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Well, we all know why we're here.
Right now, The One Spaceship That Will Save Us All is on its way to get the cure for Loki's mind control glitter and also some 2x4s to help fix the space bridge so this stops happening so much. But they're not back yet, so here we are. You know the drill. Everyone's saying don't get together for seders. Stay home! Do it online if you can! It'll be a learning experience. And we'll sure have a great story for the rest of our lives. This is gonna beat out all the snowstorm and hurricane and "that time I caught a gigantic fish, no, really really huge, no, bigger than that" stories.
Ten years from now, you can ask me what I did for my solo seder, and I'm gonna say, "I livestreamed it. Duh." And then you'll feel bad that you did it with your family, like someone who lives near family would do. Joke's on you, my family's not local. I moved here for Important Science Reasons and now my boss is on that broken space bridge fighting for truth, justice, and the scientific method. But I'm not there. I stayed here. Because I was gonna finish my dissertation, I really was. I mean it this time.
Is it finished? Look, Loki showed up with blue glitter again and I got a little distracted. I'll finish it next year. Gotta have goals.
So here we are! And I bet you're waiting for me to tell you that this is a story about kicking metaphorical ass this year, since we can't touch each other without transferring Loki's mind control network or however that all works-- shut up in the chat, look, I don't watch the news, okay? I really wasn't paying any attention at all. I was busy! And things just keep happening and they keep escalating. There are only so many times aliens can invade and brainwash people and snap at us and have some endgames before I don't even check twitter before going to Starbucks in the morning. If the world is ending, I only want to hear about it when it's different from all the other times the world has ended. I'm a jaded adult and I got a life. When the world ends, I'll either be at work or at home, and this time, I got caught at home, so I'm riding this out with everyone else. My job may be essential, but it's currently essential in a different solar system.
No, we're not gonna talk about kicking ass. We're gonna start with some questions instead!
First question, how is this year different from all other years? This is a trick question. It's not different from any other year. I've been living a farce since 2011. Next question.
Look, last year my seder was in a spaceship, and these questions were asked by a tree. I don't have any idea of normal anymore. I've given lectures on Pesach preparation to sentient wildlife and then I went to the grocery store for a box of shmura matza that hopefully isn't completely broken. Someone else tell me how this year is different.
Chatter #18, you go to Spiderman's high school, your opinion is automatically suspect.
Is anyone here normal? I know my cousin's on here. I bet she went to go sneak some chicken ahead of schedule. Horrible. There's an order things happen in, Marlene! That's why it's called a seder!
Next question! On every other year, we eat lots of green vegetables. This year, we also eat green vegetables, except some of them turned neon because of the pesticides to avoid the mind control. Can I just say I hate it? I know they say it tastes the same, but it clashes with my seder plate. It ruins the aesthetic. I bet it looks horrible on camera. I didn't do a test first. Can we all just agree that next year, if we still can't get green lettuce, we'll just spray-paint all the neon lettuce until it looks a reasonable color? I'm just asking.
The third question is just for me. On every other year, we recline a lot of times. This year, we don't. I don't. Because I need to stay in the camera angle. All y'all can recline as often as you like. Go wild.
But the fourth question is user participation time! Every year, we dip twice. This year, we are dipping exactly as many times as there are things to dip. I got myself potato chips and salsa, so I'll be dipping a lot over the course of tonight. Fun fact: potatoes count for karpas, and there's salt and water in the salsa, so this is technically part of the seder and I'm not cheating. Put into the chat every time you dip, if you want. That'll foster a sense of community. We have to social distance, but we can still annoy each other on chat. I mean, what is the spirit of this holiday when you can't accidentally elbow someone while reaching for something or knock over someone's wine glass way ahead of schedule? We've got to bring the spirit of the elbow to our solo seders. Otherwise, what's even the point.
But that's the questions! And from the questions, we go to the answers. This is the topical section. This is the uplifting bit. Why are we doing all this stuff we don't normally do? Why are we even here right now? Virtually, I mean. We're here and we're doing this weird stuff because of Loki, currently, and because we were oppressed in Egypt, usually. And how did we get out? It wasn't anything we did. If God hadn't taken us out of there, we'd still be there. And so that's why everyone's gotta talk about it, no matter how awesome they are. It doesn't matter how awesome you are, because your awesomeness doesn't matter. You owe your freedom to something else, not yourself. You were not cool enough on your own. Don't get a big head over it.
This whole thing tonight? It's not the only time Jews left Egypt. Jews went down to Egypt before this and left on their own; Jews are going to Egypt all the damn time without needing us to do seders for the rest of eternity about it. But this time it does. Because it's different when it's everyone. It's different because it's all of us. If it were up to people, maybe we'd leave some people behind. We'd be like, ew, my neighbor down the hall has the most annoying barking dog that she never puts on a leash, so he comes rushing down the hall at me and growls like I don't live here too, she doesn't get to come out of Egypt. No annoying people in our exodus!
But that's not how it works. All of us come out. We leave Egypt together. And it took something beyond human intervention to get us out, so we can't be like, oh hey, Moshe, you're the best, it's because of you that all this happened, and then we get some kind of cult of personality going. We don't want one of those. Give people the appropriate amount of credit but don't, like, go making superheroes out of them and then get weird about accountability. People played their part. They did important shit, absolutely vital shit. People are important. We still need people to be brave. But we can't say it was because of them that this miracle happened. That'd cause way more problems than it would solve.
So we have to set it out straight. It was a miracle, not human action, that took us out of Egypt. None of us were awesome enough to do it ourselves. But we still participated. Our actions were vital and necessary, but it wasn't enough by itself. It took more than we each could do ourselves. And good news! It wasn't just our ancestors who got taken out of Egypt. We got taken out, too. We're all in this together and we'll all get out of it together. No one gets left behind.
And you're maybe saying, "that's all well and good, Darcy, but I'm an atheist." Well, so am I, so what? It's not like we're dealing with prophecies right now, it's just the usual magical bullshit that comes around a few times a year. We're sitting here and telling stories now so you know what you're dealing with. You gotta learn from it, that's the point. This matters to us right now not for the idea that someone else will help, but that we all have our part to play. None of us need to be the one big hero. We're all in this together and that means we do it together, not alone. No one's an island. We can't do it each one by ourselves. It's only together that we cross the sea. Maybe there's something unseen helping us out through this, maybe there isn't, we won't ever know. But I sure am more willing to put most of this on some unseen force than puff up some dude's ego over it. I think we've all had a lesson in that in this superhero decade we've been going through. I'm not here for the great man theory of history and neither is the hagaddah. On this holiday, we are only deus ex machina.
Because what did people do by themselves? In this story we've got in front of us, some people needed a little bit of a kick. Like, Moshe may have led us out, but it wasn't his idea. He didn't suddenly get bored and decide to go do an exodus today because there's nothing on Netflix. Netflix-odus... moving on.
Like, you know that Moshe left Egypt twice? First he ran away and got married and got a new job, he was hanging out just fine as a shepherd; no worries, just sheep all day. And then the burning bush happened to him and he went back to Egypt to take his people out. But he'd already gone! He left in the middle of a sentence, like it was no big deal. Bye bye, Moshe, enjoy the shepherd life. He had to get called back to Egypt to help out the rest of us.
But he'd left once. He knew it was possible. He just had to extrapolate from the one to the many. Once you've done something once, it isn't as impossible. And, honestly, who among us hasn't already done this all before like a million times already? This isn't new. It's just that the details are new. We can totally do this! It's just gonna, kinda, suck while we do it.
And this is why we've got three things on our plates specifically. We got our analog to the pesach sacrifice. This is to remind us that we have to do work, too. We all have roles to play and we gotta do them. Remember, no great men! We are all great, together.
We got the matza. This is, as you have heard me say before, is the shit we don't wanna do. Yeah, let's have a barbeque, that sounds fun, I'm on board. But matza? This stuff isn't fun to eat at all. But you gotta do it. And, look, you're on the run from the entire Egyptian army, you eat what you have, you know? There'll be time to be picky later. For now, eat it, chew it, swallow it, and remember that you have to do the hard parts to get to the good bits.
And then we got the marror. This is because we're really fucking sad! I don't know about you, but I'm not immune to crying, yeah? So we acknowledge that this all kinda sucks. We don't like it. We're crying a lot. We got some bitter herbs -- even if they're neon this year and so look like I bought them from a rave. That's not the point. The point is, we've got three things here that summarize our lives. One of them is hard work. The second one is doing what you need to do even if you don't like it. And the third one is acknowledging your emotions and allowing yourself to feel them. Because, dude, I am feeling them a lot right now. I'm worried about my friends. I'm scared about the future. I really really hope I don't die before I finish my dissertation.
But that gets us through to the endgame. Because then we get out of Egypt. All of us. Together.
And Egypt is a metaphor for whatever we need it to be. Sometimes we need it to be really literal. Sometimes we really are talking about slavery. But sometimes we're not. This year, for me, my personal Egypt is pretty clear. I think it's pretty clear for everyone else here, too. We know why we're here this year. We know why this year is different from all other years.
One day soon we're gonna break quarantine. We'll all get to be together for real. But for now, this is what we're doing to help each other. I might have some mind controlling sequins stuck to my boots. You don't want that in your hallway, ground into your welcome mat. But once we get rid of all of them by throwing rocks down the lunar volcano and destroying Loki's magic token, whatever the fuck we're doing about this, we can finally get to the best part of the seder.
The part where we eat other stuff.
And sing songs! I love the song singing parts.
So, hey, let's go. A nice round of Dayenu, you all know the tune. Let's go!