Ever needed a safe-word at a your seder?
Reading the editor-in-chief, Rob Eshman's, letter in this week's Jewish Journal, I came across this, which I thought was good for a chuckle, speaking of the diversity of seders available to those who wish to tailor the remembrance to their own particular fetish, uh, identity:
"This year in Los Angeles there will be a Latino Jewish seder, a black-Jewish seder, a feminist seder, a male consciouness-raising seder, a gay right seder and, just when I thought I'd heard it all, an S&M seder. I'm not joking. A group that enjoys that kind of thing is touting a seder that runs backwards: it begins in freedom and ends in bondage, which for them, I guess, is an expression of freedom.
My response? You want bondage? You want slavery? How about cleaning your home of every breadcrumb prior to Passover, koshering your kitchen, then preparing the traditional seven-course meal for two-dozen guests. The holiday of our freedom requires hours and hours of hard, manual labor. Talk about S&M.
But at the risk of sounding like Andy Rooneystein, these newfangled, adaptive seders, noble as they are, aren't my thing. I prefer the regular old, leather-less, whip-less holiday."
Oh, Rob Eshmann -- how can you be such a tease and so vanilla all at once! Telling us about this unique gathering, and then giving out no phone numbers or website info. I would assume, unlike the Chai Center's shabbat dinners at Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz's house, both Jew and Jew-curious (and curiouser!) welcome.
Comments
i've never attended an s&m seder, but i've been to ones that felt like i was being tortured. hour after hour after hour, in which we are forced to recite every single prayer, complete every single ritual, every single song in the hagaddah.
it's almost enough to make me want to convert.