“Mah nishtanah…?
“Farvoos is die nacht von Pesach…?
“Why is this night different…?”
My parents and I took the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan for the first night’s seder at my grandparents’ cold-water flat on the Lower East Side. As the youngest, I would say the Four Questions in Yiddish, Hebrew and English, a trilingual performance that honored my family’s heritage, demonstrated my competency in cheder, Hebrew school, and showed off my Americanization. Zayde, Bubbe and my parents understood Yiddish and read Hebrew, but as new immigrants they didn’t know English.
To enhance my status, I would not consult the Haggadah, as if I were saying the brachot by heart before the Torah reading. I rehearsed while feeding sticks of wood into the kitchen stove. The Four Questions came at the beginning of the seder, fortunately, before the sweet wine, droning prayers and heavy food made me too sleepy to remember my lines. My parents watched nervously, fearing I might omit a paragraph or switch their order.
“…but on this night we recline,” I finished. A perfect performance. My parents flashed a look of approval. Zayde reviewed the Yiddish instructions in his yellowed Haggadah for the next procedure, read a bit in Hebrew and moved on to the parable of the Four Sons. I followed in the English section of my text, my head buried, except for stealing a look at Zayde when the section on the wise son began. Would he glance my way?