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A Feminist Seder
- Abstract
Of all the storybook characters who people my earliest memories, I remain fondest of that rotten bunch of children from the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books—the ones with ridiculous but endearing “character ailments.” And among all of these problem children—the Never-Want-To-Go-To-Bedder, the child with Won’t-Pick-Up-Toys-itis—my favorite is the impudent Answer-Backer, Miss Mary O’Toole, who, whenever her parents ask her to perform even the most minor task, blinks her eyes rapidly, swishes her hair impertinently, and loudly declares, “I’ll do it because I want to, but not because you tell me to!”
I encountered the impudent Miss O’Toole again—quite a few of her likeness, in fact—when I attended a feminist Passover seder this past April at my liberal-arts college. For example, when it came time to light the candles to mark the onset of the Passover festival, the various Misses O’Toole assembled in my college’s Jewish Center wrinkled up their faces and, reading from their prepared script, announced: “Lighting candles is traditionally a woman’s duty in Judaism. Tonight we light these festival candles not because we must by Jewish law—but in order to shed light on this seder table!”
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