SURE, BLAME IT ON THE JEWS –
May 19, 2022 – As I took small sips of the small glasses of Manischewitz I was allowed throughout the seder, I felt warm, at one with my ancestors. A light flooded through me, filling me up with the warmth of God. (As a little kid, I loved God. Huge fan.)
But the year I was seven, when we basically had Manischewitz on tap and no one at the table was paying attention to my consumption level, I put it together. In that moment in the dining room, with the plagues and the frogs and the hail and the locusts, there came an epiphany. I realised, as I kept refilling my glass, the feeling was not God but fermentation. I thought, “Well, this is a huge disappointment, but since it turns out I can get the warmth of the Lord from a bottle, thank God there’s one right here.” So, now I knew. The relief I sought could be found in an inexpensive, sticky-sweet bottle — or any bottle. It wasn’t spiritual; it was scientific. I didn’t go back to it right away, but I knew it was there.
A few months later, there was this fly in the house that wouldn’t leave me alone. I squatted near the fly, attempting to swat it, but there was no need. It was already dead. That’s when I saw it — an old paperback, wedged between S. E. Hinton’s Outsiders and Judy Blume’s Forever. I pulled it out and looked at the cover, intrigued. Sarah T: Portrait of a Teen-Age Alcoholic. I read the book from cover to cover. What an adventure! As my eyes scanned the pages, I thought, “This is how I’m going to be okay.”
