Action figures who heal and summon implausible miracles

 Jack Doppelt

March 26, 2021

[This is the third in a series of three stories published in preparation for the upcoming Passover holiday. A version of this piece has been incorporated into our family's Passover Haggadah since 2004.]

As I recall the Seders of my youth, what has stuck with me even more than the Maxwell House sponsorship was how ridiculous much of the service seemed to me at the time yet how much I cherished it. 

If this year’s Maxwell House is Zoom, may the children of today come to cherish it too. 

I looked forward to Seders as a time when I would almost pish in my pants with laughter over some of the traditional passages that linked the core themes of slavery, freedom and Jewish survival. 

It came right after the Kiddush and the Four Questions, right in the heart of the answer that started with, “Because we were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt.” It seems that Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Elazar the son of Azariah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarphon met in B’nai B’rak for “a pilpul” or a discussion of biblical text. From one store-sponsored Haggadah to another, the names were spelled differently, so that I got hopelessly confused among Eliezar, Elazar, or Azariah. It was clear that they were the action figures of the Jewish people -- my people -- and my dad expected that I would come to revere them and respect their wisdom. 

But they didn’t seem to have much to offer. They were puzzling over the meaning of “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” and over “the days of thy life” or “all the days of thy life” as it referred to how long we Jews were to recall the going forth from Egypt. They seemed to get mystical guidance from the son of Zoma, another action figure, who seemed to solve the riddle by concluding that we were to recall the Exodus even longer than life itself, into the time of the Messiah, whatever that meant to someone like me who was having a hard enough time recalling the earned run average and career strikeouts of Sandy Koufax, a true action hero. 

Sandy Koufax's career statistics

W	L	ERA	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	HBP	WP	BF	WHIP	ERA+	WAR
165	87	2.76	399	314	137	40	9	2,324.1	1,754	806	713	204	817	2,396	18	87	9,497	1.106	131	53.1

[Source: Wikileaks [not available in those days]

Then later in the Seder service, we eavesdropped on another discussion of the sages. At some other time way back when, Rabbi Jose the Galilean, Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Akiva were puzzling over whether there were 10 plagues or 50 plagues, or 40 or 200 or 250. It became an involved math problem over whether each plague stood for four, that in the end was not resolved other than to break into song with a round of Dayenu. 

 Today we face one plague or is it thousands or tens of thousands for each inflicted person or family? 

 It seemed to me then, and seems to me now, that we the Jews, and we the people of the world, could use action figures who devote themselves to healing who are capable of summoning grand and implausible miracles. 

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