Pesach is a very important holiday for me. Every year, I lead a seder with a haggadah I have been working on for twenty years. Mostly the same people come from Boston, from New Jersey, from Arlington. Massachusetts, from two miles away and from a quarter of a mile– we all gather gradually in my small Cape Cod house. Over the years, a couple and their children moved to Chile; some people tried it and it was not their kind of seder. One young woman grew up and now brings her husband. Children have been born and joined the seder. But basically we’re pretty much the same core group year after year. Like many Jews, Pesach is my favorite holiday and the one where I find the strongest personal meaning. I came to studying it earlier than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, perhaps because it is pre-eminently a holiday to share with family and friends. In this little book, I will make my way through the ritual one item and one practice at a time. I am looking for a significant contemporary interpretation, rather than an emphasis on what is strictly “correct” or traditional. I want to encourage you to fashion your own seder in a way that speaks honestly and powerfully to you and your circle, whoever they are – family, friends, an organization. I often provide a historical perspective to help you choose or create a ritual that works for you. Much of what we may have been brought up with in modern Judaism in siddurs, in customary rituals of brit or bar or bat mitzvot, in holiday services or activities, was invented, worked out, haggled over, revised over many generations. You can borrow or create or combine to make a seder that works for your own group –whether family or friends or community. Try out new things every year. Keep the parts most people love or respond to and remember. Work on the parts that seem to put people to sleep. The book is not aimed at the Orthodox, but rather at providing an entrance for secular and religious Jews with a modern slant into a more satisfying and meaningful way to celebrate our most common celebration, the one that just about every Jew partakes in, often twice with first and second night seders. Increasingly in recent years, Jews are putting together our own haggadahs or searching out material from other haggadahs to incorporate into our own ritual. There are literally thousands of haggadahs. Many of us remember seders of our childhood where the haggadah was read mostly or entirely in Hebrew as fast as possible, usually by the patriarch of the family or some older man assuming that role. It had the emotional content of the directions for installing a DVD recorder. For many of us, that something has “always” been done a certain way does not mean that is how we want to do it or the way with the most meaningful content or spiritual resonance. Furthermore, Judaism is always changing. The way we celebrate Shabbat, the various parts of the services for Friday night and Saturday morning, the expectations concerning the holiday services, every piece of what “always” has been or what is “supposed to be” was started some time in our history and kept because it worked for people. Other usages were gradually altered or dropped. The traditional haggadah has been evolving over centuries and adding some passages while dismissing others. A commonly repeated statistic is that 90% of American Jews -- no matter whether they are bagels and lox Jews or religious in some fashion or just in search of some sort of spirituality -- attend at least one seder every Passover. That seder may be the only Jewish ritual a person engages in all year long and therefore the one experience which can confirm and give meaning to that person’s Jewish identity. I am attempting to make elements of the haggadah and the seder rich with contemporary meaning so that the bored or deracinated adult would have an answer to, Why do we go to all this bother every year? or, Why do I feel bereft if I have no seder to attend? Some people come to the seder wanting a spiritual experience. They want, not rote prayers or muttered blessings, but words and practices that move them, that awaken something in them that connects them to a sense of holiness and community. Some people come to the seder wanting to reconnect with a sense of the history of our people and to find something pertinent and engrossing in our identity as Jews. Some people come the seder wanting to link up with the tradition of liberation in Judaism. Some people come just to eat, and that’s okay too, as there is plenty of food for the stomach as well as the spirit. At Pesach we rededicate ourselves to what we cherish and what we find meaningful in our Jewish identity. We see ourselves as part of a people, historically and in the present. It is a time to remember that we as a people were once slaves and that people are enslaved in all eras and in many different ways. Slavery, whether literal or metaphorical, is very much with us today. Thus inevitably Pesach has a political underpinning as we deal with issues of oppression and freedom, of revolt, of daring to change. For some, it is a time to rededicate ourselves to tikkun olam, the repair of the damaged world. A time to remember our thirst for justice and equality and to be inspired to resume the great work that will never be finished. Because like all Jewish holidays, Pesach has a seasonal reference, seders can also touch on ecological destruction and rebuilding. There can be an environmental aspect to the seder. All the way back to the days of the Talmud, Jews have argued about which aspect of the seder is the most important, the theme of liberation out in the world, resisting oppression, becoming free and helping others in their struggles for freedom, or internal liberation, fighting the inner as well as the outer Egypt. Really, we need not choose, for one without the other is weakened. I believe that what all of these various desires have in common is a desire for connection: to what is eternal or to our history or to our people or to those animal and vegetable with whom we share this earth, or to those who are suffering or to those who seek to make the world fairer and gentler and better. A seder can give a sense of connection -- spiritual or activist or communal or simply sensual. The traditional haggadah tells us that each Jew should feel as if she or he (it of course said he) personally was freed by the Exodus and left Egypt that night – an empathy across history that every haggadah tries to make happen in each individual who attends. Martin Buber urged us to feel a connection through history back to that first generation that dared seek freedom. Thus a successful seder can try to satisfy many yearnings in the participants, different perhaps for each. But as Judaism is a religion of a people not of an individual, the seder is a communal experience. We make it together. We make it for and with each other. Our alienation can be healed at least during that evening. We can experience a true sense of community at the seder table, one not based on something ephemeral or manufactured, like the crowd cheering at a football game, but a feeling of commonality that arises from real values. The seder is a night to examine self and community, to choose to undergo the experience, to choose to join again as a Jew with other Jews, to question the tradition and the rituals, to wrestle meaning from them for each of us and the others with whom we are sharing the evening. Erev Pesach is a night for each of us to question what it means to be a Jew and what we want it to mean. How are we to be free? How are we to free ourselves and others? There are far more than four questions involved in a true Pesach experience. We also crave redemption. We see ourselves as flawed and the world as broken, aching, bleeding. This is a time when we call ourselves to account, not in the sense of the Days of Awe, but in a more social sense. What are we doing to fight oppression? What are we doing to make things better? There is no agenda. Each person should find the work of redemption that touches their innermost values and sense of how things ought to be as opposed to how they are. That is part of the story of Exodus, the rising in revolt against what is unfair and painful and unjust. We remember our history on Pesach, but we also look at our present and contemplate the future we might want to make happen and the future we passionately want to avoid – for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren, for all those beings with whom we share this earth. My grandmother Hannah created the seders of my childhood. My grandfather Morris was killed before I was born, so I never met him directly – only through family stories. Among my early good memories are seders in her apartment in Cleveland, with several of my mother’s brothers and sisters gathered around a long table. Somebody was always missing, particularly during World War II, when two of my uncles were already dead, one of a plane crash (he was a stunt pilot in air shows) and one of pneumonia, and one was in the Merchant Marine, at sea. My two oldest aunts lived out in Everett Washington and during the war, Aunt Rose was still dancing, entertaining the troops, but there were plenty of us. My grandmother had borne nine children who lived into adulthood, five men and four women including my mother. They all had husbands or wives and some had children at the seder. Grandmother Hannah was poor and Orthodox, like her father the rabbi, and she kept the laws strictly. She might not own a coat that wasn’t repaired and she might not have daily clothes that were not frayed and worn, but she had dishes only for Passover and a spotless tablecloth saved for good occasions. She had fine silver candlesticks brought from Lithuania where she had grown up in the stetl. I don’t know what happened to them. Like so much else in my tumultuous family, they disappeared. She lived with us for part of every year, sharing my bed, and I remember her lush long brown hair thatched with silver worn around her head in braids and then at night let loose so it cascaded down her back. I remember her brown eyes dimmed with cataracts, her back stooped with labor, her slightly husky voice telling stories from the shtetl and from women’s rich lore. She did not wear a wig because my grandfather had forbidden it and after his death, she kept faith with him. In my childhood, she did not serve lamb for Passover but beef. It is a family tradition I maintain and my seder guests would be peeved if I made anything else. (Vegetarians, do not worry! There are many vegetarian recipes throughout.) 

GEDEMPTE FLAISCH MIT ABRICOTTEN

You need a piece of flanken or a chuck roast. The size depends on the number of people you are serving. I usually allow about one third of a pound per person, but if I were serving it on another occasion when there is less to eat before it is served, then I would allow more. I marinate the pot roast in red wine or Madeira with onions, garlic, some allspice, salt, a little olive oil, herbs as you like. I use a standard bouquet garni. I let it stand in the marinade overnight or for a few hours, depending on my schedule. I soak dried apricots in sweet kosher wine for an hour, separate from the meat. I like the whole organic pitted Turkish apricots. Turn the oven to 350. I pause here and cut up carrots, a couple of parsnips, more onions, more garlic. The amount of vegetables increases with the weight of your meat. Do not skimp. They will be delicious. I drain the meat and carefully dry it, keeping the marinade. I brown it until seared on all sides. Then I take it out, turn down the heat and gently cook the onions for five minutes, then add the garlic, the carrots and parsnips. If you like. you can add ginger or cinnamon. After another five, six minutes, I put the meat back in with the marinade and add more wine if necessary, and it usually is. I also add the apricots with the wine they are soaking in. Bring it to a boil on the stove, then immediately put it in the oven. It cooks until completely tender and you should turn it a couple of times. For a six pound roast, I roast it two and a half hours if using chuck; 3 hours if using flanken. I want it done just before the seder starts. Remember to turn off the oven! On year I didn’t and the pot roast resembled charred wood. It will sit happily in the oven until you reach the point in the seder when it is time to eat. For some Jews lamb is traditional because of its association with Pesach; for others, it is avoided because of the destruction of the Temple. I love lamb, and if I wasn’t honoring the memory of my bubbah, probably I would serve lamb. 

CINNAMON LAMB

Leg of lamb
3 eggs
3 TBL potato flour or fine matzah meal
some black pepper
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
finely chopped parsley or basil or mint or a combination
juice of 2 lemons 

Score the lamb. Beat the eggs and then mix all the other ingredients. Fill cracks and cover the outside with paste made from above items. Let it sit half an hour. Roast normally. This lamb has a nice crust with flavor that penetrates the meat while it is cooking. Food is a strong carrier of tradition. Families have dishes they hand down. Part of what I cook on the various holidays is what my grandmother cooked before me, learning from her mother. When I eat certain dishes, I am partaking of the lore of my ancestors. When I cook Sephardic or Mizraki, I am sharing in a tradition perhaps older than my family’s Ashkenazi cooking, and I feel joined to those communities of Jews as well as that of my more immediate ancestors. Food sometimes feels like emotion made edible. It is one more way of feeling connected. My grandmother, who thought herself uneducated because she had scanty Hebrew, presided in a moral sense, cooking the meal, fussing, making everything as nice and pretty as she could, but she deferred to whichever son was present to lead the seder. It was all Hebrew so I never understood it until I was much older. My brother was taught Hebrew for his bar mitzvah, but, being a girl, I was not given one and learned no Hebrew until I was saying kaddish for my mother. I began to study Hebrew then and was finally bat mitzvahed at fifty. My grandmother’s gentleman cat, Blackie, always attended the seder, having a chair of his own. He did not, however, read the haggadah. I was not convinced that he could not talk, but I understood that he, like me, had not been taught Hebrew. Learning to read My mother would not teach me to read.Experts in newspapers and pop books said school must receive us virgin.Secrets were locked in those black scribbles on white, magic to open the sky and the earth.In a book I tried to guess from pictures, a mountain had in its side a door through which children ran in after a guy playing a flute dressed all in green, and I too wanted to march into a mountain. When I sat at Grandmother's seder, the book went around and everybody read. I did not make a distinction between languages. Half the words in English were strange to me.I knew when I had learned to read all would be clear, I would know everything that adults knew, and more. Every handle would turn for me. At school I grabbed words like toys I had been denied. Finally I could read, me. I read every sign from the car. On journeys I read maps. I read every cereal box and can, spelling out the hard words. All printing was sacred. At the seder I sat down at the table, self-important, adult on my cushion. I was no longer the youngest child but the smartest. When the hagaddah was to be passed across me, I grabbed it, roaring confidence. But the squiggles, the scratches were back. Not a letter waved to me. I was blinded again. That night I learned about tongues. Grandma explained she herself spoke Yiddish, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian and bad English, little Hebrew. That's okay. I said. I will learn all languages. But I was fifty before I read Hebrew. I no longer expect to master every alphabet before death snatches away everything I know. But they are always beckoning to me those languages still squiggles and noises, like lovers I never had time to enjoy, placesI have never (yet) arrived. I remember the first year I was permitted to light the candles and say the blessings, and how jealous I was when my uncle Danny’s daughter was the youngest at table and read the four questions instead of me. I loved the seders, even though I cannot pretend that as a child, I grasped the meaning. It was the ritual I found beautiful – the formality interspersed with joking and laughter, the shape of the evening, and, of course, being allowed to sip sweet wine four times. I don’t remember much else that Hannah served except that she began with a hard boiled egg and chicken soup. Dessert was macaroons and dates. After my grandmother died, when I was fifteen, the family seders ended. My father wasn’t about to let my mother put one on; he was not Jewish and not religious. In fact, he scorned any religious activities. Over the next few years, I attended seders with various friends – at their houses, one put on by Hillel at college, one with a group of graduate students in Chicago. I even tried to put one together myself with my first husband, but I did not have enough money to buy lamb or beef. Everyone had a little bit of chicken. We mumbled away at a haggadah somebody’s family used, without much resonance. Still, it was better than nothing, which is what I had for years with my second husband. Although he was Jewish, he was in rebellion against all observation. It wasn’t until I was living part time in a commune in Cambridge that I began to take part in seders again. We used a reform haggadah – probably the Maxwell coffee one – and each contributed a dish. I was very happy to share Pesach with them. After I became involved with my present husband, we began to host our own. I met Ira Wood on Pesach. I was in Cambridge Massachusetts staying at my commune. It was afternoon and I was walking down a street behind the Martin Luther King school, going to visit an old friend of mine who lived upstairs in a cheap rental in a decrepit two-story frame house. On the front porch, a young man was standing beating egg whites. My friend had told me that he had become close to the guy living downstairs. Indeed, this man from downstairs seemed to know who I was and introduced himself. He was beating the egg whites in a desultory manner – languid, you might say. We have wondered since what he could have been making. His memory is potato kugel, a strange dish for Pesach but his attempt to create something he remembered from his grandmother’s table. In any event, I could see that he was never going to get the egg whites whipped the way he was going at it. So I took the bowl from him and beat them until they were stiff. In the meantime, we talked. I found him charming. When I went home, I told one of my female friends that I had met a cute and great guy, but he was probably gay. My stereotype. I didn’t know any other men besides gay friends who cooked or would bring something fancy to a seder. So I met the best husband I would or could have in the afternoon just before Erev Pesach. We got involved in June, married six years later in 1982 and have been together ever since. It was a couple years after Ira and I began living full time on Cape Cod that I started to hold the seders here. Over the twenty years since, children have been born, grown up, married and still come. Some of the couples are mixed, and this seder has been their children’s introduction to Judaism. It has sparked an interest that several have pursued. For some of us, it is the only time of year we see each other, and yet over the years, we have come to feel warmly about everyone. Every year, I add or change a little of my on-going haggadah. The poems that are part of many chapters of this book are from my haggadah, with a couple of exceptions like the poem about learning to read. Eventually I expect 90% of the haggadah to be poetry; now it is about 65%. We sit around the table in our small dining room, fifteen of us –sometimes more -- all the room will hold. We are crowded together and anyone getting out of his or her seat has to inconvenience several other people, but everyone seems jolly about the close quarters. After we have finished the haggadah, we sit around the table stuffed and happy and tell jokes. Everyone tries to come up with new jokes for the seder, including the kids. Some of us are great natural comics, but some, like me, cannot remember a joke unless we write it down. I think I have mastered a total of six jokes in my lifetime, and that could be an overestimate. Finally we have coffee and people slowly drift out into the night. Some have a hundred miles to drive; some live nearby. The friend from New Jersey stays over. Now, although my grandmother in some sense presided over the seders of my childhood, the haggadah was always read by one of her sons. Judaism was presented in my childhood as a male activity. Women had a lot of work to do, kitchen work, but men were the real Jews. Women have over the past century been demanding that Judaism speak to us, serve and acknowledge our experiences, our needs, our humanity. If women are truly Jews, then we need a practice that recognizes us -- not one from which we are excluded, exiled. Not one in which our role is only to cook and serve and keep quiet. Not one in which we are included only as pseudo-men. We desire a practice that on every level from its concerns, to its language and structure includes us. You may notice that I avoid the masculine terms for what is eternal and I also try to avoid God language that seems to me to embody patriarchal patterns of thought or ways of viewing what’s holy that infantilize us or cast us into archaic forms of address – like Lord. Often I use Shekinah, the feminine aspect of The Eternal, to remind us that the holy is both masculine and feminine. I will include two items that women have added to the haggadah in the past twenty-five years, the orange on the seder plate and Miriam’s cup, to compliment Eliyahu’s cup. This is not a book in which when I write ‘a Jew,’ you should see in your mind’s eye a man or a boy. If when I write Hashem or The Eternal, you visualize an old man with a white beard, you are in the wrong book. I take the kabbalistic view that what is holy enters into the world in both masculine and feminine aspects, but that when you penetrate through your practice into what is eternal, it is neither male nor female. The concept of God in the traditional haggadah works for very religious Jews, but is off-putting or something we simply ignore for many of us. We may not believe in miracles or a Supreme Being who intervenes in history. We may not believe in a Supreme Being at all. We may believe there’s something eternal, but not a personal god. Whatever we believe, as Jews we need a practice that works for us on Pesach. So welcome to a journey through the items on the seder plate, the other ritual items, the foods we consume, the parts of the haggadah, in an attempt to renew their significance for us, together, at our tables. My intent is to stimulate your practice and make it more resonant, more enjoyable, more engaging, more thoughtful and conscious. Whatever haggadah or haggadahs you use, I hope this book will complement it and enrich your experience of Pesach.

Copyright 2007, Middlemarsh, Inc.