Haroset
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When I met Bruce, I attended a church, sang in the choir, did the whole nine yards. I even wrote the Lenten and Advent lectionaries every year.
It was a liberal Presbyterian church in Austin. And frankly, it was a bad time in my life: a nasty divorce, coming out, career upheavals (years and years of a Ph D program and then finally a job teaching at a liberal arts university all led to the whole "I got to get out of academia" mess).
So liberals took me in.
Now, years later, up in liberal New England, I'm still the one goading us on to religion. Left on his own, Bruce probably wouldn't celebrate any religious holiday. So every year, I write the haggadah for Passover. And it's sort of crazy, with people acting out the parts of Moses, Pharaoh, and the rest. I even have plastic bugs and sunglasses and other things to act out each of the plagues.
Thus, I find myself making the haroset today. For the uninitiated, haroset is supposed to represent the mortar with which the Israelite slaves were to build Pharaoh's temples. It's pretty sweet stuff, perhaps to symbolize how God can turn bitter slavery into sweet redemption.
This year, I made a hybrid version, part Iranian, part my own. I peeled, cored, and diced 4 medium apples, then put them in a food processor fitted along with the zest from one lemon, 6 pitted dates, 3 chopped dried apricots, 2 chopped dried peaches, about 1/3 cup walnut pieces, several slivers of candied orange peel, a tablespoon chopped crystallized ginger, a teaspoon ground cinnamon, a teaspoon ground allspice, and a pinch of salt. I whirred it up a bit, just until it was roughly chopped.
Then I added maybe 3 tablespoons sweet dessert wine. I used a Moscato--aka whatever Bruce had opened in the fridge. (That boy and his sweet wines!) I gave it some more pulses, just until it was about the consistency of coarse sand.
I put it in a bowl Bruce made back in high school--something about that felt sacred to me--and now it's in the fridge, waiting for the seder tonight. So many times in life, I've come up to raging seas, been at the edge of possible catastrophe, and suddenly found myself walking across on dry land. I can't think of a better reason to celebrate.
Reader Comments (1)
I really enjoyed this post, and the last paragraph especially--hear, hear! Hope you have a wonderful Seder.