Two bits of Passover goodness for you to celebrate the season. The first is a link to the recently published Passover TTT that has, strangely, really been making the rounds on the Internet, at least unlike anything I've ever been involved in. Do check it out - it's pretty cool, I think:

http://www.livejournal.com/community/scans_daily/499954.html

Secondly, here's my Passover Local Boy Makes Good column, to be published today. Goshen folks take note - I talk about growing up Jewish, but manage not to defame anyone. (I haven't seen the paper yet so the final printed version may vary from this:)

This Column Kosher for Passover

Happy Pesach! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s probably the Feast of Saint Barry or something right now and I’ve got no idea. Let’s face it, folks – there are an awful lot of religious holidays. But Passover was always one of my favorites, one of the holidays that I always looked forward to as a kid. Was it hard growing up Jewish in Goshen? Eh…not really.

As a kid, I used to joke that there were more churches than Jews in this town. Which was an exaggeration, of course. Although there were probably more churches in Goshen than there were Jews in my class, which was not helped by the fact that one of the Jews who should have been in my grade went to St. Johns. I still can’t puzzle that one out.

So being Jewish did set me apart a bit. But unlike the other things that set me apart back then (my utter lack of athletic ability or interest in sports, my tendency to sit by myself at recess and read, etc.) I was proud of the otherness my Judaism provided me.

Being the only one of my friends who was Jewish made me feel like the most exclusive member of an exclusive club, like being king of the presidents. Plus, it gave me something to complain about, which is a really underrated way of determining the worth of something. For instance when we sang Christmas songs in chorus, I would remain silent whenever we were supposed to say “Jesus.” This didn’t call attention to the plight of Jews in Goshen, nor indeed did it even get noticed considering I would continue to lip synch the word. But darned if it didn’t make me feel special!

At the same time, I know I’m lucky to live in a small town in New York instead of a small town in Kentucky. Being this close to the largest concentration of Jews in the world, you’d better get used to us or move on to more gentile climes. Which is not to say that I didn’t encounter any prejudice. There was the time when some guys threw a quarter on the ground in front of me because they wanted to “see who’s Jewish.” But let’s be honest – those guys were dillweeds to begin with. Can I say dillweed in this paper? We’ll find out together!

Despite what recent electoral results seem to say to the contrary, we seem to me to be becoming an ever-more-secular society. Most of my friends now are the same religion: Lapsed. But I still have my faith, and I credit that to a single occurrence. My rabbi, Rabbi Loeb of the Monroe Temple of Liberal Judaism (hooray for liberalism!) said to us young adults one day, “You can believe anything you like and still be Jewish. Unless you believe Jesus is the Messiah, ‘cause then you’re Christian, not that there’s anything wrong with that.” I’m paraphrasing here.

But that’s what did it for me. I don’t have to believe that God created women by pulling spare bones out of some dude if I don’t want to. And I don’t. I just believe that there’s a higher power who’d like me to be a good person, so I try to. And if I happen to crave a bagel next week, I hope the higher power won’t take it personally. I don’t care how fast we had to leave Egypt…matzo sucks.