Seders and the magic "if"
To call Passover a festival of storytelling would be to imply all the others all aren’t, which wouldn’t be true. But it is certainly the most Stanislavskian.
My furry cousin, Romeo, was eight yesterday. This photo was taken of us two nights ago, at Romeo’s family’s house for the first seder: a ceremonial retelling of the story a flight from slavery to freedom… but also from the known to the unknown.
I was about the age Romeo is now in my earliest clear(ish) memories of Passover. One of those memories (probably not a single memory but an amalgamation of the many that took place in my grandparents’ living room throughout my childhood) is my jealousy of Romeo’s “father”, my oldest first cousin Joe, running the fastest of all of us to find the Afikomen (the piece of matzot traditionally hidden and searched for by the children, which would result in a prize (which actually every child got but that was nothing compared to the honour of being the one to find it – where our grandfather ALWAYS hid it, behind the same curtain). That memory popping up as clearly as if I were around Grandpa’s table still is as much part of the traditions for me as the songs we sing and the story we tell every year.
To call Pesach – or Passover – a festival of storytelling would be to imply all the others all aren’t, so wouldn’t be true. That’s partly why whether I’m remembering one occasion or a patchwork of occasions is not necessarily the point for me, but an example in itself of what we’re celebrating and commemorating. Yes, freedom; yes, gratitude; yes, remembering through empathy if not literal memory that we are here because of the journeys others took before us. But the stories are not only conduits to all this. They connect us not only in what they tell, but in the telling – to those of us who have gone before and those of us who are yet to come.
So while it’s not the only festival of storytelling, I would say of Passover is it’s certainly the most Stanislavskian of festivals. Long before I knew who Konstantin Stanislavski was, or anything of the naturalistic acting theory of which he is the father, I knew my family were telling the story of escape from slavery into freedom as if we had been there personally and individually. Before I learned about naturalistic acting theory, Passover had already shown me the significance of Konstantin Stanislavski’s psychological master-key, his magic ‘if’: Just as our ability to play Hamlet is not dependent on knowing firsthand what it’s like to have our father’s ghost reveal to us that our uncle (now the king) murdered him and that it is up to us to seek revenge, so being part of retelling myself and my family or community this story each spring ‘as if’ I myself had experienced the journey, it is about the end product: greater understanding of self; greater empathy for others.
The first and second seders always tell the same story and, at the risk of a double negative, are always never quite the same. They are always slightly different combinations of members of the same extended family. They always have the same main features. But no two families do the same seder, the same exact timing or combinations of what is included, left out, sung in a particular combination of remembered oral traditions mixed between families, countries, even singing abilities. I’ve never been to the same seder twice. I’ve never heard the story the same way twice. I’ve never been the same between each of the times I heard it.
The journey from slavery to freedom, be it literal as this story, or coming out of an abusive relationship, or leaving one country for another today, often feels more frightening than staying put does. Fundamentally, the Passover week is a reminder to me how important it is to listen to the stories we are telling ourselves, and that taking the next step, turning the next page, always means stepping into the unknown. That’s why it’s important to keep stepping forward – but also to keep taking photographs. Because all of this is my story, and how I add to its telling.