Spring has probably always symbolized something positive: green buds shooting out of snowy, frozen ground; baby birds and bunnies; Jews liberating themselves from slavery in ancient Egypt - standard stuff.

But I'm sure that everyone at this table knows it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes spring doesn't feel like Spring Should Feel. Maybe our SAD from the winter hasn't fully dissipated, and we're wondering when we should start worrying about that. Allergies are acting up. Kitten season. Our little siblings go to prom and we feel old and wonder what we've been doing with our lives. We have to pay our taxes. There are terrible anniversaries in the spring. It's raining all the damn time.

What do we do spring brings sorrow? Find comfort, wherever we can.

-

-

-

-

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

-"The Trees" by Philip Larkin


haggadah Section: Karpas
Source: "The Trees" by Philip Larkin