Our Dinner With The Katzes

Our friend Virginia invited us over this evening to the seder she and her partner Ben were hosting for his family this year. The Katz clan is large — almost thirty people were at the seder — the patriarch being ninety-year-old Joseph, seated across the table and several seats down from me, with a wonderful portrait of him hanging from the dining room wall.

It was probably the rowdiest seder I’ve ever been to: the centerpoint of it was the family taking turns telling the story of the Exodus all from memory. And we were delighted to find that Virginia was using the Velveteen Rabbi’s haggadah for the service!

No sign of Elijah this evening. But Virginia’s kitty Eloise made fleeting appearances throughout, wondering why in a tale that began with seven years of famine and diminishing grain stores, cats have gotten left out of the telling.