Passover

the long version

In Passover, David Mamet, one of our most esteemed and highly acclaimed playwrights, brings his own rich interpretation to the holiday that reaffirms the faith of a people in a God who did not desert them. The novel opens with a scene between a grandmother and her granddaughter. The two are preparing traditional recipes for a Passover dinner. As the meal is being prepared, the grandmother reminds the girl of the significance of each dish, and thus begins to retell the story of Passover. As she describes the traditional recipes for the Seder, she launches into a reverie in which she reveals to her granddaughter the tragic, harrowing history of her own family, nearly devastated, by the Polish pogroms. What the girl learns from her grandmother will forever alter the way she sees life, for she must come to terms with what it means to be a Jew, even in America, "the land of the free."