I am taking a break from Passover preparation. I do love this holiday though it is challenging for my back. Too much standing, as I cook, not to mention the bending in order to get the house ready is tough, so I try to get off my feet every so often. Yesterday morning Jeff showed me an article from the Chronicle about the places all over the world where you can go for Passover including Orlando, Scottsdale, Puerto Rico or how about a kosher for Passover African Safari? (oy!)
Hmmm...that sounds a little tempting...not the safari, but going somewhere without feeling like a slave in Egypt doing all the shopping, cleaning and cooking. One year we were all with Devora and Andy in Jerusalem which was quite an experience. I got to see some of the pre-Passover customs which are done in a communal fashion. For example, if you wanted to kosher a pot by immersing it in boiling water, you could do a drive by. You got in your car, then handed your pot to someone who would drop your pot in a gigantic pot of water on the street, circle around in your car and pick it back up. Then the last morning when the final remnants of the leavened foods had to be burned, there was a smoky pall over the city from the many little fires in every neighborhood. That is something we would never see here in Oakland!
As I prepare the house for Passover, getting rid of the chametz, I do it in a certain way that I have been doing for years. It puts me in touch with the Jewish women who have prepared their homes for Passover for generations. I remember seeing very old etchings of women cleaning for Passover in the Jewish museum of Amsterdam.
My "tradition" is bringing in my housekeeper Vilma and her niece Patty for a day, and the three of us get down and dirty and do a major cleaning. Jeff brings in the six boxes of our special Passover dishes and utensils which I store in the garage. I chuckle over last year's headlines from the newspapers which cover the dishes. I take out my mother's elegant gold rimmed Rosenthal china that I only use once a year for Seder. I can't help but think about last year when I had just completed my radiation treatments. I am filled with gratitude that I can do this holiday preparation even though it is tiring.
It is also a time I think about my mother. She began her Passover preparation a month before the holiday and she did everything, way more than me, from washing the curtains in the bedrooms to polishing the brass doorknobs. Once she turned over her kitchen we would have our meals in the garage. Her Passover Seders were legendary and she had several families who came to her every year treasuring her marvelous food. My mom's matzoh balls were dense, made of matzoh, the size of golf balls. I guess they could be classified as "sinkers." I make my matzoh balls (shhh, don't tell anyone) from one of the boxes I get at Safeway, either Streit's or Manichewitz. They are light, delicious and closer to the size of a (small) baseball, and definitely "floaters."
The week before Passover I make Jeff crazy. I call it no man's land" because there is not much regular food left, the kitchen is mostly covered for Passover, and Jeff is stuck in a corner in the kitchen trying to figure out what to eat.
The neat thing about this holiday is that every family has its own particular traditions, recipes and interpretations of the customs, but it all seems to work. The important part is gathering around the table with family and friends. My son in law's family has a huge Seder and all the children even the big kids, gets a dollar for finding pieces of afikomen wrapped in foil hidden all over. My daughter's wonderful father in law, wears a frog hat, has plague finger puppets and has his own funny sayings that he says every year.
This holiday makes us remember, not only the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt, which we are commanded to teach in every generation, but our own family stories and especially those who are no longer sitting with us at the Seder table. My Uncle Herman used to say the Seder all in Hebrew and us kids thought it took days to finish. My aunt made a special raisin wine for the children. I think of them. Another relative loved to sing the Passover songs.
Our Seder is a mix of English and Hebrew. One of the best Seder practices I like is if everyone takes the time to bring a little something to share at the Seder, a paragraph even, about some aspect of the story. It is not hard to do with so much available on the internet, just a click away. I learned this from a Seder I went to years ago. It really works well because everyone is more engaged. Our haggadahs are getting worn and the pages where we eat haroset have stains, but I love that too. I suppose I should replace them with something more modern but those books wouldn't feel like "home." We will be treated this year to Elana and Saul's musical talent!!
I have a special box where I keep the haggadahs and some of the things my daughters made in Hebrew school like decorated matzoh covers as well as the "visual aids" they used to bring to the
Seder. They are precious mementos. Our Israeli grandchildren are very well versed in the songs and the haggadah which they study in school. They have the week off before Passover as well as during Passover. The entire country, secular and religious, seems to take off and when we were there traffic was crazy as were places to visit like the zoo in Jerusalem. It was filled with families, from Hasidic clans to Ethiopian groups picnicking with Passover food. This was something to see. It was such a mob that I was afraid we would lose one of our kids. Large families "color coded" their children and had them wearing matching shirts. I could understand why.
When Jeff sees me in the midst of all the preparation, he is tempted to go back to Israel for Seder. That might be a plan for next year but I'm sure some part of me would miss all the preparation which puts me in the spirit of the holiday. Happy Passover!!
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