Daddy’s Song

Mommy gave away most of the Haggados. My husband and I would go to his parents, my sisters went to their in-laws, and my older brother would make his own Seder and host my mother and grandparents.

Aside from the few years we’d gone to a hotel in Miami, my parents had hosted a grand Pesach Seder every year for decades. We’d had grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends gracing our table. Friends would bring cousins and cousins would bring coworkers.

As a baal teshuvah with no minhagim of his own, my father tried so hard to make the Seder meaningful, and his Haggadah held dozens of handwritten papers along with printed sheets of divrei Torah he’d collected over time.

Daddy’s approach to leading the Seder seemed equal parts careful planning and heartfelt winging it. Some years we all got up to wash for Urchatz, other years only Daddy did. Parts of Nirtzah we just read through because no one knew the tune.