As a Jewish child, I never related to the Magical Beings of my Christian friends’ world. We didn’t celebrate Easter, so the Easter Bunny held little appeal. Besides, jelly beans were my least favorite candy and licorice was my least favorite taste, and the combination was too hideous to contemplate. As far as Santa Claus was concerned, when I was about eight I asked my mother if he was real. What a great answer she gave: “Honey, if he is, he doesn’t visit Jewish children, so what does it matter?”
The one figure that gave me an insight into this Christian type of magic was Elijah in the Old Testament. He was already my favorite biblical prophet, because the translation of his name in Hebrew — Elli-YAH-hoo — is “Elliot.” We were taught in Sunday school that he was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind, never to die. Of course, learning this information at age ten, I was not all that impressed since, as children do, I was kind of thinking I, too, would never die. And with my name matching his, it seemed like I had extra insurance.
What made Elijah similar, in my childish mind, to the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus was his uniquely magical role in our Passover holiday (which runs from this Saturday through Sunday, April 20). Just as the Bunny and Santa visited the homes of my Christian classmates, the Jewish people prepare for the arrival of Elijah in their homes — in two different ways.
During our Passover dinner service, which is called a Seder, we each drink four cups of wine during the long service and meal. Kids are given very small sips of either watered-down Manischewitz wine, or grape juice. Believe me, once kids taste a drop of that alcoholic cough syrup, they are begging for the grape juice.
And for Elijah, we place a fifth cup of wine on the table, untouched, to welcome him to partake with us. We also open our front door during the Seder to greet Elijah, inviting him to join in our service. Even when the Seder prayers and recitations in Hebrew became a bit dull for this third-grader, you can be sure that I kept one eye on Elijah’s wine cup and one ear cocked toward our front door, just in case my namesake (or was I his?) might decide to drop in at the Lester Engel home.
I think it was this odd combination of the open door and untouched wine cup for Elijah that has stayed with me as much as any other aspect of the Passover holiday. But it is his invisible presence at our Seder that provides his magic.
I remember thinking, even as a kid, that if invisible Elijah possessed enough magic to drink from our wine class, wasn’t it strange that we needed to open the door for him? Couldn’t he have just floated through it on his way to our dining room, guided by the savory smell of my mom’s matzah ball soup?
What I didn’t understand then but do now is that we didn’t open our front door for Elijah’s sake but, rather, for ours. We weren’t inviting him into our physical home but into our spiritual home, our hearts. Some rabbis say Elijah foreshadows our messiah; some do not. But most agree that he is felt rather than seen at our Seder to symbolize our fondest desire as Jews, which also is felt deeply but must remain unseen for now: the return of all our people to our homeland of Israel.
And so there is something quite tender about the magic that is Elijah. He could not be more different than Santa or the Easter Bunny, but they all share the allure of wish fulfillment, be it presents or candy for children or a permanent home for the Jewish people. We welcome Elijah into our temporary homes to thank him in advance for welcoming our future People into their permanent one.
And make no mistake about it: all homes are pure magic to the families who inhabit them. Dickens said it best: “Home is a name, a word. But it is a strong one: stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered, conjuring up the setting of our childhood enchantment.” A home arouses in all of us the hope of ultimate security. Our feet will leave eventually, but never our hearts.
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here