Around Day 2 of Operation Eternal Passover (begun a day early at my parents’ New Jersey home because of Shabbat), it hit me: there were 36 hours left until I could use my computer. Even then, I would need to add another hour to allow for post-Yom Tov travel time from NJ to NYC.
Not that I’m addicted, mind you. I’m perfectly capable of going a day or two without Internet, without AIM, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, perusing Bloglines, or obsessively checking my fifty-seven email accounts. I’m even able to go without Jewlicious. Not that I choose that Internet-free existence often (and yes, mostly on Shabbat and Yom Tov), but that doesn’t necessarily translate to a Betty Fordable Addiction. I can quit anytime I want.
But I do admit to having had impure, technology-tainted thoughts over chag…I dreamed of liveblogging the seders, and comparing my accounts with others from my Jewlicious colleagues: I wondered what CK’s Sephardic sedarim looked like, and whether he’d have anything to contribute to my family’s annual academic contemplation titled “I Wish We Were Sephardic So That We Could Eat Kitniyot.” I wondered where Laya was for chag, and whether she was doing one seder or two this year. I wondered if TM had any cool stories of what his child did during the seder. And in contemplation of the Muffti, I was wondering what (if anything) Passover means to a self-proclaimed atheist.
Maybe it’s the channel surfer in me, but I can’t wait for teleportation technology to be developed, so I can visit other people and experience their sedarim without sacrificing the unique experience of being with my own family.
Which, just to clarify, is not to be confused with the desire to attend more seders, because two is more than enough for anyone.
How was your seder? How were your sedarim? Break the middle matzah and share with us.
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My Pesach was/is great! I ended up going to three seders: my own, the synagogue’s, and a friend’s. Needless to say, my husband and I felt like we couldn’t walk. I made some rockin’ matzah ball soup; my husband made a brisket that felt like it was melting before it hit your mouth; and we experimented with melting and resolidifying kosher chocolate over matzah. We’re really glad that, due to a passing affair with the Atkin’s diet, we are aware of how many things have flour in them, and we were really glad we did a more traditional cleaning of the house (having orgies of pasta-eating for a few weeks before to get rid of food we shouldn’t be eating during Passover). It was a great time.
I made a great dish. I took some of the WHole wheat farfels by Streits, about 4 cups, let soak in a mixture of tomatoe sauce, lemon juice, cotton seed oil, orange juice, water to cover. Bake in oven at 350 for about 40 minutes. Wet mixture should be absorbed. Take out of oven let stand 5 minutes. COver again w/ water and back into oven until farfels start to harden at the tops.
This is very tasty and health oriented.
Esther, was your $10 potato kugel good, at least? The potato kugels at the local grocery mega-plex are about $6 for a wee little foil packet of grey mush. They’re on sale for $3 this week (’cause everyone knows that Passover is over…).
I made an apple & farfel kugel for the seder that was a pretty good, if not tooth-itchingly sweet concoction. I’ll probably make a potato one to go with the sale-priced Empire turkey breast (on sale, ’cause everyone knows that Passover is over…). And soon, I will make **mina** (also known as “Mmmmmina”).
So, even though everyone (especially the shelf-stockers at the grocery store) knows that Passover is over, have a happy Pesach!
phew, thanks for the clarification. But yikes! Still more expensive than here, Boston. I always assumed things would be a bit cheaper in NY, looking at traditional supply v. demand, but I guess since Passover demand is higher than Boston (a lot of people here will eat out during passover, but skip the bread basket), and supply is probably similar, prices go up!
lynn, it wasn’t a mix…it was a ready made kugel, and I was estimating its cost, but that’s about what it’ll run ya on Pesach in the NY Metro area.
Filter, email me and we’ll talk.
For me, the Yuntif was definetly a high. I appreciate ritual, so this is a huge holiday for that. Even tho I have to work Chol Hamoed, I am busy w/ the foods I brought and so on. You could argue that any ritual would do, but this is ours, it is very old.
Esther, I am interested in introducing you to someone. Is this possible? A really great guy.
out of curiosity, where the heck are y’all paying $10 for potato kugel mix? The pre-made stuff was disasterously overpriced, but I paid the price for KP chicken nuggets and beef knishes so I could have a nice fun dinner Thursday, and have a couple days off of cooking during the week (full time work, getting home starving at 7pm doesn’t make cooking all that easy). And those altogether (1 package of nuggets, and 2 packs of beef knishes) was like 17-18 bucks for six total servings.
But $10 bucks for a mix? Where?
this vegetarian thing is pretty rough on during pesach.
first seder i spent at synagogue. it was lots of fun, though the vegetarian option was less than stellar.
i hosted the second seder and we were a total of 14. we had plans to do it in the backyard but it was cold and wet, so we stayed in. being vegetarian(ish) w/ many vegetarian friends, i went for the kitniyot – i can’t eat eggs as my only source of protein for 7days. it was a potluck seder, someone bought 3 slices of shemura matzah from the chabad, bean salads, killer tsimmes, matzah ball soup, kugel, buckets of charoset, gefilte fish, brisket for the meat eaters, crustless zuchinni quiche made w/ emmental for the vegs, ratatouille, followed by the *best* macaroons i ‘ve ever had and chocolate cake. we actually managed to make it through the whole haggadah, although we almost missed a page skipping the shulchan orech (imagine!). we had an eclectic mix of guests, and one woman was telling us bout her younger days when she was on a kibbutz in israel, trying to swap her orange picking job for the toilet cleaning job (which apparently is a die for job because you have a machine that does most of the work and you only clean 2x a day.)
dear brother…how nice that you have so quickly forgotten what I asked you to do today. how sad is it that this is the only way I can get in touch with you…can you please get in touch with noa’s mom, cause she’s so cute, so that we can get this thing done. Don’t ignore me cause I know where to find you and you can’t pretend that you didn’t read this. Noam is brogez. Call me. Noam says you suck. I do to. HI LAYA!
Like I said, Dave, what kind of a Hagaddah did the Rambam use?
And a metaphor does not need to be a slippery slope to avodah zarah if you simply keep in mind that it is a metaphor.
Do you advocate going back into the Torah and excising all of the dangerous metaphors?
All language is an approximation. How do you describe the flavor of a grapefruit to someone who has never tasted it? If you are going to use language, you are going to be limited.
The Torah is far beyond our understanding because we are urged
to strive further in our understanding of G-d and to become better human beings, which is G-d’s requirement of us. If easy/ facile avodah style metaphors are o.k., then why bother to try to reach higher understanding? Even though because we are humans, we shall make infestimal progress in this quest, still we must try. The effort is always worth it.
The consistent miracle for me personally, which makes continue in this faith of ours is that even though G-d is All Powerful and All Merciful and Unknowable and is the Creator and Destroyer of all galaxies and solar systems, G-d is continually exercising Mercy and Caring beyond human understanding toward every single life form, which of course G-d created. This is my faith.
If I use anthropomorphic terms to describe G-d or G-d’s actions I am doing a disservice to my own understanding of G-d’s wonderfulness and amazingness, and I am on a slippery slope to avodah zarah. So that is why I feel personally that it is most important to avoid any any kind of anthropomorphic terminology.
And here WE are, fully hard core sephardic and we didn’t eat kitnyot. Not that it effected the seders at all – the quantity and quality of food at Brakha’s table was breathtaking. These were however my first seders as a non meat eater and so while I ate my fill of passover yumminess, I did not feel like I overate and was about to lapse into a coma. I have no idea how Tiff survives on what she eats but no big deal for me because my fave passover food was always Mom’s otherwise pedestrian but oddly compelling vegetable soup.
It was as always nice to have assembled friends and family with us – every year it seems like we’re being more and more outnumbered by ashkenazic Jews and this year my Dad did not read any portion of the seder in Arabic. I managed to read through this month’s Wired and Schlepping Through The Alps – 3 days of chag/shabbat is brutal but it’s good for the reading.
Ahhh… it’s nice and even humbeling a little to be with everyone. Thankyou Brakha for another splendid seder, thanks Tanya and Tiffany for putting up with me, thankyou Rachel for Jordan the cutie, thanks Dad for being Dad and thanks everyone else for coming.
Of course being sephardic and simple minded in our faith, we did not ask questions about G_d and anthrophomorization and we read through the entire seder. But whatever, y’all sound like you had a pretty good time – hurray!
Leh Shanah Haba’ah be Yerushalayim.
Well, if that’s what Rambam really meant, I wonder what kind of Hagaddah he used.
The Torah is written in the language of men. We know they’re metaphors, Dave.
In any case, if the Torah is too far beyond our understanding, of what use is it to us?
Ephraim, about my post #11.
As I said I am not Orthodox.
Yes, the Torah does use such anthropomorphic language.
What I am going to say now you will find heretical, but that’s what I believe and I am not going to change to please anyone::
I personally believe that the Torah is a holy document and the people who transcribed it were divinely inspired. But, because they were human beings, they could only think of limited metaphors, and so although G-d gave them this wonderful knowledge they could not cope with its “amazingness” and so they could only use limited human metaphors. Since at that time we the Israelites/ Jews were in the early stages of our long march out of idolatry, the people who transcribed wrote down the Torah could only think in a limited
way. The message of the Torah is beyond human understanding, but it is the human transcribers who could not cope and could only transcribe it in anthropomorphic terms.
Yes, I do believe that the Rabbis who where discussing the plagues in terms of the “finger” and “hand” of G-d, were picking easy/ facile/ inadequate metaphors, so yes they were engaging in avodah zarah, even though the end they were trying to achieve was noble ie. explaining to us the wonderfulness and power of
G-d, the means used were inadequate/ avodah zarah type metaphors. As the Rambam said “We cannot condemn idolatry in other faiths, while allowing it in ours”.
Obviously I do not believe in the Torah in the way the Orthodox do. I do believe in G-d’s total and continuing Supremacy, Mercy and Loving-kindness, and nothing repeat nothing will shake my faith.
I realize that this may be an unworkable system for people who are Orthodox, but then as I said I am not Orthodox.
See, some of us conveniently reject non-rice, gefilte fish eating customs. 🙂
BTW, my dad actually bought those matzah oven mits and thinks they are the most hilarious thing in the world.
Neo-Conservaguy, I’m feeling a little trademark infringement from you.
This year, for the first time, I too have also rebelled and eaten kitnyot.
And it is good.
vive la revolucion!
Esther, on the note of being slaves to the holiday, you forgot the cleaning– from 10 pm to 2 am, my roommate was cleaning and would not let me sleep until I helped him. Of course, that didn’t stop him from not cleaning up from making matzah bri, and thus attracting ants to our apartment.
This Pesach truly celebrates freedom for me, because I’ve stopped feeling “not good enough” for refusing to participate in the overly anal preparations that so many seem to delight in suffering through. We cleaned the house rationally without looking for crumbs in cracks. It was a good well-needed cleaning that hunted down and destroyed many enemy dust balls, and we’re happy that we did it; that’s a better feeling than wondering if you missed that little bit of crumb lost in your old jacket pocket that you haven’t worn in years.
We checked in with the wild and wacky Rabbis Abadi at kashrut.org for sane advice about acceptable food. And then, I ignored the rabbis and refused to get rid of rice and kitnyot. That’s right – the rebellion starts right here. We had rice last year, and It Was Good. Nothing Bad Happened – Really. No more suffering worrying about corn oil or corn syrup, although the “kosher for Pesach” Coke rules with teeth-rottingly good sugar taste, so I’ll buy it anyway. We ordered our soft matsa too late this year, and I’m really sad about it; looks like crackers (aka “shmura matza”) for us this Pesach. How the heck do you roll a Hillel sandwich with this stuff?
First night was at home with some friends; wife’s matza ball soup rocked, and so did my Indian/Sefardic spiced veggies in tomato sauce. Second night we joined two dozen folks at a friend’s house. We shared a seder table with some wonderful young ladies from a MO section of Yerushalayim. The look the gave me when I asked if they ate rice and kitnyot was priceless. I hope they stop laughing about it at some point. (Yes, they do eat them, as do most people they know.)
BTW – word up to single young Jewish gentlemen: if you’ve ever wondered whether being “religious” is worth it, check out the state of babedom in the MO world. Whoa. Better practice those old davening skills and dust off the tallis to be ready to impress them in shul. Yes, shul – stop whining. It will be worth it.
Umm…..Dave?
How then do you explain the fact that the Torah itself uses these anthropomorphic terms?
Are you saying that the Torah is idolatrous? And that the rabbis who were discussing the number of plagues by reference to the “finger” and the “hand” of G-d were engaging in avodah zara?
It seems to me that the term “metaphor” might be useful here.
But perhaps I am misunderstanding you.
Esther, concerning your post- #13 and anthromorphizing G-d,
I am very sorry, but with all due respect, I disagree with you.
Even the Rambam said “we cannot condemn idolatry among other faiths while accepting it in our own”. I am sorry if I sound doctrinaire, but I feel very deeply about this issue.
I am not even Orthodox, but that’s how I feel.
What do you think? What do others on this site think? I think this is a deeply important issue. I said what I feel in my post- #11.
Esther, you were always on Muffti’s mind 🙂 In the capacity of being cleverer than him no less.
Ephraim, Muffti has met some pretty learned people (he did go to jewish school, was a torah reader…) When Muffti said you were informed, he was speaking relative to the rest of the crowd 🙂 Just kiddding. Muffti loves y’all. Happy passover.
Yes, it’s true, Pesach is exhausting. I’m usually cooking for at least 2 days straight. But my wife has to do without our regular diet of rice, soy sauce, tofu and miso soup, etc., for 8 days, so I do my best to try to make it as painless as possible.
“has no imagination”
Or more likely, no time to prepare such concoctions and delicacies. Frankly, every year my mother slaves and slaves, and decides that at a certain point, the potato kugel (which was not a mix, but did arrive from the caterer pre-assembled and cooked ready for reheating) is worth $10. We do always make the knaidlach from scratch, though. We do have standards.
But if you’re willing to cater for my family next year, please let me know and I’ll be happy to pass that news along to my parents.
Why in the world would anyone pay $10 for a box of kugel mix? A real handmade potato kugel might be worth eating, but my G-d, people, those mixes are the worst! No wonder everyone thinks Pesach food is so awful. Pesach is expensive, yes, but it doesn’t have to be disgusting.
My Pesach food kills. The most Jewlicious time of the year. No one can touch my chicken soup with knaidlech, pot roast in wine and mushrooms, cold Sephardic fish, ratatouille, roasted potatoes with rosemary and garlic, pears poached in sweet wine, and, the most Jewlicious thing of all, Spanish Torte de Almandras (almond torte). Anybody who suffers through Pesach because the food isn’t any good just has no imagination.
And my charoset has yet to be equalled.
(Well, Pesach is the most Jewlicious time of the year except for Sukkot maybe, which is barbecued-lamb-shish kebab-pilaf-and-baklava time.)
And, Grand Muffti (when did you start being the “Great Grand Muffti, BTW?), while I am flattered, if you think I am an informed theist, you really need to meet someone who has some real learning.
Jessica, glad you chose to write your thoughts here. “Weak on tradition, but strong on functional family contact?” If functional family contact emerges as a strong tradition, I don’t see anything wrong with that at all! And it sure ain’t easy, even for the most functional, seemingly adult families. A strong component of the holiday message is “vehigadeta l’binkha,” to tell your children the story. And you did. Maybe it was a little messy. But sounds like you were able to make it meaningful, both for the people who attended, and perhaps most importantly, for yourself. Hag sameah!
Esther, thank you for this invitation to share. I can’t really post this on my own blog for various reasons and am spending the time I should be writing there to do this because it feels more important to be involved in a conversation than standing alone.
Our seder was conducted in the rhinestone-studded city of Scottsdale, Arizona with my parents, for whom Passover means more about dragging the whole family together from all its points than keeping tradition. I’m a DIY crunchy California Jew saved from being completely secular by many years of summer camp and I do my best to observe as my base of knowledge grows. I usually find my mother’s control freak mishegoss over matching silverware annoying because I think more energy should be spent on the sacred aspects of the seder and their meaning. But: I have learned much since becoming a parent myself and knew it would only cause friction if I gave my parents shit about the leftover challah in the freezer and my dad’s secret donut outings.
The frusturating points: The food was from a “kosher-style” deli that included charoseth made from applesauce and Elmer’s glue. The bargain haggadahs my mother picked up an Israeli close-out sale barely covered the Exodus story and focused instead on patriarchy and violence, and conversation quickly dissolved into non-Jewish matters as soon as the gefilte fish was served.
My one year-old daughter screamed bloody murder when she was put on the lap of her wheelchair-bound great grandbubbe, tried to bite her uncle when he confiscated the butter knife she had developed a keen attachment to and ended her evening by tripping and hitting her face on the table.
The highlights: My five year old son recited the Four Questions in perfect pronunciation and pitch. Of his own accord, he had pestered us and his preschool teachers for weeks to quiz him so he’d ready, and in the midst of what I considered to be a hurried, half-assed seder he jumped in at the right place without having to be prodded. When he found the afikomen, it didn’t even occur to him to ask for a prize. Talk about kvelling.
My great grandmother sat quietly (and seemingly content) in her wheelchair at the head of the table, finally too old and tired to criticize my mother.
Our kosher-keeping cousin and his wife (a reform cantor) and their two darling girls (one who will becomes a bat mitzvah next week in Jerusalem) kept bringing us back to the matter at hand with folksy prayers and songs.
My husband did the dishes.
So this year was weak on tradition but surprisingly strong on functional family contact. After the meal I went outside to pray a little and apologize to Gd for my family’s ineptitude. I found myself feeling profoundly grateful that we are here at all—free to have a sloppy seder, free to shuttle the youngest generation across state lines to be spoiled by their grandparents, free to be whatever kind of Jews we are. I was also aware that at that particular moment, most Jews, even the most bagelly of them all, were doing (or making an attempt) to commemorate the mighty event that binds all of us together.
Sometimes I envy those of you who find the time, energy and $ to be traditional Jews, but this seder I let it all go into gratitude. My children didn’t get a perfect version of Passover but they did get a happy, celebratory, easy evening with the whole mishpotech. Gd willing, there’s always next year.
I just want to say that I ate so much on the second day, I actually started to hallucinate. I wasn’t sure any more what was reality, and what was the product of my brisket-drenched brain.
Muffti, thanks for sharing. That kind of rumination was precisely what I wanted…and I was most honored to have so entered your stream of consciousness on seder night.
As to the issue of anthropomorphizing God, it’s my impression that the reason that in various places God is referred to as striking with a strong hand and an outstretched arm is to phrase the magnitude of the divine in human terms. I don’t think of this as idolatrous, just as giving us more of a shot at understanding the content and context of redemption and to reinforce the connection between God and people, who are made in God’s image. But I’m no philosophy student.
And Fuzz, I’m going to leave it to the genius rabbis who can figure out a Viagra-chametz loophole to figure out a loophole to enable teleportation, if not on Shabbat, then certainly on holidays.
i hope you aren’t planning to use the teleportation technology on shabbat. 😉
TM, it sounds like you had a nice Pessah.
Grandmuffti, I am sincerely sorry that you’re an atheist.
However, I agree with some of the points you’ve brought up.
You’re right, Rambam said that G-d is incorporeal. In fact all
Jews who believe in G-d say that they believe that G-d is incorporeal.
Sadly, there are some Jews who have such a great need to personify G-d and so they come up with these analogies and figures of speech which slip into idolatry, and in fact this idolatrous attitude was denounced by the Rambam.
Why is that so many people can’t cope with and internalize these fundamental principles of the Jewish faith?- that G-d indeed created the universe and is constantly sustaining the universe, and indeed cares for each and every life form in the universe, but G-d’s caring or love is beyond human understanding and G-d is
incorporeal. G-d is all powerful and all-merciful, in a way that we human beings cannot understand. G-d’s ways are not our (puny human) ways.
I guess that these beliefs “freak out” some people, make them feel small.
I believe this way, because this is how I was taught.
I further think that if one does believe in a Creator, the above beliefs are the only logical beliefs possible.
“Shtreimel, you’ve stated the great irony of the holiday: it celebrates freedom, and really, we’re enslaved to high prices, both financially”
For me, it’s not just the seder, it’s those lingering doubts about the details, and how cosmically significant they are. And I’ve read, tried it, and still, I can’t justify buying Kosher for Passover everything because it’s labelled kosher for passover (I obviously have the same problem with hunting for K, MK, BCK, etc., etc). And since this struggle has been ongoing for over 13 years, I’m not sure if there is going to be a neat and tidy end to all of this. In general, I find BT’s either “get it” within the first 6 months, or not. Anyone want to prove me wrong?
Conserva-Girl, you’re funny. I like the way you think.
Ricker, believe me, I did use the days to catch up on reading, which was great, and sleeping, which has totally thrown off my sleep schedule.
Daphna, good for you for seeking out what you need (on so many levels…)–if you ever find yourself in New Jersey, you’ve got a place with my family.
Shtreimel, you’ve stated the great irony of the holiday: it celebrates freedom, and really, we’re enslaved to high prices, both financially ($10 for a 4×4 potato kugel??), and emotionally. I wish that there had been one Pesach in our house that was free of intense stress. It seems like no matter how far ahead we start preparing for Pesach, we’re like the Israelites, making bricks without straw, and working as both slaves and taskmasters. Maybe that’s supposed to be some sort of freedom, that we can choose to work in the service of God instead of being beholden to an earthly dictator, but it’s gonna take more proof to convince me.
TM, your seder sounds great. One of the reasons I did this post is because I really found myself wondering what other people do. In my family, we do say every word of the “official” Haggadah, but each person has a different Haggadah, and shares insights based on their own book and their own experiences. It’s never the same twice, and I enjoy the permutations as they spin wildly from the central core of the Haggadic text.
One of the reasons that so many people appreciate the seder, in whatever form, is that it appeals to our natural bent as human storytellers, and our desire to teach our children to appreciate freedom in all its forms.
Keep sharing! I love this…
Passover to the Muffti? Atheists need not derive no comfort from festivals. But if you want a quick record of his thoughts (which, for the sake of accuracy, he will record in first person):
‘…man I’m hungry…oh sweet, a cup of wine…yuck, kosher for passover wine…one of the annual guests just asked their stupid annual question about why we try to derive 250 plagues for they Egyptians at the side of the sea…Mom is mentioning my hebrew education…everyone is looking at me to answer…I told them last year…what did I say last year? Man, I’m hungry…better pound down some (feh) wine to jog memory…oh right, it’s to illustrate principles of textual interpretation…ok, like last year, he didn’t really care for the answer this year…wait, now I’m curious…if the derivation goes from God’s finger to god’s hand (with five fingers), that entails that God has parts and isn’t a partless being…since the finger must be a proper part of the hand or the derivation from 1 finger 1 plague to 5 fingers 5 plagues wouldn’t work…but doesn’t Rambam say, (cribbing Aristotle as usual) that God cannot have any parts nor a body…hmmmn…seems no one wants to discuss that problem…and being an atheist, I probably shouldn’t get too worked up about it…but how come they don’t?…aren’t theists obligated to try to discover the nature of thing they believe in?….doesn’t anyone else wonder about how to relate contradictory texts that are both taken to be true?…lousy uninformed theists (not like Ephraim, a lousy informed theist!)…I’m sure if I posted any of this on jewlicious CK would pretend to answer it while really calling me ivory tower boy, laya would tell me one gets to know god by feeling rather than by thinking, and Esther would make a clever joke like…ummn…shit, if I was as clever as her I could tell it…TM? hmmn..I wonder what…mmm…food…[everything goes blank]’
The seder makes a nice time for even atheists to go home and hang out with their fams. Plus, the food is usually good.
After the 3 days were over, I went and turned the kitchen lights on and off a few times. Just because I could.
I actually enjoy the 3 days w/out any of the modern communications.
Fortunately I had prepared enough reading material and attended Shule just enough to fill in the time.
We didn’t do the entire haggadah, but I took extra time with the parts where the many children in attendance could benefit from a little extra learnin’. We had little furry dolls to represent the plagues and all the kids laughed quite a bit. I was pleasantly surprised by the overall knowledge but there were definitely gaps that we needed to address.
I guess there was some tension in the final preparations since we were hosting and there were many guests coming. Once people arrived, however, everything settled and people were mostly happy and there was a lot of laughter. My favorite part was at the end when half the guests had left and all the children had been put to bed. Some of the adults stayed behind and just talked. We were sated with good food and the wine we had drunk. We were in good spirits because it had been a nice seder, and the conversation flowed. We talked about Israel, about Judaism, about sophisticated audio-visual systems (I know nothing about this subject, of course), about other seders and old memories.
If this holiday is about teaching children and creating a feeling of belonging to an ancient tradition, we did that. We also were able to bond with friends somewhat differently than usual. All in all, a very nice night. We went to friends for the second seder, and again had a very nice evening, although it ended much earlier and we did a very cursory seder although all the key elements were part of it.
It’s funny, because I know that many of the people reading this are quite observant and for them what I’m describing may not be as full a seder as they would deem acceptable. On the other hand, I feel ours accomplished the spirit of what a seder should be for both the children and for the adults.
My pesach was a mix of feeling the oppression/liberation of Egypt and just oppression of the Shabbos/Yom Tov nightmare. And it’s times like this when I wonder if I really want to live my life according to Halacha. And the fact that my Ortho friends were complaining during the 2nd Yom Tov made me think: “Maybe that’s why more people don’t practice Judaism. Not only is it expensive, parochial, an impediment to taking part in non-Jewish culture, etc, etc., but even during the holiest of times, it’s just a pain in the arse…even for the devout.”
My relatives here in Israel, who are very nice and cool and all that, invited me to their seder, but they are very secular and since I have become more observant and wanted a kosher seder, I had no choice but to look elsewhere. I went to a seder at the home of people from my congregation that I barely knew, just like I did last year. Last year I was trapped at a table where everyone but the high school age daughter was a brainiac with a PhD (academics left and right) and who left me feeling, well, stupid. This year, (a different family) the seder was so fraught with tension and power struggles that I could not wait for it to be over. Next year, whether I am single or no, at MY OWN seder in Jerusalem, or at least a seder with very good friends. No more stranger’s seders!
I actually did second night too because my friend’s mom was in town and she had to do a second seder for her. That, at least, was lovely–good friends, nice atmosphere and no tension and family wars going on while reading the Hagaddah.
Of course, the best thing about living here in Jlem is that everyone is off all week so I am spending the week seeing friends, visiting family, going hiking etc. There is no point in working b/c no one is there. 🙂
My pleasure. I actually got laughs for this one:
Q. What do you call a condom filled with matzoh meal?
A. A Pesach-dick.
i used themiddle’s “charoses of the liver” joke to many groans and spoon-catapulted globs of horseradish… thanks, themiddle, for enabling my family’s first-ever festive foodfight fiasco!