A few weeks ago, I stood in the middle of my synagogue, surrounded by screaming, happy children, the whirring sound of greggors, and the smell of popcorn, and I just stared dimly at the chaos, wondering what on earth we were doing here.

I am one of many in mourning this year, still grappling for a way through the grief of unexpectedly and tragically losing my mother less than a year ago. Perhaps, being in aveilut, I should have taken an ‘out’ this year. But aside from my own personal tragedy, as we celebrated Purim, we were only 48 hours out from the beginning of another war with Iran. Missiles were raining down on Jerusalem. My in-laws were popping in and out of their shelter like one of those nightmare jack-in-the-box toys from the previous day’s carnival. And yet the dizzying whirl of happy people and tired parents continued, unabated by the threat of a modern Haman who would soon be pulled, dead, from his bunker.

Beating a hasty retreat, I was left to ponder the inexplicable juxtapositions and contradictions of modern Jewish life: at once a people of grief and celebration, a tradition rooted in both past and future, a ritual life that demands that one does not postpone joy, even in the hardest moments.

Tonight is the first Seder; in other years – we are normally in Israel – it would be the only one. The idea of doing two Seders in this year of years is not a happy one. A year ago, when I got on the plane to Israel for Pesach, my mom was in treatment and ostensibly fine. 12 days later, when I returned, she could barely walk. Pesach was the beginning of the end, of her end, and this year, as it persists in inching closer, grief seems to have paralyzed me. Paralysis has been the defining word of the last year, as I search in vain for who I am going to be on the other side. I do not know yet what that reinvention looks like, but I do know at least that the Seder itself offers all of us perspective on what it means to be a grieving Jew facing an uncertain future. Which, in many ways, almost all of us are.

Picture the scene: it is the year 135 CE. Betar has fallen. The destruction is complete.

A mere 65 years earlier, Jews in Jerusalem lay scattered and dying, victims of two simultaneous wars — an external one against the Romans, and an internal one that pitted the Sicarii........

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