This Passover, my girlfriend and I were going to celebrate with my family in Philadelphia. We planned to sing at my grandfather’s birthday party, and then I would co-lead our two big seders with my father. But last Friday, Hannah walked into our room to find me in bed, pale and coughing, surrounded by snotty tissues and pills, staring dejectedly at my plane ticket.
She wasn’t shocked—my chronic illness has been progressing for over 10 years, and at this point, my body is unpredictable. With a weakened immune system, I tend to catch whatever’s going around. We know these facts. But even so, each time my body gets in the way of a plan, a holiday, a hope—it’s crushing.
Hannah and I had to make a decision quickly. We cancelled our tickets. I was heartbroken.
I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been sick on a Jewish holiday. Even worse, I realize that I’ve chastised myself each time. It felt as if I was always letting someone (Who, though? God? Halacha? The Jewish People? Myself?) down.
Being bedridden on Rosh Hashanah meant I would not hear the shofar blow: failure. Not being able to walk on Yom Kippur meant I could only join a service on Zoom, violating the restrictions of chag: failure. Having a mouth filled with fiery ulcers on Shabbat meant I’d miss the services and festive meals: failure. The choice I gave myself was all or nothing: observe the holiday “fully” and risk my health, or forgo observance and hate myself for it.
I didn’t grow up with such expectations—my family loved Judaism, but was not halachically observant. That might be why, as I cultivated my own Jewish practice, I was incredibly hard on myself. But Hannah is not Jewish; she has none of the baggage (self-inflicted or communal) that can accompany our holidays and rituals. This clean slate she brings has helped me to examine my own biases, and blessed us with a freedom to explore new possibilities.
But I still feel the weight of my baggage on nights like these—I still have trouble not judging myself, and it was Pesach. On the most-celebrated Jewish holiday of the year I could not be at a seder.
Suddenly, the bedroom door opened, and Hannah tip-toed in. I reached for my glasses in the dark. “Close your eyes,” she said, a mischievous lilt in her voice. I felt her settle into the bed next to me. “Open.” There it was in her hands. Her round, wooden cheese board. Upon it sat a beet (“I heard you can use that instead of a shankbone”), a tiny bowl filled with chocolate easter eggs and one real egg (“there was no time to boil them, so I thought this might work”), a sliced orange, parsley, celery and homemade charoset (“it’s pretty good!”).
“You made us a seder plate?” I asked, in awe.
“Of course I did,” she said, as if it was obvious, wrapping me in her arms.
When I’m in the midst of a flare up, my mind devolves into anxious spirals. Am I going to be sick forever? Will I be able to finish graduate school? How will I be a rabbi when my health is so unpredictable?
When I voice these questions out loud, my breathing quickens. Hannah puts her hands on my shoulders, and breathes deep with me. She reminds me to be here, now. That we’ll figure out all of those things in due time; that we’re in this together.
So on our seder night, instead of spiraling, I chose to focus on four different questions:
What is here? What is in front of me? What is true? What, in this moment, is holy?
A makeshift seder plate, on a wooden cheese board. Chocolate Easter eggs, Mary’s Gone Crackers, a ginger root, a sliced orange. Two plastic wine glasses filled with seltzer and cranberry juice. Two blue glasses for Elijah and Miriam.
An orange, which symbolizes inclusion for women, people with disabilities, intermarried couples, and the LGBT Community. (“We got all four!” we said in sync, high-fiving.)
A digital haggadah compiled by my new friend from rabbinical school, complete with transliteration. Hannah’s mouth sounding out the Hebrew words.
What is true is that we are creating our little family, a home in which we listen to our bodies intently. One where ritual is essential but also malleable, innovative; where it brings us life—not suffering, not guilt.
What is true is that none of this is black and white. That this—what we’ve created, what is available to us—is enough.
Then we sing the words to Dayenu, and I am flooded with the feeling that all of this is so much more than enough.
I sit facing the love of my life, my bashert, who is looking at me like I could never do anything wrong. Like it’s the biggest blessing to be at this small table together. Like my sick body is not a failure, not an imposition—but a miracle.
In my preparations for leading the seder I never attended, I came across a creative prompt from the Jewish Studio Project.
“In Hebrew, Egypt is mitzrayim, which has in it the root word meitzar, meaning “narrow place.” Core to Passover is recounting the movement from a narrow place, a sense of constriction, of limitation—to a feeling of spaciousness and fresh possibility.”
The prompt then asks us to think about moments of constriction in our own lives, and how we might move to a place of expansiveness.
Before this year, I would have told you my mitzrayim was my illness, and my promised land—my place of freedom and spaciousness—was being healed, getting better, becoming normal. But Hannah has shown me endless, unconditional love, insisting, through her actions, that I can still live fully and meaningfully while in pain. She has shown me that while my illness may not be curable, the way I think about it can change everything.
So many ritual observances have felt impossible when I’m sick or in pain. But the more I study Jewish texts, the more I see that halacha is iterative. Adapting traditions to make them fit our abilities and circumstances feels like the most Jewish thing I can think of—just like the ancient rabbis, who crafted the seder ritual when the temple festival was no longer an option.
Perhaps, my mitzrayim is the notion that I cannot participate in ritual life when sick: the idea that I’m a failure for not doing chagim like able-bodied people.
Maybe, just maybe, I can move toward a spacious place beyond right and wrong. A place where I finally believe that adapting Jewish ritual to my reality is a holy act.
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