Waiting for Elijah

I finally made it to a Passover.

Every year at Nameless Utah College, I would see signs inviting all and sundry to a Passover celebration. And every year, I would think about attending so that I might connect with my Jewish ancestry.

But I never did until this year.

The prophet Malachi said, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

"And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."

We have a simple interpretation of Malachi's prophecy. Elijah returned to the Earth at the dedication of the Kirtland temple. He brought the sealing powers back to the Earth. The sealing powers allow us to perform saving ordinances for and be sealed to our ancestors, turning our hearts to our fathers. They also allow us to be sealed to our descendants, turning our hearts to our children.

I've been spending a lot of time in the temple lately, doing proxy work for and thinking about my Jewish ancestors. My heart has never been so fully facing them, and so it was that this year of all years, I was drawn to the Passover.

I contacted the person in charge of Nameless Utah College's Passover and asked if it would be appropriate for me to attend. She said I would be welcome.

My two very non-Jewish roommates, bless their hearts, volunteered to accompany me to this very Jewish and rather expensive event with ever so much alcohol at which they would be even more out of their depth than I would be. And thus, the Saturday night before Easter, we set forth.

Upon arrival, a college student walked up to us, greeted us, and said, "Sit anywhere you like! That table over there is Cattle. The table with the sunglasses is Darkness. And the table with the plastic swords and baby feet is Death of the Firstborn, if you think that kind of thing is funny."

And we were like, "Erm... uh... huh?

Looking around, we realized that the decorations on the tables representing the ten plagues from the Book of Exodus. And I had an internal monologue that went something like this:

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Is this…okay?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Well, I guess so. If anyone has a right to poke fun at the Book of Exodus, Jews do.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: But do they always do this at Passover? Is it common?”

I thought that no, it probably wasn’t, and having reached this conclusion I thereupon took a seat at a table that wasn't Death of the Firstborn, because I didn't think that kind of thing was funny. Our table was decorated with combs, to represent Lice, and plastic locusts, for obvious reasons.

Soon the Seder began. The rabbi alternated between reading passages from the Haggadah (the book of Passover scripture) and having those of us attending the Passover read passages of the Haggadah.

Part of the Haggadah said, “If God had not redeemed our ancestors, then we and our children and our children’s children would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt.” I thought about that and was surprised to realize that it’s true. I think sometimes we think that slavery is uniquely American, that it happened to only one group of people at one time and in one place. But that’s not true at all.

In between passages of the Haggadah, the rabbi led us in Hebrew songs, which were lovely and stirring. He also gave brief addresses of his own devising.

In one of these addresses, the rabbi commented that someone rises up in every generation with an intent to destroy the Jews. He mentioned Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and other names I didn’t recognize. He also talked at length about the suffering of the Holocaust. As he talked, I thought about my own family. I thought about relatives who died in the Holocaust. We’ve been trying to find the names of these relatives and to learn exactly what happened to them for years. Recently, we learned that many of our European relatives were living in a village called Sassmachen. Some were killed there on July 26th, 1941. The rest were taken on a pointless excursion out of town only to be shot on August 7th.

I say it’s a shame. It’s a shame on the world that such things ever happened, and are happening, and will continue to happen. Living in a fallen world is part of the mortal experience, but oh, how fallen a fallen world is!

Throughout all the reading, and the singing, and the rabbi's addresses, there were places where we ate and drank ceremonial food. This included cups of wine (grape juice for the Seamstress and Pepper and me), parsley dipped in salt water, horseradish, and pieces of matzah. After the first part of the Seder, there was also a full meal of matzo ball soup, chicken, brisket, herb potatoes, and vegetables. An unleavened strawberry sponge cake followed.

Then there were some silly activities. The rabbi hid a piece of matzah and made us all look for it, something that is usually done by children. He also led us through what I can only describe as a Jewish version of "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." It started with "An only kid, an only kid, my father bought for two zuzim!" and ended with God destroying the Angel of Death who killed the butcher who etcetera etcetera you get the idea.

The rabbi assigned someone to do a sound effect for each line. He told me that every time he said "an only kid," I had to make a noise like a goat.

And I was like, "Somehow I feel like all of my improv comedy training has led up to this moment where I was asked to make a goat sound in front of a bunch of strangers at Passover." In other words, I was well prepared for this experience.

After this fun, we finished the Seder from the Haggadah.

Now, the Jews are also mindful of the words of Malachi. They know Elijah was to return, and they are waiting for him. Jewish tradition holds that Elijah will return at the Passover. (Interestingly enough, when Elijah appeared in the Kirtland temple, it was during the Passover.) A cup of wine is filled for the prophet, a chair is left empty, and the door is opened to let Elijah enter.

Around the time that the door was opened for Elijah, the rabbi gave another address, one to this effect: "The Orthodox Jews still believe that the Messiah will come, but I don't believe that. At least, I don't believe that an actual person will come to us. I believe that if things are going to get better, we have to make it happen ourselves."

I don't know what the other people in the room thought of that statement. I didn't agree, but seeing as I'm Christian and my whole religion began with the coming of the Messiah, that shouldn't surprise anyone. And I can't even begin to guess what the Jewish people in the room were thinking. So I will just say that I think it would be hard to see your people be persecuted and destroyed and not have the expected warrior-king Messiah swoop down from the sky to stop it, but I think it would be harder to have nobody to look to for deliverance.

We finished the Seder. One of the last things we said was, "Next year in Jerusalem." Then we left through the same door through which Elijah was expected.