From Dragonfly: First Night of Passover

Well, as I imagined, this will be a Passover I will never forget. There is so much fighting between the few Jewish people here (4 people born and raised Jewish, 5 people converting/interested), that it is nearly impossible to avoid non-stop drama. Plus, there is an orthodox woman, and the rest of us are more reformed. Our traditions are very different. Combine that with the drama around the Mezzonites, and you have the opposite of a peaceful evening.

The table looked pretty, the food was edible, the charoset made wrong, TV dinners for our entree, but plenty of other things that I never opened mine. I mostly ate the hard boiled eggs, some potato latkes, and an interesting take on matzah brie (more matzah than eggs... should be the other way around). But, it was Passover, and I was grateful for everything and be around other's trying to tell the story of the feast of freedom.

That became the problem, though, as the leader among us was too disgusted with everything not being how she wanted it, that we never made it past our first glass of grape juice and the four questions... We never even built our Charoset/Matzo sandwich. She then just sat at the head of the table and sulked, while the rest of us just accepted a quick end to our actual service.

By the end of the night, I was sufficiently full, even if it wasn't quite "traditional." The leader, who has been locked up for dozens of years, stated that she would not be doing tomorrow night's Seder and it should be cancelled. I looked at the beautiful haggadah on the table, the eight other women at the table, and said, "well, I want to still have a Seder and I will put it together if I can borrow the Haggadah overnight (technically these things stay in religious services). I was granted the ability to take the book home with me - as the chaplain with us for the evening is really quite kind and I think grateful that someone stepped up to possibly make this all better. So, here I am, in prison, and I will lead a small group of women tomorrow in a Passover Seder. I pray for a little peace, as we take on my favorite holiday. I hope we all leave the dinner tomorrow night, feeling connected to our holiday and happy to have spent two hours together.

I have to say that if you want perfection, you will not get it at prison. I just kept saying how "grateful" for the food I was. We were given many things not usually on the menu. I was allowed to drink 4 full drink boxes of grape juice. I ate matzo. It is passover, and I am a Jew, celebrating it in prison.