hyperreal expression of the American Dream. Often I swear I’ll never return, declaring that next year, we will stay home. A few times we have even made good on this promise, and though these Passovers are delightful and private, they never happen two years in a row. They exhaust my mother or mother-in-law. We can’t handle them anymore, anyway. Our systems have been reconditioned, weakened; our tolerance for endless matzah with jam, all but atrophied. Where’s the buffet? we ask. We may sing about next year in Jerusalem, but by the following April we have reverted to form, boarding a plane ten hours before Seder night, bound for another grand hotel, our bags crammed with sunscreen and neckties, our hearts full of longing and dread.

1 Of Passover’s eight days, only the first two and the last two are considered holidays. One is still required during the four intervening days to eat no leaven, but otherwise these are regular working days.

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