I Flee

Haggadah Section: Introduction
I'm in hour three of cleaning my kitchen and there's still no end in sight.

Crouching on my kitchen floor, refrigerator door open, food stuffs spoiling around me, I wonder

Is this what the Israelites did? 

Did they throw out their moldy jars of pasta sauce and shriveled vegetables, so rotten I'm not sure what some of the things once were?

I have taken my kitchen apart in a rather manic fashion.  Pots to scour sit on the countertops, cabinet doors are open, their shelves needing to be wiped, chametz begs to be discarded.

I thought the Israelites were in a hurry to get away.  Did they let their "Easy-Off" sit overnight in their ovens as the can recommends? 

I try not to think about the hours of cooking that still lie ahead, and the house that needs to be cleaned before guests arrive, and all the other “ands” that are making my head spin.

I could say this is "slavery" that I'm experiencing, what my ancestors went through, but that would be insulting to them. 

How am I supposed to connect to this holiday that seems more like one long advertisement for Soft Scrub and Clorox than a spiritual journey?

Another 18 minutes passes, enough time to bake matzo, and I haven’t done a thing, lost in some foggy cleaning stupor.  The refrigerator door is still open, energy just spilling out.  My kitchen looks like something out of Hoarders and I start to panic that if I don’t get out of there soon, I'll be buried alive amidst the half-eaten burrito and pots and pans and dirty paper towels that surround me. 

I crawl through the debris of the kitchen on my hands and knees, pushing months of old food away from me, and make my way to the dining room where bags of overpriced Passover goods sit.  I'm already regretting the impulse buy of the kosher for Passover pizza that I know will taste like a soggy shoe that someone left in the gutter. 

On my dining room table sits a megapack of matzo.  More boxes then I'll ever need, but hey, I know a deal when I see one and the megapack, stuffed with enough cardboard-like crackers to ensure that my bowels need not visit my bathroom for the next 8 days, is truly a bargain.

I rip open the plastic packaging and take out a box and hold it in my hands.  The Israelites, with the Egyptians fast on their heels, made matzo because they didn't have time to let the dough rise. 

But no one is chasing me now, the clock quietly ticking, the house deathly still.  And yet, suddenly, I feel the need to run too.  To get out of my house, away from my kitchen with the petrified vegetables and moldy salad dressing and stale burrito. 

To feel something, anything , that will connect me to this ancient holiday that we’re supposed to experience at seder as if we were there.  As if we were slaves ourselves, sitting at our Williams-Sonoma place settings, eating overpriced kosher meat made with our Cuisinart appliances. 

We are meant to feel, to empathize.

But I feel nothing and for once I want to feel something.  Even a little bit.

And so I take a single box of matzo from the megapack and open my front door. 

The kids of my Mexican neighbors are playing out front.  A trash truck is slowly turning down my street like a lumbering elephant. 

I’m lucky, I know.  What a great time to be living.  I step outside onto my stoop, leaving the front door ajar, no bloody marks telling the Angel of Death to stay away, and holding my box of matzo, like my Israelite ancestors, I start to run and I don’t look back.

Source:  
Original by Warren Hoffman
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Comedy Seder
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Haggadot
Table of contents
    Introduction
  • Jerry Seinfeld's Passover Stand-Up Introduction - The Yada Yada Haggadah
  • Matzah
  • Monty Python Haggadah: The Seder Plate
  • I Flee
  • The Sorting Hat of Passover
  • Let's get this party started
  • Courtesy of Beyonceder
  • The 30-second Seder
  • The 15-second Seder
  • Seder Guests...
  • Hametz - Curb Your Haggadah
    • Songs
  • Take Me Out to the Seder
  • Chametz
  • Our Passover Things (Sung to the tune of "My Favorite Things")
  • The Plot of Wonder Woman Meets Chad Gadya
  • Chag Gad Ya Emoji Style
  • Pharoah Pharoah
  • A Whole New World Passover Parody
  • "Jews" (Juice by Lizzo)
  • Sweet Charoset - parody song
  • Take Me Out of Mitzrayim
    • Kadesh
  • Four Cups of Wine
  • Kadesh: Happy Hour Begins
    • Urchatz
  • 2020 Seder Order
  • Seinfeld Urchatz - The Yada Yada Haggadah
  • Wash Your Hands song
    • Karpas
  • Karpas - The Yada Yada Haggadah
  • Karpas Buzzfeed style quiz
  • Karpas Cocktail
  • Da Dip
    • Tzafun
  • Afikomen Prize
  • Shalom Sesame: Les Matzarables
  • Afikoman
    • Yachatz
  • Aim for the Middle
  • Pharaoh Doesn't Pay
  • Song - Don't sit on the Afikomen
  • Skit - The Real Reason We Had Unleavened Bread
    • Maggid - Beginning
  • Moses, Aaron, and Pharaoh
  • A Few of my Favorite Things
    • -- Four Questions
  • Dr. Seuss' Four Questions
  • Four Questions Asked in Sarcasm
  • Ma Nishtanah
  • Monty Python Haggadah: Four Questions
  • Four Funny Questions
    • -- Four Children
  • The Good Place - 4 Children
  • Emoji Four children
  • Marx Brothers Four Sons
  • SP - Four Sons
  • Pesah Man (Sing to tune of Piano Man)
  • The Four Sons
  • The Four Sisters
  • Reggae Four Children: No Egypt, No Cry!
    • -- Exodus Story
  • Let My People Go (song)
  • Exodus story in LEGO
  • Beyonceder - Tell Him Boy Bye
  • Star Wars / Sci-fi Seder Intro
  • Matzah Humor
  • Story of Moses - a memo from Moses to G-d
  • Beyonceder - He Better Call Becky With the Good Hair
  • Skit - The Original Zoom
  • Passover In Pop Culture
    • -- Ten Plagues
  • Skit - Pharaoh and Moses Go To A Conflict Counselor
  • Dom, Dom
  • Death of the Firstborn
  • Alternate Seinfeld Plagues.
  • 50 Ways to Leave Your Pharaoh
  • Top Ten Rejected Plagues
  • FIRST PLAGUE AS REPORTED ON TWITTER
  • Shalom Auslander - Plauged
  • The Ten Plagues
  • Musical "Let it Go"
  • Hamilton Haggadah - Ten Plagues of Egypt
    • -- Cup #2 & Dayenu
  • Maroon 5/Adam Levine - "Memories (The 2nd Cup Parody Song)"
  • Beyonceder - Let's Get in Formation
  • Dayenu: Behind the Music (A Fictional Origins Story)
  • We're Gonna Sing Dayenu (Sing to tune of We Didn't Start the Fire)
  • dayeinu graph
    • Rachtzah
  • Because we would feel guilty if we didn't
  • Modern Passover
    • Motzi-Matzah
  • An Ode to Bread
  • No Pasta more Matzah
  • Motzi-Matzah
  • DIY Matzoh Baking
  • Flour + Water = Matzah
    • Maror
  • Have Yourself a Piece of Bitter Maror
    • Koreich
  • A Joke of a Sandwich
  • Charoset Ice Cream
    • Shulchan Oreich
  • Dr. Mom BLOWS UP Passover (Food) (With Science)
  • Matzah Ball Soup
    • Bareich
  • When Messiah Comes Lyrics
    • Hallel
  • Les Miselijah
  • Monty Python Haggadah: Elijah's Cup
    • Nirtzah
  • Beyonceder - Next Year in Jerusalem
  • Monty Python Haggadah: Conclusion
  • Monty Python Haggadah: Afikomen
  • Next Year In Jerusalem Meme
    • Conclusion
  • Ben & Jerry's Rejected Passover Flavors
  • Be Our Guest, Elijah
    • Commentary / Readings
  • Monty Python Haggadah
  • Humor and hijinks
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