Zoom Seder

April 8th 2020: A Zoom Seder

The period of Passover/Easter this year was the first time many of us became aware of the true horrors of lockdown. These two simultaneous festivals, are a time when friends and families gather together and much-loved annual traditions take place: Easter Egg hunts at your Grannie’s house, spring-welcoming ceremonies in ancient stone circles, parades, carnivals, rare visits to church or synagogue, the creation of palm crosses, and, of course, for Jewish people, the almost bewildering set of rituals associated with the Seder meal. It was this period which made us realise what we were truly missing and what might not be with us again for some time. Sure, we’d all experienced the queues, the boredom, the lack of loo paper, aspirin, yeast, baked beans, the worry about our jobs and the general panic and fear about catching the blessed illness, but it was the lack of human contact which made most of us feel so hopelessly sad. And not being able to spend time with friends and family during this holiday brought it all home.

For the last three years, I have celebrated Seder at my wonderful friend Felicity’s house. I don’t think Felicity would mind my saying that, despite being a highly successful QC and a massive supporter of the arts, cooking for friends and family is probably the most important thing in her life. She hosts Friday night dinners for scores of people every week, but it’s the two Passover meals - which celebrate the story of Moses - which are probably the most important meals of them all. Like most Jewish families, Felicity’s crew have developed a series of joyous, charming, unique and theatrical responses to the countless rituals associated with the occasion, and these serve to make a Seder meal at her house an unmissable event.

Being unable to invite people to her house this year was a horrifying thought, so, she decided to organise a Seder Zoom. And when I say organise, I mean she meticulously planned every aspect. The day before the meal, she delivered two Seder boxes with all the food, curios, plates, napkins, matzah, table cloths, candles, books of prayers, songs and stories, table decorations and instructions we’d need for the following night. It truly was a one-stop Seder-shop. The instructions were incredibly detailed, from when to lay the table to when to get the food on to avoid any conflict with religious rules. Felicity always decorates her tables with scores of miniature frogs to represent, probably the most palatable of the ten plagues. You don’t want a table crawling with blood, lice or boils, do you? (Although a thunderstorm of hail and fire might be fun to recreate!) I was very touched and excited, therefore, to discover a lot of little frogs in our Seder box. She'd also given us both a little gift. Knowing I'm a collector of cufflinks - and one of the world's largest ABBA fans - she'd found me a beautiful pair with the word Abba (which means father) written in Hebrew on them. 

We set up a make-shift table out of a pair of ottomans in the sitting room. Once decorated, it really did look a picture, and, of course, the house was simultaneously filling with the rich, glorious smells of the food we’d been sent.

I think there must have been ten or so households on the Zoom call. It was the early days of Zoom, when no-one quite understood the concept of the mute button. For a while all we could hear was a terrible, echoing, nightmare wave of sound - and, at a crucial moment everyone suddenly started to sound like daleks. The sound of mastication got quite overwhelming at one point when one of the guests decided to eat his soup very close to his computer’s mic. But none of that mattered, because we were all together. We all had the same food. The same books. And Felicity had worked out which sections of text we were all going to read out to one another. It was heartening, warming, and, at times, highly moving; a very bright light within a very dark time.