The seder is all about questions. The evening starts with the famous four, asked by the youngest present, but if the seder is what it should be, it doesn’t stop there. Everyone around the table — from the youngest all the way to the oldest — is encouraged to dissect, debate and shamelessly pontificate over each bit of the haggadah and over any part of Jewish tradition, ideally well into the night.
Let me just start by admitting that I probably didn’t really need to put the knife directly on my burner. But it was the first time in a very long time I was kashering anything, and I had conflicting guidance from my rabbi and my mother, and I thought I needed to drop a hot metal object into my hot water urn to make it kosher for Pesach (I was totally wrong. Do not try it at home.).
Frieda Korobkin was orphaned by the Holocaust, but because she spent the war years living protected in the English countryside, she didn’t really consider herself a survivor — and she never thought about writing her memoirs.
Chuck Boxenbaum had never made a donation to Birthright Israel — until he was asked. And then he came through with a six-figure gift, making the program that sends young people on a free trip to Israel one of his top funding priorities.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.