Celebrating the special moments

Norma Baumel Joseph

I write this column on March 27. You will read it during Passover. I mention these dates because they are significant to me both personally and communally. And I believe that the lessons I take from them are worth sharing.

Fifty years ago, on March 27, 1965, I married Rabbi Howard S. Joseph. Fifty years have passed, 50 years of a faithful, committed and loving relationship. It seems quite strange not only because of the rampant rate of divorce today, but because I am hard-pressed to locate such a long time span. Could it really be so many years? 

I recall my father telling me that he could not imagine how he had aged, that in his head he was still a young man though the calendar said he was 85. Now it is my turn to experience that same dislocation.  How could time have passed so swiftly that I cannot catch my breath? It has been a wonderful, adventurous life but there have also been many challenges. I never thought I would leave the United States. I never anticipated how much I would grow. I never understood how miraculous long-lasting love is. I never appreciated how much I would learn from my husband. And it all happened so quickly.

Consequently, I value the ability and necessity to celebrate these special moments. Celebrations help to mark the passage of time, to locate our transformations and perseverance. They make the private public, and in doing so, they generate a community of family and friends. 

Correspondingly, we need the celebrations of our heritage that take place via holiday cycles. 

Passover is the quintessential holiday for this type of experience. Passover marks the transformation of a group of slaves into a nation of free citizens. My marriage ceremony 50 years ago converted two individuals into one new entity; so, too, this holiday marks the creation of a new national unit. Before the Exodus, we were only a series of families. After it, even before Sinai, we became a people, united in history and legacy. We are not united politically or even in all our ritual practices. We are certainly not uniform in opinions. But we do comprise a unit, a known grouping of individuals. And that is celebrated most significantly through this holiday. Passover makes public our unique history and pride in our esteemed heritage. 

And of course, it marks the transition of winter into spring (which we really need already). The natural element of our Jewish holidays is also a very important aspect of commemoration and tribute. Remembering who we are is aided by locating our existence within the cycle of the seasons. The ritual of the seder seems to be especially geared to stimulating this mindfulness. Celebrating the design of the seasons and the gifts of new agrarian cycles seems particularly appropriate. 

Marking the passage of time through these rituals and ceremonies seems to me to be both ideally Jewish and incredibly necessary. How else can we grasp both our finitude and our eternal survival? The holidays link us to the past of our ancestors and bind us to the future of our inheritors. Celebrations of birthdays and anniversaries do the same. They all help to freeze frame our experiences and punctuate moments in our lives. In some sense, they stop the flow of time while celebrating it.

Finally, it is very important to me that the Passover process takes place in the domestic space. Of all our holidays, this one enables a sense of Jewishness that includes the private space of home with the public recognition of nationhood. 

We sanctify ourselves and our history through this process of celebration. The public and private aspects of our lives can thus combine together to mark our own individual and communal existence and purpose.