The Passover holiday contains countless traditions. There\’s the matzah and the sweet wine, the charoset and haggadot, the gefilte fish and the good fortune we celebrate. But perhaps most importantly, there is the gathering together of family and friends — the people who make the singing, reading and eating around the seder table meaningful and special.
A 1998 article about Chicago collector Stephen Durschslag\’s haggadah collection set the number of different haggadot on his shelves at 4,500, increasing almost daily.
It\’s probably impossible to know how many haggadot exist, but it\’s obvious that for every Jew, there should be a haggadah that fits like a glove.
All evening Taumisha Freeman sat dutifully, listening to the story of the Exodus out of Egypt, tasting matzah (\”It needs salt\”), reciting the plagues, without any expression. It was hard to know if she was bored or if, given the fact that she had never been around anything Jewish before, it was just too strange to be here at this intergroup Passover, sponsored by the Pacific Southwest regional office of the Anti-Defamation League.
It was March 31, the first night of Passover, and his native Yugoslavia was again convulsed by war.
It was nearly midnight when Louis Roth\’s seder ended and we packed ourselves into my old Bug. My wife, Kyongcha, rode shotgun; Steve, my 12-year-old brother, shared the cramped back seat with a case of matzo and boxes of kosher-for-Passover canned goods from the chaplain\’s office. It was enough to supply each of the seven Jews in my U.S. Army signal battalion.
Sharon Ann Dror, born deaf, didn\’t enjoy seders with her hearing family while growing up in a traditional Jewish home in Santa Monica. She could read lips, but she couldn\’t see peoples\’ faces as they read from behind their Haggadot. &\’009;
Usually, I\’m so used to the clutter that has accumulated inmy 1986 Honda Civic that I don\’t even notice it. Now and again,however, I squint and think to myself, \”Why am I seated in a mobilegarbage can?\”
\”I\’m a Jewish girl, and my husband\’s a Catholic,\”says Barbara Lazaroff, who has been married for 15 years to renownedchef Wolfgang Puck.\n\nAbout 12 years ago, Passover was a lonesome timefor Lazaroff, most of whose Jewish relatives lived out of town. SoSpago regulars nudged her to create a restaurant seder, and she consulted withhubby Wolf (\”He said, \’We can make shrimp.\’ I said, \’I don\’t thinkso,\’\” Lazaroff quips).\n\nThe result was the first seder ever held in anupscale Los Angeles eatery, with kosher-style (i.e., not strictlykosher) fare a la Puck\’s trendy-interpretive cuisine.
My Passover seder was once again acclaimed by one and all as the best ever. Good thing, too, since, as befits a holiday filled with questions, anxiety had dogged my every step — right until the last moment.
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