Imagine waking up the week of Passover. While grocery shopping you find that all the Kosher for Pesach items are out of stock. Now you can’t feed the 20 people attending your seder and you haven’t even started cleaning the house for hametz. Never mind the fact that you will have to live off of Matzah and grape jelly for a week since you didn’t plan to grocery shop weeks ago.
For as wonderful and ritualistic the Passover holiday is, logistically it can be a nightmare.
It’s why calligraphy artist and author Rae Shagalov decided to create “The Ultimate Passover Planner,” a coloring book, multiplanner, journal and Passover spirit guide all in one.
“Passover is a time of intense preparation, there are so many details and its very easy to get lost in the details and get overwhelmed with it all,” Shagalov told the Journal. “I decided to put together all the planning tools that I have been using and I crowd sourced Facebook for tips that many other women use and combine them all with calligraphy art notes on passover then also combine with coloring as a stress-free combination of Jewish wisdom and mediations with a spiritual focus on what we are doing for the Passover preparations.
The book includes extensive broken down spiritual tips, logistical tips on what to clean, what to buy, recipes, coloring sections and checklists to get you through the holiday. The book even includes musical playlists, seder prep and a section for what to do for next year.
Shagalov noticed most people in her life started to prepare or begin to prepare thinking about Passover a month before.
With all the worrying the planning doesn’t become a joyful experience and so “The Ultimate Passover Planner” attempts to bring joy back into planning the holiday.
Shagalov said she and her husband got married the day before Passover 15 years ago. Her friend, who put on the wedding in her backyard, told Shagalov the only way it would be a success is if she switched her house for Passover a week before she regularly would. Since the wedding was the destination, planning Passover was a joyful experience.
“That’s the goal of preparing for passover,” Shagalov said adding “We are celebrating our freedom and our marriage to god, so that’s the tone that I put into “The Ultimate Passover Planner” ways to keep focusing on the spirituality and the happiness and the memories we are creating.”
There are more than 100 spiritual tips and thoughts shared throughout the book that one can doodle or color on including, “if you are very apprehensive for preparing for Passover, your children will feel that way, too.”
“I wanted to create more a journal experience where people could customize it themselves,” Shagalov said. “But where all the details are there and they could use those details and have a place in the journal to customize it.”
She doesn’t just want the book to remain in tact. She says if someone wants to rip a page out and start coloring with their kids, they should. If they need to take a break and rip out a thought in the page and decorate the house with it, go for it.
“One of the first checklist I put in there was a self-care checklist,” Shagalov said. “You need to think about how you are going to maintain your energy in an uplifting way and what you’re gonna do to take care of yourself in this intense journey before we enter Passover.”
Shagalov said all the chaos starts in your head and if you don’t have a place to organize it and put it down then the stress builds. She hopes the book allows people to clear their mind space so they can be present and in the moment.
“Remember with whatever you are doing Jewishly, be joyfully Jewish doing it,” Shaglov said. “[The] Passover experience is about searching. Searching for Jewish identity and searching for relationship with God. When you are traveling to go on a big trip to a country you have never been to before you are so excited you are so happy, that’s how we should feel when going into Passover.”
