Reflection
after my second ever Jewish Passover meal (the first being with a wonderful
woman in Namibia in 2010, Lucy Steinitz and the second being at the last supper
mass here at University of Cape Town, which was a seder):
I found
out, to my surprise, that my classmate Cara Singer may not have been wrong at
all in saying “you’re so Jewish!” when she found me frying Latkes, from a ready
box mix, one evening in a kitchen we shared in Little hall during the summer
after Junior year. I learnt this from my dad, when he paid a visit to Cape
Town. No, I did not have a Everything is Illuminated Moment – my mother is
Bulgarian, but she does not have any Jewish ancestors; her roots are in a
village outside the big city of Plovdiv, outside of where a large number of
Bulgarian Jews once lived. My father, is from rural Namibia and he is not from
an ethnic group that, like the Lew of Zambia or Igbo of Nigeria, have a genetic
fingerprint that matches the one the Kohanim of Europe have. It’s a bit simpler
– my last name happens to actually mean “Wise man”. The literal translation
from our language of Mulongeni into English would be “teach him”, but one
should not translate the name this way, says my father. “Wise man” is a better
translation. With that knowledge, I could call myself “Pancho Wiseman”. Now I see
my participation in the second day of Passover in Cape Town as a homecoming of
sorts.
During that
Passover meal, I remember seeing that a certain Jarryd, whom I did find most
handsome, had his gaze on me. Everyone gazed upon me when I stood there and
read aloud in Spanish the questions a child would ask about the Passover. The
young Rabbi read it in English and then he asked if anyone else knew another
language – I chose Spanish because there was a young lady from Ecuador seated
across from me “Why on all other nights we stand upright or we recline but on
this night we only reclining?” was the one question I struggled to interpret,
but looking at my Ecuadorian Hispanic friend smiling at me I managed, “?por qué en otras noches estamos derechos
pero en está estamos casi tumbados” was my attempt. Later I read the
Spanish version of the Gospel of John where the description of the last supper,
where disciple leaning his head on Jesus’ chest uses the verb recostarse, a verb I did not know during this Pesach. Yet Jarryd’s gaze
was on me after this point in the seder – during a later blessing. When I
looked at him, his eyes furtively looked away. It was only later that I found
out he never meant to express desire. Still I wonder to this day, what he did
mean with that stare.
On this
evening of the feast of Corpus Christi,
the body and blood of Jesus Christ, I call to my mind what happened that Passover
evening in April. At the end of the dinner, I for the first time understood
where this Catholic practice of the breaking of the bread and sharing of the
wine. The Rabbi at our long table announced that the time had to come to eat
the afikomen, the piece of matzah that we kept hidden, our last
piece of matzah, on our plates. This was eaten on a full stomach and represents
the eating of the paschal lamb, which can only be performed in the temple. In
our readings at mass tonight, we heard about the shedding of blood of bulls and
other sacrificial animals in a tent which Moses had made in the desert. It
sounded far too gruesome for any spiritual practice I would find intimate. Now
taking a cup raising – the last cup of wine – as our last cup of wine,
subsequently to eating the afikomen, that
is unifying. The Jewish boy I now sat next to, this one happened to be gay like
me, struggled to have the last of wine and giggled saying “I think I am really
drunk now”. Here I was raising my cup, albeit filled with grape juice to save
my virgin liver from the shock of several glasses of wine, partaking in this
rite. When Jesus did this, how intoxicated must He have been in order for Him
to come up with something as preposterous as “this is my blood, the blood of
the new and everlasting covenant shed for you and for all, for the forgiveness
of sins, do this in memory of me.” Were
the disciples just as drunk that they did not make much of what he said? Only
later did they perhaps internalize these words and put them to posterity in the
Greek writings that would become the New Testament.
The singing
and dancing of that evening I will never forget, especially when a girl from
the United States with whom I travelled to the schul – in the car of the
president of the South African Union of Jewish Students University of Cape Town
chapter – mentioned I knew the words better than some of the Jewish students.
The song was Echad Mi Yodea; a song I
learnt, because I did a dance to it at the United World College of the Adriatic
ten years earlier. I just wonder, what had I been doing all these year – going to
mass I guess. I will continue going to mass. When I next have the opportunity,
I think I will partake in these Passover festivities, but I then I will opt to
attend a reform seder. For all I
know, there may be someone whom I can actually fall in love with and with whom
there will be much to share.
