Lessons at the Dinner Table

Jenny Lehman’s mother taught piano lessons, baked rhubarb pie and wore her hair in a gray-and-white bun that said, sternly: If you are not nice to my daughter this cleaver could relieve you of several fingers. You would not be the first. Have some pie.

Thankfully, I had every intention of being nice to Jenny Lehman, a nice Jewish girl who attended a nice all-girl Catholic high school. She was part of a circle of friends connected by Temple Emmanuel, where, despite the jade cross hanging around my neck, I attended Friday night services so often I was made an honorary member of the synagogue’s youth group and given, with good humor, my own Jewish name.

Shalom, Streuliwitz.

I liked Jenny Lehman a lot, and wished she liked me more than she did. But while we were trying to sort that out in the way teenagers do, she generously invited me to her house, on Cranleigh Drive, for the beginning of Passover.

A Passover Seder celebrates the Jews’ escape from slavery in Egypt some 3,300 years ago. The meal is full of symbolism and a lot of food that middle-class Presbyterian boys have never eaten. Jenny’s father, Godfrey (that’s Mr. Lehman to me, sir) led us through rituals as common in their house as Easter lilies and chocolate bunnies were in mine. He poured the four cups of wine that represent God’s four expressions of deliverance, said the Kiddush, and performed the Yachatz, breaking the matzo and hiding the larger piece.

The Passover Seder is much about remembering, and teaching the children the story of the Exodus. The rituals encourage questions, and Jenny, still the youngest child at the table, was required to ask, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

The answer, I learned, is not, “because we have to eat gefilte fish and unleavened cake and drink Manischewitz.”

I discovered that matzo ball soup is pretty good and that Jewish mothers can be, in the warmest possible way, Jewish mothers.

“What’s the matter? You’re not eating! Don’t you like the soup?”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Lehman. I love the soup.”

“That’s good! Here! Have some more!”

Quietly, I asked Jenny what the white stuff was.

“Oh, that’s really good,” she whispered back. “You’ll like it. Just take a big spoonful and put it on some matzo.”

“Like that?”

“No, more. Yes. Like that. Now just pop the whole thing in your mouth.”

Mrs. Lehman, from the end of the table, an instant before my teeth came together: “Stop! Do you know what that is?”

Sheepishly, “No, ma’am.”

“That’s horseradish!”

And from the corner of my eye I saw Jenny, belly laughing as quietly as she could, with a look back at me that said, “Forgive me. I did it because I like you.”

At the end of the meal the children, that being Jenny and me, were sent to find the afikoman, the hidden piece of matzo. That, I understood. It was an Easter egg hunt! I found it on a bookcase and collected a dollar from the patriarch.

It was a gracious, welcoming evening. And, for me, a brief introduction to genuine American Jewish culture which, despite the gefilte fish and unleavened cake, was full of humility, reverence, warmth and tradition.

This week, the oppressed are again rebelling in the Middle East. Jews celebrate Passover. Christians begin to celebrate Easter. And in Oklahoma City, we remember the bombing.

The Passover Seder at Jenny Lehman’s house wasn’t a formal attempt at interfaith dialogue; it was just a couple of teenagers trying to get better acquainted. But the idea has never left me that if we just knew more of one another, we would have a lot less fear and a lot less hatred.

Shalom.