Nitzan and Shaul Barakan had to come all the way from Israel to the United States to learn words like \”afikoman\” and \”seder plate.\”
The couple, both born and raised on Kibbutz Kinneret, didn\’t have a clue that there is a haggadah that looks nothing like the one they used on the kibbutz.
Passover is a holiday near and dear to Marc Jaffe\’s heart. So when the \”Seinfeld\” and \”Mad About You\” writer went to a friend\’s house for a seder last year, he was let down when an Elijah\’s entrance gag bombed.
\”They shook the table. I thought, \’You gotta be kidding me,\’\” he said. \”You gotta have better effects than that.\”
Margie Pomerantz and her fellow volunteers from Congregation Beth David, a nearby Conservative synagogue, were out looking for Jews. In a supermarket. Unaffiliated Jews, if possible, but they weren\’t being picky.
Of all the Jewish holidays, none is so firmly rooted in the home and so joyously celebrated with song as Passover. This simple fact would lead you to expect an avalanche of Passover records, but this year the avalanche is more like a mild rain of pebbles, at least in the quantity department.
Here was my dilemma when I came of age and began making my own seders: Should I maintain tradition even though I didn\’t have the same associations with these foods that my mother did? Since Passover celebrates freedom (another traditional name for the holiday is Zman Cheiruteinu, or The Time of Our Freedom), I wanted to express my freedom by making foods of my own choosing, rather than feeling bound by a menu that was \”traditional\” only due to its roots in Eastern European cuisine.
Something new for the holiday, use the charoset ingredients to make a Passover Fruit Cake filled with nuts and dried fruit that offers a tasty and a crunchy treat. It is similar to the Italian delicacy known as Panforte that originated in Sienna. The mixture is tossed together in a large bowl, spooned into parchment-lined baking pans, and baked for an hour and a half. The good news is that these loaves will easily keep for the eight days of the holiday.
Passover is a time for families to gather, to enjoy each other\’s company and to recall the story of our shared ancient history.
It is also the perfect time to preserve your family\’s greatest treasure: the memories and stories of your own family elders.
Cecelie Wizenfeld is not alone in her efforts to find memorable ways of helping children connect with the holiday. While model seders, seder plate illustrations and handmade afikomen bags have become standard educational fare in the classroom, many Southland religious and day school teachers are finding that creative and unusual holiday projects make more of an impact.
On no holiday are we instructed to feel God\’s participation in our lives more palpably than on Pesach. The hagaddah teaches: \”In every generation, each person must see himself as if he personally left Egypt.\”
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