Meet my husband/7: Active Ingredient: Faith

San Francisco, April 23, 2011: the Contemporary Jewish Museum hosts an Out of Order Seder. Since we are in San Francisco, the Seder will necessarily be "an unforgettable, 'unorthodox' Seder led by the Bay Area's most creative and boundary-pushing artists, performers, writers, musicians, and ritualists."

Jonathon Keats is one of the artists who are invited to participate. Before the Seder begins, waiters are serving drinks. On the trays, together with the glasses, there are little plastic bottles full of transparent, empty pills. This is what Keats writes:

"The pills were offered as philosophical manna* for a pharmaceutical era. (The original manna, provided by God to the Israelites fleeing Egypt, was allegedly not so much philosophical as flavorless.) Those who chose to take the pills exercised their free will. Those who chose not to do so exercised their free will too. By that measure, the placebo was deemed successful."

*In the Biblical account, the name manna is said to derive from the question man hu, seemingly meaning "What is it?"

A pill bottle labeled 'Free Will (Placebo)' is filled with empty gelatin capsules. The active ingredient: Faith.