My birthday is May 29. The year was midway back in the last century. The country celebrated Memorial day on May 30 to honor those who have fallen in the service of the USA. Schools closing doubled the pleasure of my birthday, however during the 70s the government shifted Memorial Day to a convenient Monday or Friday to create 3-day weekends. Other national holidays followed suit and wandered the calender like gaunt Indian cows on the streets of New Delhi. Hawaii’s Senator Daniel Inouye has led a lonely fight to return Memorial Day to May 30. It would be nice to sleep on my birthday drunk with a paid holiday.

Jewish holidays roam the months with more abandon and today the chosen people celebrate Passover. Monday afternoon everyone was closing their booths. Our firm was staying to the bitter end of 6pm. Manny my boss didn’t believe in cutting out early. I asked several of the home-bound, “What does Passaich celebrate?”

“When the angel of god passed over the Jewish houses in Egypt.” Marty answered putting on his coat. A light cold rain was a threat to a man his age.

“The last of the ten plagues.” I had seen THE TEN COMMANDMENTS at the South Shore Drive-In. A drunk teenager threw a rock at our station wagon. My father chased him into the brush. He came back red in the face, but satisfied with his vengeance.

“Yahweh instructed the Hebrews to sprinkle lamb’s blood on this doors so his spirit would skip their houses in his search for the first-born males of the Egyptians.” Marty was a reformed Jew. He ate bacon, but had been instructed in a Brooklyn schul in his youth. The Old Testament was a living instrument of his god.

“You know I was taught that god was all-knowing and all-seeing, so why couldn’t he see which houses were Jewish?”

“What kind of question is that?” Marty accepted some profane thought.

“Here you have this god.” Most people think the killer of the male first-borns was an angel. “Super powerful Yahweh blundering through the night killing young boys. Do you think there was any collateral damage like how our smart bombs hit schools in Afghanistan?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t there.” Marty was fed up with my narishkait or foolishness.

“So you turn your back on the massacre of innocents.” I was pro-Palestinian.

“Don’t start.” Marty was a firm believer in the right of Israel to exist on the ancient lands of the Hebrew kings.

“It’s just a thought, happy exterminating angel day.”

Marty walked out in disgust. He would forgive me until my next outburst. Marsha from across the aisle was shaking his head. She had been in the death camps. A Nazi tattoo was hidden by a gold bracelet.

“You really think god was a murderer?”

“Actually I think that the second-sons of Egypt plotted to kill all the first-borns to destroy the rules of primogeniture.”

“What’s primogeniture?” Andrea asked while putting away Marsha’s jewelry for the day. She loved my writing. We had once made out in a Soho parking lot. 20 years ago. I started to explain the term. Marsha beat me to it. “Primogeniture is where the first born inherits everything from the father. Like Cain and Abel.”

“Cain killed Abel.” Andrea was horrified. She was a sweet girl still.

“The second son plot.”

“Es iz nit geshtoygen un nit gefloygen.” Manny my boss said from his desk. He hated my wasting my time talking about nonsense. Work was time to work and nothing else mattered to him.

“What’s that mean?” Andrea had never heard the expression and neither had I.

“It never rose and it never flew.” Marsha smiled with the pleasure of hearing Yiddish.

“Plain speaking ‘bullshit’.” Manny whispered loud enough for only me to hear. A miser with his help he was a gentlemen to women other than his wives and girlfriends.

“It’s not foolishness.” I protested with the fervor of a devotee to the untruth. “The only logical explanation of passover is that the Egyptians killed the first borns.”

“It was God.” Manny attended temple once a year. Never on the same high holiday, so that each decade he had covered them all. “And his killing angel.”

“Isn’t that the same name they called Josef Mengele?”

“He was called the Angel of Death.” Marsha soured on the mention of his name. She had lost family in the camps. It was only a miracle that she had escaped the Nazi pogrom. “Who knows what passaich really was? It was over 3000 years ago. I can barely remember what I had to eat for lunch.”

“Me neither.” I liked Marsha. She had a kind word for my kids, even though neither of them looked like me. I wished her a good holiday.

“And you have a good Bunny Day.” Marsha knew I was a non-believer and respected my choice. I was a goy and goys were meshuggah or crazy.

“I’ll bring you some chocolate.”

“Viele danke.” Marsha had been brought up in Berlin.

“Gar nichts.” I had studied German in high school. My bible knowledge came from the nuns and priests. They thought that the Jews had killed Jesus. It was a crime for eternity. As a sinner I was willing to forgive everyone for everything. To err is human to forgive is divine.