I remember calling it “Gooder” Friday when Passover and Good Friday came on the same day. But only to myself. I don’t think I ever said it out loud to anyone. It was my happy little secret.
Passover and Good Friday opened a window of mutual celebration for me with my non-Jewish friends, making it a double Good Friday. As a Jewish minority, both in the town and the school where I grew up in Virginia, I was delighted to be able to come out of isolation and celebrate with the rest of the world.
Even if their moms were baking ham and mine was making potato kugel, the fact that they were doing it on the same weekend was both joyful and normalizing. It allowed me to feel a part of a whole that I didn’t understand, except that there were more of them, making me part of a minority.
We observed Passover at my Aunt Helen’s house. She lived on the second floor of a duplex. Every Passover to this day, I remember climbing the stairs enticed by the delicious smells of her chicken soup. Her sister, Aunt Bertha, lived on the first floor and always complimented me on my dress as I passed her doorway and we walked upstairs together holding hands.
Most years, I got a new dress for Passover, making me a part of the Easter shopping brigade. Like many of my friends, I went shopping for an Easter dress, because there was nothing called a Passover dress.
“What color is your Easter dress?” a schoolmate would ask.
“It’s lavender…”
“But it’s not actually an Easter dress…”
By that time, no one was listening. And it didn’t matter. We all had a new dress for a holiday that was important to us. We were bonding over respect for something we each held dear, even if it wasn’t the same something.
Embracing traditions went both ways. When we emptied our house of bread in observance of Passover week, Mom would pack matzo in my lunches. I would explain to my schoolmates that the matzo symbolized that my ancestors didn’t have time to let their bread rise before they left Egypt for the desert.
“Really? Your grandmother lived in the desert?” they’d ask.
At the time, I didn’t understand the real meaning of their holiday any more than they did mine. Over school lunch tables, we shared matzo and hot cross buns.
Without realizing it, we were practicing “respect.”
Let’s hold on to that thought as Passover and Easter meet again this week.
Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on Patriciabunin.com