every year, a cast of characters
by bam
every year. count on it. there will be characters. they will be many. they will be deeply, richly, crazily creviced, shadowed, colored.
it is as much the order of the seder as the haggadah itself. the table will spill with character. ooze with it. rumble, tumble, jumble, full of characters.
wafting just above, that’s character no. 1. the tall one, that is.
that’s ted. rebbe ted. the one wrapped in japanese prayer robe, tied with obi. the one raising the first of four glasses of vintage manishewitz. the one we drive miles to be with every pesach.
ted, a rabbi and cantor without a congregation these days, is a therapist; spends his working hours trying to screw on people’s heads, or at least screw them on a little less wobbly than when they first wandered in.
but mostly, always, ted is a character. ted’s eyes, i think, must gleam even when he’s sleeping.
at ted’s seder, things are, um, unorthodox. ted reaches in a bag and pulls out yarmulkes from around the world. sometimes he wears his tibetan temple headdress. he always wears his japanese robe.
at ted’s, you do some chanting. you close your eyes and chant the vowels. you do not close your lips when chanting vowels, he tells you, and thus you assume a posture of openness that ted thinks the world truly deeply needs. you chant deeply, ahhhhhhhhh.
at ted’s, you eat sumptuous french hors d‘oeuvres. (and then you find out, oops, they are not kosher for passover; maybe that’s why they tasted so good.)
i tell you the story of ted because in bringing my children to ted each year i bring them to one of the most essential gifts a parent can give a child: the gift of the one who’d never paint by numbers, the iconoclast, the eccentric, the character. the deep and rich and soul-expanding knowledge that life is splashed with vibrant colors.
one of those colors is the color ted.
it brings unending joy to me to bring my children to tables where i know they will hear voices they do not hear at home. home is where the grounding happens. home is where you learn that the parachute has a safety cord, and you can pull it any time.
other people’s launch pads are where you learn to lift your foot off the ledge, set it in mid-air, and feel the fall, but then the updraft, carrying you, lifting you to places you’d never see from the safety of that concrete ledge.
last night we soared with ted. heard his salty brand of politics. took in his dash of new-age mysticism. felt the gestalt of letting go of that by which we’d been enslaved. watched him raise a yale sweatshirt, oy, to teach a lesson on hebrew light and perfection. (right there, spelled out on yale’s emblem, in hebrew letters, who knew? found out that centuries ago, at the founding of yale, patrician of patrician schools, hebrew was required study. ted, by the way, went to yale.)
tonight we congregate again. at another table of eccentrics. they will be the ones with whom we’ve worked for decades. the ones with whom i’ve “sedered” for 25 years, before husband, before children, and every variation since. a cast of newspaper kooks. my boys, all eyes and ears, will learn much that i won’t teach them.
besides the wine glasses filled with jelly beans (the kinder version of fruit of the vine), the flogging each other with scallions, yes, scallions, the pulling out of little plastic plagues, there is the annual putting of passover lyrics to broadway tunes.
we drive home each year, from nights one and two, with bellies aching. not from all the passover matzo kugel. no, no. from laughing ’til our sides feel split in two.
we are blessed. so very blessed.
all my life, far back as i can remember, i have loved the odd ball. the duck who waddled to his or her own drum beat. at my mid-century mark, i survey the landscape of my life and see i’ve assembled quite some cast of characters.
my almost-man-child told me recently that one of the most lasting lessons he learned from his uncle david was when david spoke of a brilliant friend of his, a friend with phD in sanskrit, a friend who studies global drumming and, for a long while, drove a cab in new york city. david, it seems, told my almost-man-child: “he really is a kook.” and my almost-man-child told me that the way he said it, he knew that uncle david meant that to be a kook is a very noble thing. “that’s how i learned i should never march to other people’s drummers,” said my boy who decidedly does not.
my prayer this pesach, my prayer that already has been heard on high, is that all the children, not just my boys, hear a world of many drummers. and come, as often as they can, to a table that spills with kooks and characters and bold eccentrics, a table, every first-night seder, led by rabbi ted.
who, by the way, i love with all my heart. even if he makes me close my eyes and chant the vowels.
do you collect characters? do you see the beauty in those who color outside the lines? do you, if you have children, or love children, or are a child at heart, seek out tables where you know they–and you–will hear voices unlike the ones they–and you–hear at home?
pull up a chair 
Thank you for this barb. While I do not have my own little ones, I do grasp the importance of exposing children to as much as possible. Sometimes children cannot relate to their family of origin…their skill-set different, interests, talents…filling in the potential cracks and voids, by introducing them to the world and its characters can greatly aid in connecting them on all levels. Thank you for reminding us.
So many thanks for letting us pull a chair up to Ted’s table with you.It took me back to my first seder, in Hyde Park, in my callow youth. I volunteered to bring the charotzeth, whose recipe I’d discovered the year before while burrowing through Mrs. Rabbi Simon Kander’s classic ’30s cookbook, “The Way to a Man’s Heart.”Mrs. Kander (who cooked like my grandmother, though Grandma was a German Lutheran) urged open-mindedness in ingredients, so I rolled tastes around in my head and went with finely chopped dried dates and apricots, hazelnuts, a bit of ginger — and splurged on the “wine” binding it, a wonderful and expensive (for a copy boy) Kruscovac — a sweet, golden Yugoslavian pear brandy.It was a hit. “How did you *ever* get it to taste like this with sweet Manishewitz?,” Aunt Bea asked from across the table.I explained what Kruscovac was.Bea looked shocked. “But it’s not. . . “It was obvious that Arthur, next to her, kicked her under the table.”. . . It’s not . . . it’s . . . it’s not bad at all.”My huge gaffe dawned on me, but we had one of those full-table sweet-bellyache laughs you mentioned.Were she still with us, I think even Aunt Bea would have loved the Reb’s hors d’oeuvres, and the rest of the evening. I know I did.
i don’t know when i made that comment, but it certainly was an offhand moment, a comment in passing, relaxed. and he heard what i meant, not in the words but in the breath which bestowed a lasting presence in his young mind. he was adventurer then, a christopher robin voyaging forth. i recall from that time one day in particular, although i am not sure why this day juts out, but it has gained a singular presence. he came to visit his grammy, my mama, now called “cardinal mom,” where i was living. it was spring time – it must have been for the waters were high in the creek beside the house. he wanted to make a ship that we would sail down the waters, and so with intent and purpose we descending into the basement and he dreamt up, and i crafted, a wooden vessel. his vision was quite clear but i used old wood scraps, no right angle, nothing “true” as the carpenter speaks, rather what was on hand to cobble together something if not grand, at least bouyant. his imagination filled my every crack, gap and mismatched board. the ship did sail, and we strode beside it, on the bank, and he poked and shoved it free from the tangles blocking its journey along its way. when we came to the end of the creek we knew it was time to pick up the ship and return home. its maiden voyage was its only voyage, but the moment lives on vividly.we had moments like that when we wandered and wondered. and that a seed could be planted, and take root – oh such fertile soil is the young adventurer. how blessed am i to have been a sower, and how blessed is he to receive parenting that opens doors, and reassures him that it is safe to go forward.
My kids have each commented through the years, “Lots of mom’s friends are kooks!” I take that as a compliment–and think Barb should too–as I guess that means that she is one of them!
Geez, I’ve missed you all the last few weeks with no time even to peek, let alone post. Back to the deadline but definitely wanted to say hello. I love the Rabbi Ted essay and want to say that after having an eccentric sptepfather I’ve been hopelessly hooked on quirky people. He died almost 30 years ago, but he was one of the sanest men I have ever met. Relations with him flowed smoothly and I wish my children could have known him. Quirky, I think, is sometimes only as it appears. It’s as if the way we live is quirky and the Rabbi Teds are often simply messengers.
Thanks you for this beautiful piece BAM. It reminded me of a poem by Sarah Hall Maney I first heard in the mid 1980’s and so I will include it.COLORINGColoring outside the linesis scary businessSome daysI don’t have the courage for itat allOn my big, bold days, thoughI let my red crayonjust streak across a lineThen I swirlmy purple and orangeout there with itin perfect freedom —no linesColoringoutside the linesis lonely, tooI’m the only onewho doesn’t geta gold staron my paperThe teacher frownsthe kids call me weirdor dumb or retardedWhy don’t they seethat I’m out in frontrunning freeoutside the linesIt would be niceto have a friendwho colored outside the lines,too —Would you?I suspect that many of the folks gathered here color outside the lines routinely!