It was a strange week – so much happening and not happening.
Passover, a holiday when the generations usually gather together to celebrate the escape of the Jews from slavery in Egypt, was celebrated alone or virtually and remotely. We sang the songs, the appropriate questions were asked by the children and answered by the adults; we ate the food and drank the wine and when we recited the ten plagues of Egypt we wondered if this year there wasn’t perhaps an eleventh.
Following a peculiarly quiet Palm Sunday the Easter weekend, another usual gathering of friends and family and which is celebrated communally was similarly affected with closed churches. Families were apart, most painfully for the grandparents. The Archbishop of Canterbury delivered his Easter sermon to the faithful from his kitchen. The Pope’s Easter "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world message) was delivered from an empty St. Peter's Basilica instead of to the usual crowd.
The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, already in hospital with Covid-19 was moved into intensive care at the start of the week and when we sat down to celebrate our virtual Seder our thoughts were with him, the thousands of others and their families as well as the teams looking after them.
He was discharged on Sunday and, abandon your cynicism about politicians making speeches, spoke movingly with fulsome and deserved thanks and gratitude. It may well have been a life changing experience – he will have much time to reflect as he recuperates.
Passover ends on April 16th and the dietary restrictions are lifted. When I was growing up in Johannesburg there was a huge agricultural and trade show at Easter with wonderful entertainment – the Rand Easter Show (it still exists – but cancelled this year). The timing seemed so unfair as it usually coincided with Passover and although we could go we couldn’t indulge in hotdogs and hot cross buns. I have saved some of the recipes from the newspaper to make my own hot cross buns.
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