by Roger Herst
A mouth of strong teeth underscored his smile. "I'm Kye Naah," he said, reaching in front of Dottie to take Stan Melkin's hand. "Gut yomtov, if that doesn't butcher your language.”
"Why yes, of course," Stan stammered, he eyes opened wider than normal and his brain racing for answers to a host of questions he had never entertained until that very moment.
There was a youthful freshness in Gabby's smile as she confirmed to others that Kye was, indeed, her evening companion and that it had always been considered a mitzvah to invite Gentiles to participate in the seder. Middle Eastern music, haunting and exotic, suddenly permeated the hall. Images of Pharaoh Ramses II filled the overhead screens. Momentary glimpses of the Nile River flashed.
"Here we go everybody," Karla Foo's sharp, commanding voice resonated through the Meyerhoff loudspeaker.
Donald Silvio's celebrity face filled the screen, then receded as the camera pulled back, leaving him a miniature martinet before the colossus of Abu Simbel. "Gut Yomtov and Hag-sameach," he opened first in Yiddish then Hebrew. I am standing at this moment on the very threshold of history, in the year 1212 before the Common Era, in the presence of one of Egypt's mightiest rulers, Ramses II, whose empire encompassed much of the civilized Middle East. However powerful this god-pharaoh, he proved to be impotent before Hebrew tribes that had once prospered and multiplied in his lands adjoining the Nile River, then became enslaved. Our story is the conflict between him and the divinely inspired slaves who broke their chains of servitude to eventually become the children of a new god. And that marriage of a people and its god has endured through the ages. Today, modern Jews, great grandchildren of these Hebrew slaves in ancient Egypt, enjoy history's oldest legacy. This evening, you will see the events which triggered this epic exodus and watch the descendants of these slaves, Jews in Washington, D.C., commemorating their past around the Passover table. Follow us and together we shall traverse the road of history, FROM THEN UNTIL NOW."
The Disney director left Egypt and instructed her cameramen to pan the Ohav Shalom celebrants, then sweep across the head table and come to rest on the rabbi as she instructed her congregants how to pour water from a pitcher over their hands in ritual purification. The name of Rabbi Gabrielle Lewyn scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Canter Blass stood to her left to chant a blessing over the holiday candles while Dottie Melkin lit the tapers. A bit of trick photography projected Gabby's image behind the candelabra, her eyes devout, the soft indentures of her dimples augmented by candlelight. Reuben Blass's baritone voice resonated richly in the background.
A panoramic view of the Egyptian desert, shot from a helicopter, suddenly captured the overhead monitors. "And so, we begin this epic journey…" Donald Silvio said in voice-over. Small spots on the landscape represented laborers working in the hot desert sun at a nearby construction site. The shot morphed from the present into a distant time, with a caravan of Hebrews entering Egypt in search of food to counter the effects of famine in their Canaanite homeland.
"Ready now, Rabbi Folkman," Karla Foo cued Asa to explain why contemporary Jews eat green-leaf vegetables at their Seders. He stood and gathered a healthy sprig of parsley in his fingers. Upon a signal from Karla, the overhead monitors switched from Egypt to Ohav Shalom.
Asa's ease at the piano before audiences conveyed to the synagogue. He spoke without a trace of nervousness.
"The observance of Pesach is governed by a lunar calendar and that's why it falls on a slightly different date each year, though always in the spring. In ancient times, this lunar calendar was superimposed upon a solar calendar because the sun also governed the lives of ancient peoples. Our ancestors were farmers and shepherds whose livelihoods were dependent upon crops and herds. Each Jewish festival, Passover included, is therefore an amalgam of two themes and two calendars – the agricultural theme, in which the sun calendar is dominant, and the spiritual-religious theme, in which the lunar calendar prevails. Eating the spring vegetables, such as this parsley, is a remnant of our agricultural past and the farmer's petition for healthy crops. But descendants were not content to leave it at that. They dipped this spring greenery into salt water to remind us of the salted sacrifices offered in the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. Some say salt also reminds us of human tears shed under slavery. Let's now stand, dip a sprig of parsley into salt water and recite a blessing, thanking God first for our food and secondly, for our freedom."
The congregation stood. Cameras surveyed the room before focusing on individuals in the act of dipping parsley into salt water. In unison they recited a blessing in Hebrew.
"Everyone knows about Joseph from the Bible, the eldest son of the patriarch Jacob and the Matriarch Rachel," said Donald Silvio, as the screen filled with a replication of the young Joseph scything wheat in an open field. "Joseph left the Land of Judah, surrounding modern Jerusalem, and traveled into Egypt, after being sold into slavery not by bandits or highwaymen, but by his jealous brothers. His new Egyptian masters eventually recognized his extraordinary talent for interpreting the symbolic nature of dreams. From a poor, undistinguished slave in the house of an Egyptian officer by the name of Potifar, Joseph's fame as seer spread to the house of Pharaoh where he rose to become viceroy over all that the mighty Egyptian monarch possessed. Meanwhile, Joseph's brethren also journeyed to Egypt and with their brother's forgiving help, prospered and multiplied." On the screen re-enactment, Hebrews were shown in a busy Egyptian marketplace enjoying the bounties of a prosperous land.
"Over the course of the next four hundred years," Silvio's voice-over continued, "the Hebrew nation in Egypt became numerous. The Hittite empire to the northeast, close to the ancestral land of the Hebrews, threatened to invade Egypt. To counter a perceived threat of alliance between the Hittites and Hebrew population in Egypt, Pharaoh Ramses II put his Hebrew subjects into forced labor building famous cities.
The film sequence Disney Productions had previewed to the Ohav Shalom Board of Directors about manufacturing bricks without straw binding appeared on the monitors. A theatrical voice recited the biblical passages describing the cruel suffering these enslaved Semites experienced. In bondage, the meaningfulness to their lives in Egypt ceased. In desperation, they cried out for delivery to the god of their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the deity whom most had forgotten during the four centuries of Egyptian exile. And miraculously, this god heard their woes.
"Stand ready, Rabbi Lewyn," Karla Foo prompted through the headphones. "You're up in twenty seconds."
Theater spotlights fell upon Gabby from opposite directions, encompassing her in a halo of brightness. Her green and yellow skullcap contrasted with the starched white collar of her blouse. Cameramen were instinctively drawn to an attractive female. Dark shadows accentuated the angularity of her chin. Her nose was perfectly set between soft cheeks that curled into dimples when she spoke. Her eyes, highlighted by dark mascara, were deep and Semitic, bridging the modern Jew with ancient brethren in Egypt.
Overhead monitors began to sparkle with white snow, then suddenly went blank. "Oh Shit!" exclaimed Karla Foo into her mike connected with her camera crew. "We've just lost our link to Egypt. Silvio might as well be on Saturn. But we've still got the Egyptian-Sinai footage in sequence and can feed it as necessary. Any sign of a resumption, Ralph?" she spoke directly to the chief engineer in a mobile van parked outside the synagogue.
"Nope. Dead as a mummy from you know where," he shot back.
"All right then. Until we make contact again, we've got to improvise from here. A switch on her belt connected her to Gabby's earphone. "Are you standing by, Rabbi? We've just lost the link with Egypt, but we can still work the original script. Only I must ask you to fill in with historic commentary. Please talk about ancient Egypt and modern America. Can you do that, Rabbi?"
Gabby thought of thousands, no perhaps millions, who might be watching and shuttered. Her next thought was a reprimand for having accepted Disney's invitation in the first place. Once that was dismi
ssed as a waste of time, she accepted her lack of alternatives. "I'll do the best…"
Karla interrupted. "I'm coming up on your inset, Rabbi. For now, just do what you had planned to do. We're down to six seconds. The matzah, please, Rabbi."
Gabby inhaled as though this might be her last breath of air and lifted three square-shaped matzot from the table. The camera moved in to follow her extracting the middle sheet of unleavened bread and presenting it to those at her table. "Passover is a festival with many symbols which remind us today of our forefathers trek from slavery to deliverance. We're not spectators gazing back on history with detached curiosity. No, quite the contrary. Their slavery is our slavery, their epic exodus, our exodus. The foods we eat, the prayers we recite, bind us inexorably with our ancestors 3,200 years ago. And no symbol of this journey is more poignant than this middle sheet of matzah."
Two spotlights converged upon her face, looking down at the matzah. "Half of this, I shall break for eating later,” she almost whispered. "But the other half is called the Lachma Anya the Bread of Affliction. My next words will be in Aramaic, a cognate language of Hebrew spoken for centuries by Jews and the mother tongue of Jesus of Nazareth." She raised this sacred sliver of matzah high for all to see and proclaimed, "Ha lachma anya d'aochaloo ahavatana b'artza d'mitzrayim… kol dichphin, yetev, v'yechaloo…"
The lens captured her conviction as she made eye contact with her congregants, explaining, "All of us, Jew and Gentile, come to this planet from humble beginnings. We are all the children of slaves, immigrants, refugees and vagrants. This particular matzah, called the Bread of Affliction, reminds us of our lowly origins. Our good fortune in America is largely a Divine gift, not our birthright. This is bread of our humility, the bread of the poor, the outcasts, the underprivileged. May those in want share it with us. Let no neighbor or countryman have less than this pitiful sliver of unleavened bread.
"It has not always been our fate to live in a nation of freedom. Let us not forget that had our grandfathers and grandmothers in Europe traveled east rather than west to improve their lives, we wouldn't be here tonight. Like our brethren in Europe, we would have been incinerated in the fires of the Holocaust. Who but the arrogant can ignore his own fortune? When we see Haitians crawling onto Florida beaches, Eastern European refugees on Yugoslav roads, Chinese peasants in illegal ships coming to American shores, Mexican laborers wading across the Rio Grande, our hearts fill with compassion. Who among us has the right to shut the door closed once he has reached the Promised Land? When others are in pain, their pain is rightfully our pain. And our Bread of Affliction is rightly theirs to share with us. Ha Lachma Anyah, come eat with us. How is it possible to celebrate the deliverance of our ancestors three thousand years ago and yet remain insensitive to the suffering of people in our own generation? Ha Lachma Anyah. This, friends, is the Bread of our Affliction, not the affliction of others, but our affliction. God delivered us from slavery so that we might bring freedom to others. How dare we forget those who are still in chains, those who are hungry and those who are struggling to share in the bounty of this good earth!"
Karla Foo prompted her camera team. "We're moving into the footage on the Ten Plagues in fifteen seconds. Rabbi Lewyn, please get ready because we'll be showing your congregants dipping wine onto their plates. Call out the plagues by their Hebrew names and we'll mix that into the sound background with the music."
Film that Disney had screened before the Ohav Shalom Board of Directors appeared on overhead monitors. It showed a frog jumping over a windowsill into an Egyptian home, then Egyptians walking cobbled streets and scratching their heads infected with lice. Simultaneously, Gabby recited the list of plagues while dipping her forefinger into a goblet of red wine and casting drops onto a dinner plate. Karla broke in. "Doing just fine, Rabbi. We've got a great cutaway. But this is where it gets tricky. I need you to fill in for Don Silvio. Read the script or improvise. It's your choice."
Gabby needed a moment to gather her thoughts, but time was a luxury she didn't have. The camera was on her making eye contact with Cantor Blass. Following recitation of the plagues against Pharaoh and his people, the Dayeinu lyrics tracked logically.
"Friends," she said upon the completion of the sequence, "in your haggadahs. Cantor Blass will lead in this joyous song of gratitude."
Without further prompting, the cantor, an indefatigable cheerleader, almost jumped from his seat. Dayeinu is the most exuberant and festive moment in the seder and he let his congregants know he expected them to belt out the familiar Hebrew verses. It was time to let God know how Jews appreciated His bounty. Hold back nothing!
On the screens, the imposing figures of Moses and his brother Aaron, with their backs to the cameras, were arguing with Pharaoh while the monarch's courtiers circled around, disdainful and dubious. Ramses, his face to the screen, looked puzzled, as if wrestling with a premonition that these Hebrew slaves were destined to vex him.
In Meyerhoff Hall, Gabby explained the historic sequence to her congregants. The cards were stacked against Pharaoh. How could he possibly have known that a divine power far larger than himself had taken these woebegone slaves into his care? How could he have foreseen that these people would escape into the Sinai Peninsula and later march onto the pages of history? What would clue him that these seemingly impotent and destitute slaves would receive a revelation to reshape Western Civilization? The moment was pivotal not only for Judaism, but for Christianity and Islam. Poor Ramses was clueless.
On cue, Asa Folkman rose to lead his congregants in the traditional blessings over bitter herbs bread and matzah. Each required an explanation and to each he brought a modern touch. On the monitors slaves were on the run into the eastern desert of Egypt, with the hot sun baking a flat, moisture-less bread on sheets of bronze. Miles behind, Pharaoh's cavalry had begun it fruitless chase.
The mental concentration necessary to pull off both a public and private seder simultaneously enervated Gabby. By the time Disney had signed off the air, she felt ready to run from Meyerhoff Auditorium to a quiet sanctuary anywhere. Her congregants approached the head table with mixed reactions about what had just occurred. Several voiced their opinion that they would prefer not to see the experiment repeated on subsequent years, their opinions stated in less than respectful tones. To them, the time-tested traditional way was preferable, raising doubts in Gabby's mind whether merging of the past and present really worked. About the same number held the opposite view and praised her innovation in making the old relevant to modern times, their position stated with much less hostility.
Exhausted though she was, she could not ignore dubious expressions of wonderment when she introduced Kye Naah. Eyes invariably darted about in confusion. What was he doing with their rabbi, especially when Ohav Shalom was enjoying television exposure in many thousands of American households? What impression would this leave in the minds of fellow Jews who were having enough trouble digesting the idea of a female rabbi?
"I was skeptical about this," Stan Melkin shook her hand rigorously. "But thanks to you, Rabbi Folkman, and Cantor Blass, we did pretty well. We'll soon hear reaction from the community. I'd be interested to learn what your rabbinical colleagues think."
"They probably didn't see this. Most were conducting ceremonies in their own synagogues or homes. A few might view it later on videotape. Between you and me, I don't expect much. Anything that challenges the status quo is threatening. Remember, rabbis are paid to defend the past and uphold tradition. Innovation," she paused to punch a friendly knuckle into his shoulder, "comes slowly."
Saying good night to hundreds of congregants added to her fatigue. Kye asked to follow her home and be certain she arrived safely. While this was not necessary, she enjoyed his attentions.
Outside her garage, he faced her with a rare expression of uncertainty. "I'd invite myself in, but I know how tired you must be. What I want to say, I can say here on the street. You were wonderful, Gabby. Your words were golden and your timing pe
rfect. At a moment like this, it makes me sad to think of you in politics. You have much more to give in your current job."
"I appreciate that, Kye. More than you know," she said, looking vulnerable. "It's important to me to be the best rabbi I can."
He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. After a single peck, she angled her face toward his and returned the kiss on his lips, then gathered him in a full-body embrace. In breaking away, she muttered, "There will be hell to pay for this, you know."
He squinted his willingness to participate in the conspiracy, but at the last moment asked, "How so?"
"Couldn't you read their eyes tonight? My people want to know who you are and what you mean to me. You're a Korean Baptist. Jewish girls are supposed to date Jewish men. I'm supposed to be a role model for their daughters and dating handsome, talented Korean men like you is definitely not what they have in mind."
His eyes dropped to the pavement but quickly returned to hers. "I'm sorry, Gabby. I am who I am."
"Someone else said those identical words a long time ago."
"Who was that?" "God. In the Book of Exodus. When Moses asked for his proper name. God replied, 'I'll be who I'll be.' So that shows you that Yahweh, deity to the ancient Hebrews, was history's first existentialist."
On her doorstep they embraced again. "I'd invite you in, Kye, but I need to decompress. I've got to conduct a service tomorrow morning and I haven't yet thought what to say. Time has run away from me."
"I understand, honey," he kissed her forehead while clinging to her upper arms. "I'm looking forward to some private time with you. Remember, you promised to let me teach you about Internet fluency. And that's tough when you're so busy at Ohav Shalom."
A gush of cynicism escaped from her lips. "I warned you about interruptions in my schedule."
"What if we get out of town and you don't answer the phone. I've got the perfect place in mind."
"Where?" she was curious.
