“Earth, receive an honoured guest; (a Holocaust victim) is laid to rest.”

In Memory of W.B. Yeats. W.H. Auden (1940)

Their name was pronounced Peh- Sheh- Vor- Ski. I have no idea of the spelling or their first names. I addressed them as “Mr. and Mrs. Pshvorsky. It was such a mouthful, I practiced it before they arrived.

They were our perennial Seder guests. I never saw them otherwise. Honestly, I didn’t mind that.

There was nothing about them I enjoyed. He looked odd. They were both tiny. Even in grade school, I dwarfed them. Their outfits, although their best, were dependably drab,  devoid of color or style, matching their personalities.

They did not participate in the singing, barely spoke, when they did, only in Yiddish. They never laughed at my attempts to amuse them. Indeed, I don’t think they ever smiled. Their mood vacillated between somber and morose. In all the years they attended our Seders, I can’t recall a single comment either of them ever made.

After they left, I am retrospectively ashamed to admit, I made fun of them, and of my parents for inviting them, then quickly forgot about them as soon as the door closed behind them.

After we moved out of Washington Heights in 1968, I never saw them again. I didn’t think about them until, 28 years later, rising from sitting Shiva for my father, my 12-year-old daughters, putting away my bar mitzvah album we had displayed, came across their photo.

They were impossible to miss, the shortest couple there, the only guests not smiling, deer in headlights. He, Coke-bottle-glasses, pocket-pen-protector, sweater in May, mismatched pants and jacket, looked like a cross-eyed owl.

The girls couldn’t stop chuckling. I played to my audience, happy we were all laughing again.

Then, Jayme asked me a question. Why did my parents perpetually invite them? I told her it was past their bedtime and sent them upstairs to their rooms.

Eight years earlier, in a memorial lecture for her namesake, my best friend Jamie Lehmann, interpreting the Haggadah parable of The Four Sons, I pointed out it made no sense that a Wise child is contrasted to a Wicked one. The antonym of smart is not evil; it is stupid. Furthermore, excluding yourself, the wicked son’s ostensible sin, is no one’s definition of evil.

I suggested The Four Sons represent, in reverse order, our natural progression. Toddlers don’t have the capacity to ask. Children are simple, don’t care to. Adolescents individuate by excluding themselves. Adults come to understand and accept their ancestors’ wisdom.

Though barely an adolescent, Jamie had asked me a wise question I had never asked myself. As soon as I heard it, I knew the answer. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to admit it. That was the real reason I sent them upstairs.

My parents invited the Pshvorskys because they, like my parents, were survivors. They, like my parents, had lost their parents, spouses, children and, like my parents, had paired up to start over in a new land.

My father’s toddler had been murdered in front of him. I didn’t even know her name. Perhaps theirs had been murdered in the same fashion.

Unlike my parents however, they had not been able to have another child. That was why they didn’t bother to learn English, why they were melancholic. My presence reminded them of what they had lost. No wonder I couldn’t amuse them. They had no reason to sing, or to smile.

My parents invited them to our Seder because they had nowhere else to go.

We expand our horizons for our Seder guests, inviting Nobel laureates, authors, Michelin chefs, actors, sports and rock stars, et al. My parents invited the Pshvorskys.

One of our perennial Seder guests, Dr. Ruth Westheimer and I were at dinner when another patron asked her to sign one of her books. She readily agreed. Asked to inscribe it “To a fellow survivor”, she said she couldn’t do that. Assured the recipient was a survivor, she explained, since she had never been interred in a camp, she had not earned that honorific.

The Pshvorskys had; my parents had. Yet, I mocked them.

In retrospect, there was a fifth son at our Seders. He was neither wise nor wicked, but indeed stupid.

He can’t go back and be solicitous of the Pshvorskys, instead of ignoring them. He can’t tell my parents how much I admire them for their choice of invitees, that I now realize that their Seder guests were far more impressive than our own.

He can’t, but Jayme can.

30 years after she asked her question, she gave birth to her first child, in many ways a miracle.

She thought carefully about the names. She visited the Holocaust museum, did extensive research to discover the name of my father’s daughter I had never known.

She named her daughter after that Holocaust victim, forgotten for over eight decades, and for my mother, a Holocaust survivor.

Jayme, a lawyer, obeys the biblical dictum Tzedek Tzedek Tirdofe. No matter how long it takes, pursue justice. She did.

Thanks to Jayme, this year, and in the future, we will, once again, have an honored Seder guest.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)