Please wait...
Tag : seder
April 14, 2020 by admin
All-of-a-Kind Seder in the Time of Covid-19
In the unfolding of COVID-19, while some friends were frantically dashing back to Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven or Ling Ma’s Severence, I reached for All-of-a-kind Family, by Sydney Taylor. It’s an old children’s book, doubly old—published in 1951 and set in 1912—about the five all-of-a-kind sisters, dressed alike and running around in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, surrounded by their fellow Jews. It was the confluence of two events that brought it to mind—quarantine and Passover.
- No Comments
April 6, 2020 by admin
Turning Days of Distancing into Days of Reflection
Progress is an American value. We are acculturated to propel—socially, professionally, economically—which makes sheltering in place excruciating. For me, not moving forward is as good as moving backwards.
So, how can we navigate this temporary suspension of life as we know it? Some folks are turning this time into an opportunity to begin exercising, bond with family and pets, clean closets, or garden. Others are re-hanging holiday lights. I am reliving the Days of Awe.
- No Comments
April 6, 2020 by Nechama Liss-Levinson
Food for Thought on Passover
In some ways, I have always been a gastronomic Jew, that is, my Jewish identity intertwined with eating and enjoying traditional Jewish foods, like chicken soup with knaidels, noodle kugel and mandelbread. I knew in my heart that for some of us, these foods were our “madeleines,” the tastes, smells and memories that connect us with our past.
Years ago, after my mother died, I would wander down the aisles of the supermarket at Passover, looking at the lovely stalks of fresh asparagus, the bags of tiny marshmallows, the chocolate covered orange peels and the matzah redolent of matzah brei and I would silently weep, missing her presence.
- 1 Comment
March 31, 2020 by admin
I Attended a Jews for Jesus Seder in France: Here’s How It Went
Before embarking on my French sojourn I hadn’t contemplated what Jewish life abroad might look like or the compromises I might make. Living in France throughout my 20’s, was more accidental than planned – I was never a refugee fleeing persecution, but a student, an aspiring artist who fell in love with a landscape; the light, the sounds and smells of Aix-en-Provence. Eventually, an intended summer stay stretched into a decade.
The landscape was that of Cezanne and Van Gogh, the scent, wafts of lavender and thyme, mingling with the aroma of freshly baked bread that permeated the 18th century town.
- No Comments
July 9, 2019 by admin
Women at the Tick-Tock
For the past nine years, my friend (and sometime Lilith contributor) Pamela Rafalow Grossman has hosted a gathering in a diner. As quirky as this might seem at first, it’s still a Seder.
This year, Pam held the Seder on a Tuesday night (not one of the first two nights of Pesach). Eight of us met at a bustling diner near New York’s Penn Station, our third year at the Tick-Tock. Passover is a holiday of liberation, and to me, an important element of freedom is one’s time. The Tick-Tock’s walls are stenciled with various time-related words and mottoes.
And one of the reasons that Pam started the Seder in a diner seems to me to be time-related in a feminist way: “I was tired of what I think of as ‘Leaping Woman Syndrome’. You know—when the person cooking the food for the Seder, and we know that’s usually a woman, is constantly leaping from the table to put something in the oven or check something on the stove.”
Every year the diner gathering is a little different. Last year we used a “hippie” Haggadah from the 1970s. There were more people and more singing. This year, we read from small stapled paper Haggadahs that Pam had gotten from a neighbor in a “no buy” group. Our Seder plate held a pinkish (Easter) egg, parsley, homemade charoset (from Pam’s pal Liz), horseradish, a beet to stand in for the roasted shank. We brought matzoh and extra wine (also ordered a bottle from the diner). For candle-lighting, someone flashed the light feature on a phone. Pam led and we took turns reading from the Haggadah. We ate not at the customary break in the service, but when our kind waiter (Nami, originally from Lebanon) brought our orders. He also hid the afikomen for us!
Pam’s first Seder in a diner started with two other people. They had never attended a Seder before and she wanted to try leading in a low-key situation. As many as 18 people have attended in previous years, but she says “8-10 seems like a great sweet spot.”
We dipped our parsley, ate our “Hillel sandwiches,” discussed how we have found liberation in our own lives (“Hello, Feminism!” said I), and probably puzzled some people at nearby tables. Or not. It’s New York. There, at large booth at a diner, we still absorbed the meaning of Pesach: liberation and reflection. So I raised my glass with the traditional toast, “Next year at the Tick-Tock!”
- No Comments