By DAVID IZRAELEVITZ
Los Alamos
“Did you hear what Mirabel’s father just said?” and I snatched up the remote from Terry in the middle of watching the Disney movie “Encanto”. My patient wife, who has too many times relinquished control of the remote so I can rewind a scene because A) I couldn’t understand what was just said, B) I noticed something in the background scenery that I found interesting or abnormal, or C) I wanted to stop and share some obscure Wikipedia nugget I remembered about the historical context of the movie, has now found a fourth reason, D) the use of a polite substitute for a Spanish expletive smack in the middle of a Disney film. If you don’t know Spanish expletives, think Miercoles is to X, as “shoot” is to Y in English.
Everyone enjoys finding ways to get away with crossing social norms, whether it is not wearing socks at a business meeting (a universal no-no for men, but subject to complex rules for women), requesting both lemon and cream when offered tea (see any Richard Feynman biography for this and many other examples), or using language for this purpose. Sometimes the effect is performed for coarse shock value, but when one observes this transgression in a creative or subtle way, it is worthy of instant replay. My siblings and I have such a transgression at an otherwise solemn time, which I hope against hope to pass on to a new generation when we visit family for Passover this weekend.
Passover is a major Jewish holiday on our religious calendar, an eight-day-long observance of the story of the escape of the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage as related in the Book of Exodus. The week is full of dietary restrictions such as replacing regular bread with matzah, the traditional unleavened flatbread. There are also many special prayers on some days of that week, depending on whether you are a first-born, or whether you remember departed family members, but the highlight of the week and how the holiday begins is with two ceremonial dinners, called the Passover Seder. A highlight of the dinner, if you have children attending, is the singing of “Mah Nishtanah” or The Four Questions, traditionally by the youngest child at the table. The answers to these four questions form the agenda for the following two (or more) hour retelling of the Biblical story, accompanied by visual aids, more singing, and the religiously mandated four full glasses of wine.
The reason I bring this up is that one of these four questions is “On all other nights, we eat chametz (regular bread) and matzah. Why on this night, only matzah?” If you are about eight years old and haven’t begun giggling at this question already, it is because you don’t speak a little Hebrew and a lot of Spanish. The traditional tune that goes with these questions has a mini-aria just as you sing the phrase “only matzah”. The word for “only” in Hebrew is pronounced “Kulo”, but in Spanish, “Culo” is the impolite word for your rear-end. In our family, we all sang the tune together, and my brother and I would glance at each other and then extend the aria just a little longer so we could relish in the multilingual foul language right in front of our parents and all their invited guests. Of course, my Dad knew exactly what we were doing, but we were just singing in Hebrew, right?
My grandchildren are too young to participate in singing the Four Questions, much less that Izraelevitz aside, and anyway, even if they learn some Spanish, expletives will probably not be in their school curriculum. The tradition initiated by Gabe and I will probably die with us. That’s too bad, isn’t it?
Miercoles!!
