“Are they running late?" David asked, looking at his watch. He lifted the lid off the chicken soup, inhaled the delicious aroma, and nodded to Leah, who was cutting up her homemade gefilte fish.

"They're not coming," Leah answered.

David's smile vanished.

"Not coming?! What do you mean, not coming?"

"Sam called yesterday and that's what he said, 'Tell Dad we're not coming to the Seder’."

David slammed the lid back on the pot of soup. He stared out the window of their gourmet kitchen, and looked at the landscaping they had just added. He thought of his parents, when they were alive, bragging to their friends that their son lived on an estate. Life was good in America.

Yeah, well, if life’s so good, why do I have this knot in my stomach, David asked himself.

"I invited the Steinbaum boy to come say the four questions. He'll be here in 20 minutes, so let's get started."

Their dining table felt empty. There were only three settings, instead of five. Sam wouldn't be there. Anna wouldn't be there. Jeremy .... his grandson ... wouldn't be there. It would just be David and Leah and the "Steinbaum boy."

David recited the Kiddush, washed his hands, dipped the Karpas, broke the matzos, poured another glass of wine. It all felt ... mechanical.

There was a knock, and Leah welcomed in the Steinbaum boy, wearing a new suit two sizes too big, one that he would "grow into."

"Your timing is perfect, Nathan. We were just up to the Mah Nishtanah."

David handed Nathan a Hagadah.

"Thanks. I know it by heart." Nathan chanted: "Mah nishtanah ha lilah hazeh mecall halaylos?"

David had wanted his son to ask the Questions. He wanted to see Sam sit next to Anna, while they smiled at their sixteen-month-old Jeremy in a high chair. He didn’t want Steinbaum "pinch-hitting" at his Seder table, a table that now felt deserted like the desert of the Exodus.

As Nathan chanted the Questions, David rose and left the house.

"Did I do something wrong?" Nathan asked, puzzled.

"No ... Thanks for coming over, Nathan," Leah said, leading him to the door. "Give your family our best for a happy Passover."

• • •
"Honey, someone's at the door, and I'm in the middle of this report. Can you get it?" Sam shouted from the study, to Anna in the kitchen.

"I can't! My hands are full of baby food and Jeremy’s in the high chair."

Sam sighed and saved his work. He walked to the front door and looked through the peep hole.

"Dad?" he called. Sam opened the door and his father stepped inside.

"Do you know what night this is?" David asked. Sam could see the anger in his father's eyes, and said to himself, this is my house, my family, and he has no right to push me around here. Sam stared back at his father in defiance.

"Wrong question, Dad. You're supposed to say 'Why is this night different from all other nights?’”

"Don't be a smart aleck!"

Anna walked into the hallway holding Jeremy, his face covered with mashed carrots.

"Whose idea was it to skip Passover this year?" David asked, staring at his daughter-in-law.

"It was mine," Sam said.

David faced his son, shocked.
"I wanted to go, Dad," Anna stated.

David looked to his son. "Why?"

"Because my family wants our own traditions, instead of yours."

"My traditions? This isn't only my tradition. It's our tradition. Jews conducted Seders for over 3,000 years."

"Maybe it's time for a change, Dad." Father and son watched Anna and Jeremy disappear into the bathroom, followed by the sound of a bathtub being turned on.

"Let's go for a walk," David suggested.

"You won’t change my mind, Dad."

"Let's go for a walk anyway. Remember when we used to walk together, after work? Is that a tradition you approve of?"

Sam looked at his father, and shrugged.

"Dad. Stop treating me like I'm still ten years old."

• • •
They walked in silence. How do I start, David asked himself. If he could find one true sentence, he could begin. What was the one true sentence here?

What was true was that he spent 45 years running away from his religion, out of ignorance, and the last 10 years clinging to it and studying it. That was true. And now his son rejected their Seder. That was also true.

He understood how his son felt. He felt that way for 45 years.

He did not know the one true sentence that would unlock his son's heart, and if he did not say something soon, it would be too late to say anything at all.

"Let me start by saying it's not your fault, Sam."

"Well, that's a load off my mind, Dad."

"When did you become such a smart aleck?"

"It came naturally, considering the genes I inherited."

"I take some of the blame, but mostly it's not my fault, either. I had almost no Jewish education, so when I was your age, I also rejected our traditions. I was forced to attend my grandfather's, and then my father's, Seders, and I disliked it."

"It's a long, boring outdated ritual. It has no meaning in the 2000's."

David got upset at the "long and boring" reference, and then he thought about why he was.

"Yes, I thought my father's, and my grandfather's Seder was long and boring, too."

He turned and looked at his son. He saw in his son's face his grandfather's eyes and his father's nose ... and his chin ... Sam's chin was the same chin David stared at in the mirror for almost half a century until he decided to grow a beard.

"I gave you almost no Jewish education, Sam, except the least, to get bar-mitzvahed. I thought your education was better pointed toward a career."

"And I'm doing well in my career."

"Yes, and your mother and I are proud of you for that. But ..."

The "but" hung in the air until Sam asked: "But what, Dad?"

"It's not enough. Whenever I think of your success, I also think of my failure. My failure and my father's failure and my grandfather's failure, going back to my great-grandfather, an Orthodox rabbi. Each generation got further away from our tradition, until now, where I'm going back and studying our roots, and you refuse to sit through a Seder."

We're so far apart, I don't know how to close this gap. Please, G-d, help me reach my son, David prayed. He closed his eyes and felt tears. He sat down on the curb, put his face in his hands, and talked to himself, out loud.

"This is supposed to be my responsibility, to take the Seder and breathe new life into it, apply it to life today. You’d think it would be easy to make something timeless into something modern, but it isn't easy to be Jewish in America. No matter what we do, we’re still out of place."

David paused, tried to control his emotions, and continued:

"It feels like unless we huddle together in a shtetl, or a ghetto, the pressure to fit in is too difficult to overcome. Yes, we have religious freedom, that's why your great-great grandfathers came here, to avoid Cossacks beating our heads in. But the pressure to conform to a society where we are a small, strange, different group, well, that pressure can defeat the desire to learn about why we’re different."
David looked up at his son, standing over him. "I feel like I'm losing you, Sam. I can't bear the thought."

The heck with it, already, David told himself. His tears were running down his cheeks now, and he didn't wipe them off.

Sam stared at his father, and then sat down next to him.

"I've never seen you cry, Dad. I don't know what to do."

One true sentence, David repeated to himself. One true sentence.

"There is a simple truth here, Sam. Do you know what that is?"

"No."

"Passover is the story of a revelation. It is the only time when three million people experienced G-d, first hand. Not just one prophet or starry-eyed mystic, but three million Jews saw, heard, and experienced it. We saw the Red Sea part, and we heard G-d at Mount Sinai."

"I know the story, Dad."

"Yes, but what about what happened after the revelation? G-d gave us laws that a free people could live and prosper by. You don't know those laws. You didn't study them, the same as I didn't study them."

"It's not necessary to know 3,000 year old laws, Dad. We live in a different world today, with different laws."

David looked at his son sitting next to him.

"Yes, it happened over 3,000 years ago, and it's hard to keep it 'fresh and modern,’ but the greatest wisdom this world has ever known commands me to tell you about our history, our Seder tradition."
David looked at Sam, and put his arm around him. "The Seder is about you, my son. And your family. It is about Jewish parents teaching their children timeless values, and without you ... without you ..."

David was choking, but forced himself to continue, "... without you, there is no Passover ... no Seder. I can’t go back to an empty table. It breaks my heart and I don't know how to tell you how important it is to me."

David looked at his son, and in that look, he begged him to understand.

Sam waited before he nodded his head and whispered, "Okay, Dad."

David looked up and said a silent prayer of thanks to the Holy One, Blessed be He. David hugged his son for a long time, until they both realized where they were sitting - on a curb along Central Avenue.

They stood up and walked home in silence, but in that silence, David felt connected to his son.

When they arrived at Sam's house, the curtains were open, and the dining room was lit up. The table was set for a Seder, and Leah and Anna were sitting there, along with Jeremy in his high chair.

"It looks like the women of our family made the same decision we did," Sam said, smiling.

That night, Sam sat at the head of the Passover table, and with his father's help, he made the Seder 'modern.'