MY life has turned Talmudic. A friend, aware of my religious upbringing, talked me into doing a new translation of the Haggadah — the book from which the story of Exodus is retold in Jewish households, read aloud at the Passover dinners taking place tonight.

It took a lot of convincing; I’ve been — for a long time — proudly and radically secular. But, as with the rest of my deeply observant family, once I’m committed to an undertaking, it’s zealousness or bust. “Born to Be Ascetic” is the tattoo my mother sports across her back...or the one she would, were she the tattooing kind.

With my sister this zealousness manifests itself during Passover cleaning. It’s forbidden to have even one crumb of hametz (basically any leavened product) loose in your house during the holiday week. For her (with a brood of five) this means stripping the place to the studs, and a kitchen sterile enough both for brain surgery and a certifiably kosher matzo-ball soup. The only way to get it cleaner would be to burn the place down.

With me, this obsessive bent has turned what was supposed to be a short, quick, fun project, into a house piled high with religious texts, a study partner to argue every word choice with Babylonian-style, and countless hours of compulsive work — another year gone by.

Beyond the famed medieval manuscripts — the illuminated Sarajevo Haggadah, and the German Bird’s Head Haggadah — there are versions geared toward seders of every stripe. There are feminist editions, a vegetarian take for “the Liberated Lamb,” “The Anonymous Haggadah” for 12-steppers, one for the United States Armed Forces, the Santa Cruz liturgy, which is both “gender-neutral and God-name-Free,” and a Facebook Haggadah that ends by threatening a twitter version for next year (Google it yourself).

The Haggadah advises us to venture-off and learn but when it comes to choosing a liturgy, I don’t venture far. I came to discover that there’s no one more fiercely traditional than a fallen Jew, and found myself recoiling in horror when an ancient Hebrew word-puzzle was absent from the text I’m using as a guide (don’t worry, I put it back).

In the middle of all the figuring and arguing, the pondering of biblical prose, I often find myself remembering, a sweet side effect I didn’t expect. I remember the ritual search for hametz the night before the holiday: a little boy standing in a darkened basement at my father’s side, a lighted candle aloft, a feather in hand, ready to sweep up any crumbs missed along the way.

I remember the seasons when Easter and Passover crossed; walking to our suburban Long Island synagogue in a yarmulke and tiny suit, and waving up at the Easter Bunny perched atop one of the town’s fire trucks, the volunteer-fireman Bunny waving back on his rounds. I remember us laughing, my sister and father and I, the firemen too.

It was not lost, the sweetness of it: Passover suit or bunny suit, the firemen in their uniforms and me in mine, an acknowledgment of the different rituals and ceremonies that make up a town.

And the rituals in our home were many. I remember stealing and hiding the afikoman during the endless Seder meal (a tradition meant to keep youngsters awake). I remember all the preparation that went into that meal, the heavy brass mortar and pestle in a kitchen filled with steam, and the dishes — my great-great grandmother’s china, used two nights a year for 100 and more. The wine was decanted into carafes, the salt served in filigreed silver wells. We were not fancy people, CorningWare white the rest of the year. But these two nights, remembering slavery, were to be celebrated as if we were kings, the poor seated with princes, all meant to recline.

I remember when the herbs were dipped, the horseradish eaten, and I can still see the grown-up faces turning fiery red. I remember the egg served in salt water (a family tradition). And I remember all the sweet wine drunk, and a drunk little boy sliding under the table, which I retell here but don’t recall. I remember — a strange thought in this year of my father’s death — that, aside from my mother, sister and me, everyone else from those dinners is gone. The individual Passovers now melt together into warm memories of relatives long dead.

What I most remember, though, what stays most vivid, is the Haggadah itself — the words and the rhythms, rendered here in the translation I’ve been working on:

Were it our mouths were filled with a singing like the sea,

And our tongues awash with song, as waves-countless,

And our lips to lauding, as the skies are wide,

And our eyes illumined like the sun and the moon,

And our hands spread-out like the eagles of heaven,

And our feet as fleet as fawns,

Still, we would not suffice in thanking You, Lord God-of-us...

In studying this tale built around remembering, I came to see how much it’s also one of looking ahead. These are times of great uncertainty. Even the dream of returning to Zion as “our mouths swell with laughter, and our tongues are overspread with songs of joy,” will take us to a country of walls and war. It is nice then to come away from the translation feeling that the Haggadah is as focused on promise as it is on rescue. As the psalm, from which the above line is taken, ends,

For those that sow with tears, with joy will reap.

Walks-on the walker crying, bearing the sack of seed;

then comes the comer, rejoicing, carrying his sheaves.

Nathan Englander is the author, most recently, of “The Ministry of Special Cases,” a novel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/opinion/08englander.html?pagewanted=print

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company