Tag Archives: Passover

Festive Earworm

Posted on April 21, 2025 by jillbpearlman

O holidays of promised liberation:One towards an earthly land,One to a place promised posthumously.In our hands, Questions: Which way now, How to mind the gap, Is home home? Exile exile?  Do the two meet as two seas thatclash and shamble towards each other?

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Salt Water & Suffering

Posted on April 13, 2025 by jillbpearlman

Saying shema in the oldest synagoguein Fès part of a run-on sentence said before and after me,  as the long-gone rabbi still brays among lanterns and blue walls and sheep graze on the hillsides belowamong soul-white stones of the Jewish dead. As … Continue reading →

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L’Eau and Behold

Posted on April 29, 2024 by jillbpearlman

One of Passover’s big themes is water.  The Sea in the Desert sets the stage for crossing the sea, coming through narrow straits, through a “birth canal” towards your own life, passing from received ideas towards self-awareness and freedom, singing in … Continue reading →

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In Our Cups of Seder Freedom

Posted on April 9, 2023 by jillbpearlman

Four glasses in, heaps of food and words, the feast of mouth-people overflows. The Reed Sea breathes. The message in the bottle passed forward each year — Ask, talk!  Tell, tell! — God’s backward order that Exodus was a pretextfor us to tell the … Continue reading →

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Eternal Memories in the Eternal City

Posted on April 4, 2021 by jillbpearlman

Eternal memories from the Eternal City, Rome, 2018, from the weeks we were lucky enough to spend in Testaccio. That year, religious holidays fell at the same time — Passover Seder was finishing as Easter bells began to ring.   In … Continue reading →

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Speak, Kafka: What the Maxwell House Haggadah didn’t share

Posted on March 26, 2021 by jillbpearlman

The Jewish way of telling things is famously contentious and fractured; stories get started, then start again differently (doesn’t an Origin story imply a single origin? Think again!)  The surface is not linear, stories grab you, then leave a key part … Continue reading →

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A Sonnet for Seder during Lockdown

Posted on April 8, 2020 by jillbpearlman

Sonnet for Seder during Lockdown Nothing is new under the sun, not even confinement.  The sun is not new, narrow straits not new, the liberation story rolls like time in search of an ending.  With Passover we should be done but we keep … Continue reading →

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Passover, Notre-Dame and the Book Thing

Posted on April 19, 2019 by jillbpearlman

The idea that Notre-Dame might be reduced to a hole in the ground, a collection of rubble terrified me.  When I lived in Paris, or before that, or after, the Cathedral lodged itself deeply in my being. A friend mentioned … Continue reading →

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Headiness of Spring Cleaning

Posted on April 14, 2019 by jillbpearlman

I had a highly complicated scaffolded reaction to a spring cleaning talk that I’m attempting to unravel.  It led to a revelation, and that I’ll try to unravel too.  It took place in a series of metaphors – which made … Continue reading →

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Debating Seder – for Mireille Knoll

Posted on March 30, 2018 by jillbpearlman

What is Seder? A time to leave doors open like Mireille Knoll, late of Paris: “If she could have she would have welcomed the entire world into her home” entertain anyone who has a mother though she survived the Nazis, … Continue reading →

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