‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’ After a year of isolation, Dallas-area seniors to gather for the Seder

News travels fast in a retirement community. And for the past year, there hasn’t been a lot of good news swirling around The Legacy Willow Bend: Family visits suspended. Knitting club and movie nights canceled. Possible COVID-19 exposure among some residents with Alzheimer’s.

This week, though, the news making its way through the rumor mill was exciting.

“Hey,” an octogenarian said to the community’s director earlier this week, “I heard that we’re going to be able to eat together for Passover.”

It’s true. For the first time in a year, The Legacy’s residents will be allowed to gather in the dining room, without masks, and enjoy dinner side by side. For many, their first meal together will be on Sunday for the Passover Seder, a celebration of family, of freedom and of survival.

“It’s the perfect opportunity,” said Laura Levy, director of the Jewish-sponsored retirement community.

This year, Passover begins Saturday evening and runs through April 4. Last year, the Jewish holiday fell at the start of the pandemic. Nursing homes across the country shut their doors to the outside world, praying that doing so would protect those who are most vulnerable. It was no different at The Legacy.

Levy knew it was too dangerous to bring the seniors together for the community’s annual Passover celebration. Instead, the rabbi broadcast prayers over The Legacy’s in-house television channel. Staff delivered individual Seder plates to residents’ apartments, each holding the elements of a traditional Passover meal. There was a hard-boiled egg to symbolize life and a scoop of maror — horseradish — to symbolize bitterness.

It was a sharp departure from a typical year, when as many as 150 people — residents and their extended families — congregated in the dining room to recite the ancient story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt.

“It was strange. It gives you a strange feeling,” said Ro Reinthal, 87. Even though she was isolated from her neighbors last Passover, she said she still felt a sense of connection, understanding that they were all singing the same songs and eating the same food.

“That’s the beauty of it,” she said.

This year’s Seder will be held on Sunday, starting at 4:30 p.m. Reinthal said it will be “wonderful.”

All of The Legacy’s 198 residents are fully vaccinated and so are the majority of staff members. When Walgreens employees came to the campus with the first shots in January, they decorated the hallways with rainbow balloons to celebrate the huge step toward normalcy.

It was such a relief, said Joan Boruszak.

The Legacy staff “did as much as they could to make it a reasonable year. But it was hard — it was hard for them and it was hard for us,” Boruszak, 88, said. “When you’re elderly, when you’re old, there aren’t that many years.”

Now, The Legacy has been able to slowly lift restrictions.

Vaccinated residents can visit family at their homes. Happy hours have resumed and no longer must be strictly “grab and go” martinis or beers. Beginning Thursday, residents were allowed to walk through the community’s public areas without wearing a mask.

It’s so much easier to hear each other speak, residents said.

The policy change was so new that, on Friday afternoon, some residents were reminding each other, “Hey, you don’t have to wear a mask anymore.” Reinthal said it may be time to buy some new lipstick.

In anticipation of the weekend’s Seder, kitchen staff began laying the place settings on Friday. It felt good, the community’s food and beverage director said, to once again bring out the formal dishware — gold plates each topped by a napkin tied with twine.

The Passover meal will be pretty standard, Wesley Helms said. After a year like this past one, he said it will feel good to serve up some normalcy in the form of brisket and matzo ball soup.

When they gather Sunday, Rabbi Michael Cohen will oversee the Seder, encouraging everyone to remain vigilant until the community is truly free of the virus. Levy will perform the blessing over the candles. She’s expecting around 65 or 70 people to come for the dinner, including one of the last Holocaust survivors still living in the community.

This year’s Seder will not be entirely back to normal. Children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are not yet allowed to join in-person.

That poses a bit of a quandary. Each Passover, the youngest child in the family is tasked with reciting the traditional Four Questions.

“I don’t think I qualify,” Barry Solomon, 94, joked.

Levy said a younger member of the staff will likely take on the role, singing out: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

During the last “normal” year, Boruszak’s great-grandson was still too young to sing the Four Questions when he visited for the Seder.

By next Passover, she says, he’ll be ready — and they’ll finally be together.