ABSTRACT
I could barely contain my five-year-old legs from galloping up the stairs rather than waiting by the elevator. I wanted to be on the sixth floor already, ringing and ringing the bell to Grandma Annie and Grandpa Joe's apartment and running in to see my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents gathering for our family seder. 1 Instead, my parents insisted that we wait for the elevator, wait as it inched its way up the sixth floor, wait in front of the door with the wooden mezuzah. But the wait was rewarded. As soon as the door opened, I dashed in, winding my way through adult bodies to the tiny kitchen, checking to make sure the chicken soup, gefilte fish, and even the inedible chopped liver was all ready for us, checking that the huge table was set up in the small living room and that the silver cup of wine for Elijah stood regally beside the seder plate. Bursting with excitement, my cousins and I would scramble under the table, laughing, then heading for the refuge of my grandparents' tiny bedroom where we always met by the radiator, looking out over the cobblestone streets of the Lower East Side of New York City.
