cellio | Entries tagged with pesach

Another family in my congregation invited me for the first seder tomorrow night. It was to be their family, another family, one other individual, and me. This morning they sent email: the host is sick and contagious, and can anybody else host? I offered. The other family wrote back and said they had made alternate plans when they heard about the health situation (I gather that there was prior discussion with hopes that it would pass). The host clarified that they are all presumed contagious and so would be staying home. That left me and the other singleton.

So I sent her email and said hey, I'm game if you are. (Offers of food had been free-flowing, so I wasn't going to have to cook everything at the last minute.) Meanwhile, I checked back with my synagogue to see if anybody needed a place to go at the last minute and also checked with some people whose plans I knew to have been uncertain, but everybody was settled. While waiting for her reply I wondered what I would do if she bailed, and found myself wondering whether I could fulfill my obligation through a second-night seder that starts before sundown (as the one I'm going to will) or what it would be like to read the haggadah alone or whether it was too late to ask the Chabad rabbi for help.

But she was up for it, so fine, we both figured -- we can have a small seder, get to know each other better, and have a grand time. It'll be good.

A few hours later I got a call from another family from the minyan -- they'd heard through the grapevine that I needed a place and would be happy to have me. I said there was another person who would be stranded if I accepted and could she come too? Yes yes, of course. So I accepted for both of us, sent email to tell her what happened and make sure it was ok, and she's happy to accept.

So I went from "sure, I can pull a seder out of thin air; we have food, we have wine, we have haggadot, and we are mighty!" to everything working out. The food I would have taken to the original seder will be welcome at the new one, and plans for the second night are unaffected. Whee!

As I have for a few years, I hosted a Pesach seder this year with the goal of lots of discussion. We had a great group of people this year and it was a big success.

We had eight people, several of whom brought other haggadot to share things from. People asked questions (for which we sometimes pulled reference books off the shelves) and we had lots of great conversation. We also sang lots, which makes me happy. We went for a bit over six hours (including the meal).

I heard some new-to-me melodies, which I haven't necessarily retained but I know whom to ask. Chad Gadya with sound effects -- I'm just sayin'. We sang most of Hallel and I taught a melody for part of the first psalm, which we normally read in English because we didn't have a melody. (So I wrote one, a few years ago. I have a melody for the whole psalm, but I didn't have transliteration available for this psalm and some people needed it, so I didn't want to impose.)

I chose the haggadah I did, despite some archaic language, because not only does it include transliterations of key phrases, but those transliterations are in Sefardi-style Hebrew instead of Ashkenazi. (Sefardi is what comes naturally to me and is used in my congregation.). But there's some stuff that's not transliterated that we sing as a group, so I made a supplementary page with those transliterations. But I need to update it with a couple things for next year, including Psalm 113 so we can sing it.

I made this charoset recipe and it was very successful. It more closely resembled mortar than anything I've ever had based on apples and walnuts, and it was tasty enough that there were almost no leftovers. (I almost halved the recipe because, hey, we were only going to be 8-10 people, but I'm glad I didn't.) I left out the walnuts and increased the almonds and pistachios accordingly, by the way. (I like almonds and pistachios more than I like walnuts.)

I had a couple people coming who don't eat meat (but do eat fish), so rather than making "fake" chicken soup that contains no actual chicken broth, I went looking for interesting alternatives. A search for ginger soup (which I know is a thing and, mmm, ginger) led me to this recipe for green soup with ginger. This took a while to make, and you should definitely use a bigger pot than you think you need so there's room for the greens before they cook down, but wow, that was good! (The recipe says sweet potatoes but shows yams in the photos. I wasn't sure which to use but the decision was made for me: the store didn't have any sweet potatoes when I went shopping. Yams work fine.)

During the first part of the seder I put out snacks (so hunger and spending time on the haggadah wouldn't be in conflict). I put out raw vegetables, dates, and almonds, and a guest brought an eggplant dip. We began the meal with hard-boiled eggs as is traditional. Besides the soup, we also had gefilte fish (brought by a guest), baked herbed chicken, roasted small potatoes, and roasted vegatables. A guest brought fruit salad for dessert, another brought candy, and we had macaroons.

I had to quickly wash the plates we used for the ritual items during the reading of the haggadah so we could use them for dessert; I need to figure out a better solution next year. (Possibly nice disposable plates for one or the other.) We didn't just use the dinner plates because we weren't sitting at the dining-room table the entire time; I learned from my friend Lee Gold the custom of starting in the living room where you have comfortable chairs/couches, so people don't feel rushed by butt-numbing furniture. We gathered around the coffee table, which required small plates. (Obviously this only works if you don't have so many people that you're using all available space for dinner tables. I have the luxury of enough room to use two seating areas, at our current size.)

Last night, as has become traditional (three times makes a tradition, right?), I held a second-night Pesach seder that I bill as the "it takes as long as it takes; you had lunch, right?" seder. In other words, the goal is plenty of good discussion, tangents welcome, and we'll get to the meal when we get there and meanwhile I'll put out some snacks.

We were five this year, having lost a couple people at the last minute. Our group included our new associate rabbi and another minyan member joining us for the first time; the others have been to this before. I asked everybody to bring something to share -- something from another haggadah, other readings or teachings, new songs, etc -- and, of course, plenty of questions.

We had a blast! We left few tangents unexplored, and I saw some haggadot that were new to me and interesting. (When people have a chance to answer the email I just sent, I'll update this post with specifics.) I heard some new songs (learning will take more than the one hearing, but now I know about them), and it turned out that some of the melodies I know were new to some others. And I take it as a good sign when a discussion about torah text gets to the point where somebody says "do you have a BDB" (a standard lexicon) or "pass the Jastrow" (dictionary of Aramaic terms). Why yes, we were taking apart grammar on the spot to answer niggling questions.

Here's a thing that only registered for me this year, despite using this same haggadah for three years now: you know that part at the beginning of Magid (the story) where many haggadot say "My father was a wandering Aramean"? Our haggadah (Silverman 2013) says "An Aramean sought to destroy my father". !!! The latter understanding is Rashi's (we learned), reading oved (wandering) instead as ibed (destroyed). That raised some eyebrows over grammar, and it turns out it does with Ibn Ezra too, who opts for the "wandering" version. Huh, interesting. Tonight I found an article at My Jewish Learning that talks about this.

I didn't notice exactly when we started, but it was about three hours until we got to the meal. To make that possible and not butt-numbing, I continued something I learned from Lee Gold: do the pre-meal part in the living room on the comfy chairs. We're supposed to be able to recline in comfort during this part; if space permits, I've found it helpful to actually do that. This wouldn't work with a large group, but with a large group we probably wouldn't be able to have this kind of discussion and interaction anyway.

Dinner conversation was enjoyable and wide-ranging, and then we went back to the living room for the after-meal parts, including a pretty rousing Hallel. It turns out we all like Hallel. :-)

I was able to share some things from "Hagada - Mi Yodeya?", and I sent everybody home with a copy. (You can download yours here.)

Food notes: During the earlier part, in addition to the ritual foods, I put out raw vaggies and almonds to munch on. Dinner was: (hard-boiled eggs,) ginger-coconut soup (with assorted veggies), gefilte fish, baked chicken with rosemary and sage, roasted red peppers stuffed with butternut squash and sweet onions, roasted small potatoes (golden and red) with sea salt, green salad with fruit (brought by a guest), and assorted desserts including cookies brought by a guest. (I was a wizard of multi-tasking on Friday!) For those wondering about the soup: everybody is presumed to have had chicken soup with matzah balls the previous night and one guest is a vegetarian, so I wanted something non-meat and didn't want to just use something that came in a box. I saw this soup recipe in a newspaper recently (it was a fish soup but I adapted it) and decided to make that.

Three years ago, we at Mi Yodeya put out our first publication, a Hagada supplement full of questions and answers related to the Passover seder, hand-picked from the thousands of great Jewish Q&As at Mi Yodeya. Seders around the world were enlivened, thanks to people bringing printouts of this booklet.

Today, for Passover 5776, we are proud to present a second edition, significantly expanded and improved. With eleven additional Q&As, "Hagada - Mi Yodeya?" now covers every step of the seder, from preparation (how can I make an engaging seder?) to the closing songs (why does Echad Mi Yodeya stop at 13?). It includes questions of theology and philosophy (did hardening Paro's heart mean he wasn't really responsible?), practical questions (what do you do with the wine in Eliyahu's cup?), and other things you might have wondered about (is two zuzim a lot of money for a kid goat? how much is a zuz anyway?).

You can download the new edition at http://s.tk/miyodeya. Please download, enjoy, and share! I'll have copies at my seder; perhaps you will at yours too?

One of the dishes I made for my seder got compliments from everybody (and requests for how I did it), and it was incredibly easy. I wasn't expecting it to be one of the stars of the night. So, to share this discovery with others:

Vegetable-stuffed peppers

Dice a large sweet onion (next time I'll use more) and cube about a pound of butternut squash (~half-inch cubes), mix in enough olive oil to coat, spread in a pan, and roast at 400 for about half an hour (stirring a couple times in there). Meanwhile, cut four red peppers¹ in half, removing the stems, seeds, and white vein-like stuff. Ideally you will have selected peppers that are square-ish in shape, such that when you set the halves in a pan they'll stay put rather than tipping over. Fill the peppers with the cooked onion-squash mixture, add a bit of water to the pan (I find this helps prevent the peppers from burning), and put back in the oven until done (maybe another 20 minutes, though definitions of "done" vary). The onions on top should be caramelized and everything should be tender.

That's it. I didn't even season it before cooking, and it turns out I didn't need to.

I cooked this the day before and it went onto a hot plate during the early part of the seder.

At other times of year I might add rice to the mixture, particularly of the multi-colored-mixture variety. There were going to be other starches, so I didn't add farfel.

¹ Yellow or orange peppers would work taste-wise, but the colors are prettier with red ones (with the orange squash and the light-yellow onion). Green peppers are never an option in my kitchen, but I also think they'd be too bitter in this combination even for people who like them otherwise.

stuffed peppers

Tuesday night I had assorted friends over for an all-adults, talk-as-long-as-we-want seder. I thought it went quite well. There were ten of us (planned to be eleven but somebody stayed home sick, alas).

As we did last year, we had the first part in the living room -- if we're reclining in comfort, why not use the comfy chairs? (I think, but am not certain, that I have Lee Gold to thank for this idea.) The haggadah I use (Silverman, revised/enhanced) has transliteration for many of the key parts -- part of why I chose it, for accessibility -- but not all of them, so I made a supplementary sheet with the rest of what we'd need. With luck I got everything this year that I had missed last year; it's an iterative process. People were good sports about faking their way through unfamiliar melodies, and I got to hear one or two new ones from others. (When you bring diverse people together you don't all have the same traditions, which is cool because we can learn from each other but can leave people feeling a little off-kilter while they get used to it.)

Somebody brought the Velveteen Rabbi's haggadah and shared some readings from it. Note to self: go download that. One thing in particular that I want to pick up for future years: as pointed out by one of my guests, the haggadah spends more time recalling discussions of the exodus than the exodus itself; we don't read from the book of Exodus, for example. The VR haggadah has a nice engaging summary that we inserted into the magid to good effect.

Note to self: get more grape juice next year! Last year we only used one bottle and this year I bought two (had a couple more people); three would have been better. Also, it's worth it to get the nice bottled sparkling grape juice, not the stuff from the juice section of the grocery store.

We went for about 2.5 hours before the meal, I think, with lots of good conversation. The meal was pleasant and we did the rest of the haggadah and sang some of the songs after.

Note to self: get a different, or additional, folding table for next year. There was no good way to seat 11 people with the tables and chairs I had; I set up something that I thought would work but people rearranged while I was getting the soup ready, so I guess it didn't. Since we only had 10 they were able to make that work. But I don't want my furniture to limit my guests in the future. (When the dishes start to limit the guests I'll just get more or use plastic or something.)

I'm glad my friends were able to be part of this, and I'm glad Dani was there this year.

Monday night I went to Chabad for the first seder. This was new for me; the only other community seder I've been to was a university Hillel, and the only other time I've been to anything Chabad was a Shabbat dinner when traveling once. The people there were nice, and it turned out I knew one person at my table, someone who was in that class I took last year.

Unanticipated (but if I'd thought about it...): a community seder draws people who don't have anywhere else to go, which includes people who aren't otherwise very Jewishly involved. (So it's great that somebody is there for them.) Being asked to teach somebody the blessing for candle-lighting came as a surprise to me. (She was very nice, and at my table. Later I taught her the blessing for hand-washing.)

Halachically speaking there is a minimum amount of matzah you have to eat and a minimum amount of wine (or grape juice) to drink. Handing out maatzah in pre-measured bags makes sense in retrospect, but I was surprised by it at the time.

Acoustics in a large room with children running around making noise where the leader can't use a microphone are challenging. I hope the poor rabbi had a voice left the next morning.

Noted in passing: Chabad doesn't do matzah balls. (I don't know if that's "at all" or "at the seder". I think the former, and that this is something called gerbrokts.)

Interesting logistics: they gave us a small meal (which they called a "snack") before the seder got started, which was after 8PM. We probably got to the meal around 9:15 or 9:30, which I don't think of as terribly late, but people with kids may have a different view. (In a similar vein, both last year and this I put out munchies -- raw veggies, pickles, etc -- during the first part of my seder, so people would have more than a sprig of parsley before the meal.)

Contrary to what I've heard about the length of Chabad seders, we were finished before 11.

Pesach starts tomorrow night. The kitchen is ready and the grocery shopping is done. I'll be going to Chabad for the first seder Monday night (definitely a new experience for me!), and hosting one for friends on the second night -- this year with guest appearance by Dani. :-) (We were just in Toronto a week ago for a wedding celebration, and he decided he wasn't going to go up there again this week. He doesn't want to join me at Chabad and we didn't receive any other invitations, but he'll be with us on the second night.)

Chag sameach to those who celebrate, and happy mid-April to the rest of you. USians, don't forget to file those taxes...

I forgot to mention this in my Pesach entry. Because, for my seder, we had a small-enough crowd, I was able to implement an idea that I heard once but have never seen. In the first part of the seder we are supposed to recline -- symbolically in a few places, but, as the haggadah answers, this is because we are no longer slaves and therefore are at leisure to recline, talk, nibble on food, and otherwise take it easy.

So we did the first (almost) three hours in the living room, on couches and comfy chairs and with pillows. This is more comfortable by far than sitting at a dining-room table. I am pleased with how that worked out.

I think I heard this idea, ~15 years ago, from Lee Gold, but I am not certain.

I had two excellent seders this year -- a first!

Monday night I was privileged to be invited to my rabbi's seder. (I have been wanting to experience that for years.) He and his wife hosted about 25 people, a mix of family and congregants with a strong personal connection to them. In addition to the main haggadah that they always use, they had copies of another haggadah with a lot of interesting supplementary readings (A Night to Remember, edited by Noam Zion and Mishael Zion); they had chosen certain readings from this book and assigned them to different guests to read. The assignments were thoughtful, fitting the interests of the individual readers well; this was no random doling-out of parts. We some good questions and discussions during the reading of the haggadah, and more over dinner in smaller groups. It was easily the most fulfilling seder I've ever been to (and I'm not even talking about the excellent food :-) ).

And I've now seen and tasted shmurah matzah, by accident. All matzah that you can buy in the usual boxes is kosher for Pesach, but some observe an extra stringency. "Shmurah" means "guarded", and the idea is that this matzah was continuously watched by Jews from (if I understand correctly) the time the wheat seeds were planted until the time the hand-baked matzah comes out of the oven. This year the stuff cost about ten times the price of the usual matzah. My rabbi was in the store picking up a few extra bottles of wine on Monday morning and I guess they were having trouble selling it at that price: the proprietor just told him to take some, so he did (enough for the ritual three matzot at the seder). All matzah pretty much tastes like the cardboard box it comes in, but the shmurah matzah tastes like, I don't know, a different grade of cardboard.

Tuesday night I held a seder. There were some last-minute changes in attendance -- half of one couple got sick, the person who was going to drive in from New Jersey based on my posts on this journal (!) couldn't make it in the end, but someone who had initially declined was able to come after all, and the person who had emergency dental surgery that afternoon (ouch) made it and wasn't too loopy from drugs. We were eight in all -- a good size for what we were trying to do, and of course plans were flexible. After all, we say "let all who are hungry come and eat", so there's always the possibility that someone will, y'know?

We had great conversations. I asked everybody to come with questions and/or supplementary readings they wanted to share, and we did not lack for things to talk about. I had copies of Hagada Mi Yodeya? and one of A Night to Remember, someone brought copies of an "atheist" haggadah, someone brought some writings from the Velveteen Rabbi, other people brought other books whose titles I didn't note... and oh yeah, there was a copy of the Santa Cruz Haggadah (very "hippie" in feel) that provided a lot of amusement, particularly with its illustrations. We asked questions, answered many but not all of them, compared translations, talked theology and philosophy (did the exodus really happen as written in the torah? If not, does that matter?), and had a jolly time. It was almost three hours until we got to the meal! (I had pitched this seder in part as "we don't care how late it runs", but I had no idea what would actually happen.)

We did lots of singing, and (possibly for the first time in my experience) actually sang through all the verses of Echad Mi Yodeya instead of singing the first two and then jumping to the end. (It's a counting song, so each verse adds one new line and repeats the rest, but I found I enjoyed the repetition, and it gave the people who were less comfortable with rattling off the Hebrew a chance to get it.) Somebody asked why the song stops at 13 and not at some other number; this made me chuckle because one of the running "things" on Mi Yodeya is to continue the questions -- it's up to, I think, "who knows 314?" right now. But since 13 are the attributes of God, that's a pretty good place to stop.

We definitely have to do this again.

I had some vegetarian guests at my Pesach seder, so I was looking for something to prepare for a veggie main dish that's kosher for Pesach (duh), can be made ahead (seder logistics), and is also attractive -- a festive dish for a festive meal, in other words. Isaac Moses on Mi Yodeya pointed me to a "veggieducken" recipe created by somebody who had a similar problem for Thanksgiving. The recipe was easy to tweak to make it kosher for Pesach, so I decided to make that.

My adaptation (with commentary):

( Read more... )

I did a better job than usual of eating up the chameitz before Pesach, so there was not that much to pack away and sell. The dishwasher is running the last few days' worth of regular dishes; the kitchen is otherwise turned over, and I am about to sit down with the TV, a couple of cats, and the last bottle of beer from the fridge. This afternoon I did a big load of shopping (with lots of fresh produce to offset the matzah). Tomorrow I will go out for lunch. Then, prep for two seders -- guest at one, host for the other, and I'm looking forward very much to both.

Season of our freedom, here I come! :-) Chag sameach to those who celebrate, happy Easter week to my Christian friends, and happy spring (cough, snow?, cough) to everybody else.

I am thrilled to announce the publication of Mi Yodeya's haggadah supplement! At the Pesach seder we are supposed to ask questions (about the exodus from Egypt and about the rituals of the seder, and anything else that comes up along the way). Mi Yodeya, a top-notch Jewish Q&A site (if I do say so myself :-) ), is all about questions. So we compiled some of ours that are on-topic for the seder into a book, a supplement to the haggadah. I hope you'll download a copy for possible use at your own seder (or just to read) and that you'll tell all your friends.

Go to http://s.tk/miyodeya for more info and a download link.

This is how Internet time works.

Late Tuesday night, somebody made the following observation in the Mi Yodeya chat room: hey, the text of the Pesach haggadah is freely available in digital format, a key element of the seder is asking questions, we're all about asking and answering questions, and we've got a lot of good Pesach-related content...so why not publish a haggadah with material drawn from our site? Reality set in soon thereafter and the proposal was amended to: why don't we publish a haggadah supplement this year, as a free PDF download that people can print and take to their sedarim?

The real discussion started on Wednesday, with people posting lots of suggestions, voting positively, and volunteering to help. Someone asked how we were going to organize the content since some copy-editing, filtering, reformatting, and whatnot would be needed and we'd need a template and... and I said leave that to me. (Organizing multi-author writing projects on tight deadlines? Been there, done that. :-) ) So I proposed a format that could be easily transformed to the final product, mocked up a couple questions as proof of concept, and got buy-in. We were, by this point, collecting links for questions to harvest, and somebody collected a list of useful tags to search for questions. I said I hoped we could ask our site's designer to design a cover page for us. Style and review guidelines were suggested somewhere in here. I started planning the formal call for submissions and its logistics.

Today Stack Exchange's lead designer showed up saying he has permission to do our design and production for us if we can give him the content. Awesome! And he can work quickly. I never would have thought we would get that kind of support (and asking for it had not been on my radar). So tonight I posted the call for submissions with detailed instructions (designed to make this as easy as possible for everybody), and off we go.

I'm excited because not only is this a cool project, but I can personally benefit from it this year. I'm not going to Toronto with Dani, and if I can round up enough interested people I'll be holding my own seder on the second night for adults who want to engage with the text and who don't care how long that takes. In other words, I'm aiming for the opposite of the "when do we eat?" seder.

I will, of course, share a link to the results later. Meanwhile, if you have any burning questions about Pesach this would be an excellent time to ask them, and if you're somewhat knowledgeable in this area and inclined to do some editing, drop on by. :-)

Recently some local congregations have been banding together for yom tov services. Friday's service for the last day of Pesach was pretty unsatisfactory in a lot of ways, but in this post I'm going to write about just one practice, something I have seen in other congregations too and that needs to end.

Most blessings begin with a six-word formula, followed by the text that varies. The morning service contains a bunch of these, thanking God for making us free, lifting up the fallen, giving strength to the weary, and more. (There are 15 of these in a row.) The congregation says these together. In Friday's service, the leader decreed that the congregation would chant these in "Hebrish" -- first six words in Hebrew, then chanting the varying part in English.

I previously wrote about the horror that is chanted English prayer. This isn't that. This "Hebrish" practice, I've been told when I've asked, is motivated by a desire for inclusion: people don't know the Hebrew, the reasoning goes, so this makes prayer more accessible. Sounds admirable, right? But it's misguided and, dare I say, harmful. First off, the transliteration is right there in the siddur next to the Hebrew, precisely to make the Hebrew more accessible. But, more fundamentally, this practice serves to keep people down. How are they ever to learn the Hebrew if we never do it? Are we supposed to settle for the current state and never move past it? How would I have become proficient in the Hebrew prayers if, when I was trying to grow, my congregation had kept me on the English?

The Rambam (Maimonides) famously taught that the highest level of tzedakah (charity, loosely) is to help a poor person to get a job, rather than to give him money. Giving him money sustains him for a time; getting him a job helps him break out of the clutches of poverty (we hope). The Reform movement holds this up as a key value, even placing it in the section of the siddur where we study torah in the morning. Why, then, do we refuse to apply that same principle to those who are poor in knowledge? Why is it better to give them the handout of English prayer instead of helping them to pray in Hebrew?

In the past I have remained silent to avoid the appearance of challenging our leaders. I have tried and failed to persuade leaders who do this to reconsider. Friday, when they announced this and started into those prayers, I said to myself quietly "no more" and proceeded to chant the prayers in Hebrew. The long-time member of my congregation sitting next to me said "good for you!" and joined me. We were not disruptive, but I have high hopes that maybe, next time, he'll be sitting next to someone else and he too will say "no more" and forge ahead, and maybe someone sitting next to him will follow. And maybe, eventually, we'll be able to help people break out of the bonds of illiteracy, instead of continuing to keep them down by catering to their current weaknesses. We've just celebrated z'man cheruteinu, the season of our freedom, and it is time to apply that to our people now and not just looking back at Mitzrayim.

If reading the Hebrew text directly is too challenging for some, the transliteration is readily available. Or they could quietly read the English the way I quietly read the Hebrew. (I do that when I'm at services that are above my level, like last week at Village Shul.) But let's stop telling our congregants that they're too uneducated to handle the Hebrew; that only serves to reinforce the idea until they no longer want to try.

We were in Toronto for the first days of Pesach. I had previously had an excellent experience at Beit HaMinyan (not just the one, but that's the one I wrote about), so I was looking forward to going there for Shabbat/Pesach morning. I checked their web site before leaving Pittsburgh to make sure they were in the same place; thus reassured, I went there Saturday morning to...an empty, locked building. They're very friendly and welcoming when they're there, but maybe not so great at updating their web site. Bummer. :-(

So I fell back to the Village Shul (Aish HaTorah), a place I'd been once before. This time, as last, I found them to be not too welcoming; this time I knew where to go in the building so the indifferent man standing at the entrance didn't hinder me, but nor did he respond to my greeting. At the kiddush (which was a standing-around affair this time, not a sit-down one), not a single person greeted me, even when I made eye contact. It can be hard for me to approach random people and start conversations; I greeted some and usually got responses but no one engaged. I don't know what (if anything) I was doing wrong; I think it was fairly obvious that I wasn't a regular, but I wasn't inappropriate in any way I could determine.

But all that said, I'm very glad I went for one reason: Tal.

Ok, I need to back up. T'filat Tal, aka the prayer for dew, is said exactly once during the year, on the morning of Pesach, in the musaf service. I had never heard it before. The Reform movement doesn't do musaf and didn't import that part into another part of the service (like is done with some other parts), and when we're in Toronto I don't always make it to Yom Tov services (but I insist on Shabbat). It's possible that I was at a Conservative service for Pesach once, and if so either they didn't do it or they didn't do anything special with it and I didn't notice.

So, this is either the first time I've encountered this prayer or the first time it registered. And it did in fact register. A resonant text (which I am unable to find online, help?), a beautiful and fitting melody (which I can't find a good version of online), and just the right amount of congregational engagement (a few words sung together at the end of each stanza) all came together into a heartfelt but not over-the-top prayer that felt entirely right to me. Wow.

And I think it needs all of those. As I said, the Reform movement doesn't do this text -- but let me predict how it would go down if we did. Because it's unfamiliar and people can't be assumed to be fluent, we would read (not sing) it, in English. Perhaps responsively, alternating stanzas. And it would fall completely flat, done that way. I'm not fluent and I'd never seen this text before either, but I listened to it in Hebrew while reading the English translation, and that worked. If I didn't need the translation then that'd be even better, but the text I read and the text I hear don't need to be the same language and that's just fine. Alas, mine seems to be a small-minority position in my movement, so I will probably not get the opportunity to experience this prayer in that setting, which makes me sad.

( some service anthropology )

We were in Toronto for a few days. We spent some time with Dani's family, helped an outlaw (spouse of an inlaw) buy a computer, saw a show I might review later (Billy Elliot), visited a textile museum, and went to the two seders. This post is mostly about the seders.

But first: on the way up it rained the whole way, except that it was sunny in Erie. That's just Wrong. Bad weather is centered in Erie; it's one of the laws of the universe. :-)

( seders )

We experienced good hospitality on this trip. My sister-in-law and her husband have always been happy to have us, and this year I found that they had laid in a supply of Diet Coke in anticipation. :-) ("Um, we couldn't remember if you take it with caffeine..." "Caffeine is the point of the exercise." "Oh good, we got it right.") My mother-in-law went to the effort to procure kosher meat for me (no one else cares), which was a nice surprise. The hosts of the first seder, about whom I didn't have clear memories from their previous turn, were gracious and easy-going even with 20+ people invading their home. :-)

We saw something interesting in their home, by the way. They had recently returned from travel overseas (I didn't catch where) and had brought back a painting. It was a reasonable journeyman-grade picture of a vase of flowers -- unremarkable, until you learn that it was painted by an elephant. :-) They told us that they had a painting done by an elephant and I was imagining abstract art, but no -- somebody has trained some elephants to do specific classes of paintings. (Different elephants did different ones, as I understand it.) They watched their painting being painted. (A human has to dip the brush in the paint and put it in the elephant's trunk.) "Their" elephant is four years old, which led to the expected comments about child labor.

(I'm home now and won't be catching up on a week and a half's worth of LJ. If there's something I should see, please tell me.)
( Read more... )

Pesach has been going well. Tonight/tomorrow is the last day, which is a holiday like the first day was. Yesterday Rabbi Symons led a beit midrash on the "pour out your wrath" part of the haggadah; more about that later, but it led me to a new-to-me haggadah that so far I'm liking a lot. (I borrowed a copy after the beit midrash.) When I lead my own seder (two years from mow, I'm guessing?) the odds are good that it will be with this one.

Tangentially-related: a short discussion of overly-pediatric seders.

Same season, different religion: researchers have found that portion sizes in depictions of the last supper have been rising for a millennium, though I note the absence of an art historian on the research team.

Same season, no religion: I won't repeat most of the links that were circulating on April 1, but I haven't seen these new Java annotations around much. Probably only amusing to programmers, but very amusing to this one.

Not an April-fool's prank: xiphias is planning a response to the Tea Party rally on Boston Common on April 14: he's holding a tea party. You know, with fine china and actual tea and people wearing their Sunday (well, Wednesday) best. It sounds like fun.

Edit (almost forgot!): things I learned from British folk songs.

From nancylebov: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality looks like it'll be a good read. Or, as siderea put it, Richard Feynman goes to Hogwarts.

Real Live Preacher's account of a Quaker meeting.

Thanks to jducoeur for a pointer to this meta community over on Dreamwidth.

I remember reading a blog post somewhere about someone who rigged up a camera to find out what his cat did all day. Now someone is selling that. Tempting!

In case you're being too productive, let me help with this cute flash game (link from Dani).

Friends from my congregation invited me to their chavurah's seder Monday night. There were about 50 people there (largest group they've ever had). I hadn't known in advance that my friend would be leading it, so that was a nice touch. It was a warm, friendly seder, complete enough to be satisfying and expedient enough that the kids present weren't getting too antsy. There wasn't as much singing as I'd expected, but what there was was enthusiastic. It was a good experience.

New insight (reported by my friend, attributed to Rabbi Symons): we can view the four sons as the filling-out of a matrix (ok, he didn't say matrix) of wisdom and piety. The quiet son has neither. The simple one has piety but not wisdom. The rasha (evil son) has wisdom and no piety (he uses his wisdom to rebel). The wise son has both. The rabbis tend to do this sort of 2x2 mapping of attributes to types of Jews, so this is in that spirit.

For the first time (or maybe second?) our congregation offered to match people looking for seders with people who could take guests. (Before that everyone asked the rabbi, I think.) Matching for the first night was very successful. I requested a seder for the second night but it didn't happen -- but I didn't know that early enough to do something about it. So sigh. A second seder isn't necessary for me, but it's nice to do if I can, particularly if it's different in some way from the first. Someone asked on a mailing list tonight why Reform Jews would have second-night seders; what I wrote was: the first seder is to fulfill external obligations -- to God, to family, to those who can't/won't handle some of the content, etc.; the second seder is to fulfill internal obligations -- study, spiritual growth, etc. So next time I'm at home for Pesach I plan to hold my own second-night seder; it sounds like enough of my friends don't go to one regularly that they'd possibly be available to come to mine. (Whether they'd want to come is an open question, but it can't be answered now anyway so why worry?) I think next year we're going to Toronto, though, so probably not for two years.

Morning services on Tuesday went well. The crowd was smaller than it will be next week (seventh day) for Yizkor. Usually my rabbi asks me to read part of the holiday megillah (Song of Songs, for Pesach); I'm lousy at reading poetry, particularly translated poetry, so I'm glad he asked others to do so instead. (I'm always happy to read from Ruth or Kohelet.) Instead he gave me an aliya, which was nice -- I so rarely get to hear my Hebrew name used!

Foodies: my favorite brisket is made in a pan on the stove in tomato sauce and spices. (Simmer two hours, slice thinly against grain, simmer two more hours.) I don't have a suitable kosher-for-Pesach pan. Google suggests that I can cook a brisket in sauce in the oven to good effect; I would welcome specific suggestions that work well for you. The oven-cooked briskets I've had have been closer to the "roast + gravy" model than the "barbecue beef" model -- also good, but not the effect I'm looking for this time.

Omer: day 2. Haven't forgotten yet. :-)

(Gentile) coworker: When we realized that the pot-luck dinner was during Pesach, we decided to try our best to accommodate the Jewish attendees. So we kashered the oven, boiled the utensils, used a foil pan, etc... but I didn't kasher the drill bit.

Drill bit?

Spade bit, he said -- for coring the pears.

Some of you guys probably sigh when software geeks like me go off on something. What makes software geeks sigh? Hardware geeks. :-)

(Ok, ok -- it's clever, and he says you can do a dozen pears or apples in under a minute so it's efficient for large-scale prep. I suppose if I happened to have a drill lying around in my kitchen...)

Another coworker caught the last part of this and asked if wood is kosher. (That being the only substance the bit had been in contact with.) I said it's a plant, so I guess so.

(Yes, I know -- none of this addresses whether the drill bit -- or anything else in this story -- has been to a mikveh.)

* * *

Someone: Is there a market for kosher-for-Pesach pet food?

Me: Surely. But I handle the problem a different way. The food belongs to the cats, who are not Jewish.

Someone: You sold the food to the cats?

Me: No, they aren't valid buyers. I gave it to them.

* * *

Me to guest for Wednesday lunch: Any food allergies?

Guest: I can't eat gluten -- bread, noodles, oats...

Me: So this is pretty much the perfect time for me to invite you?

(I didn't ask what she does about the matzah that must be eaten at the seder.)

lefkowitzga and her family invited me to their seder Wednesday night. I'm really glad; it was a wonderful experience. We did most of the haggadah, we sang, we had stimulating conversation, there was excellent food... what more could one ask?

Gail, her parents, one other participant, and I had a meeting in advance to go over the haggadah, decide what would be sung and to which melodies, assign some roles, and so on. They were very open to doing parts I suggested that they don't normally do, and I think people enjoyed it. (It's important to me, but I certainly don't want to be a burden at someone else's seder.) So we did more of Hallel than usual, and we sang some other parts that usually just get read, and it was fun. We used the generically-named "Haggadah for Pesach" published by the CCAR in the 80s; I gather it's now been superseded, but this one worked well for us. And it has the benefit of having sheet music in the back, though not always the sheet music as we know it. :-) (They can't win: they can do the kindness of providing the assistance, but any printed version cannot account for the folk process.)

We had 16 adults and one child too young to ask the four questions. The teenager present didn't want to sing them, so we sang them as a group and he read the English. A few people brought supplemantary articles, poems, or teachings. One person brought a nifty set of illustrations on "Chad Gadya" from early last century, done by some famous artist (sorry, I'm not up on my famous artists) who was a contemporary of Chagall, if I'm not mixing up my references.

The only people I knew in advance were Gail, her parents, and (minimally) the other person who'd been at the meeting, but due to fortunate seating assignments that were surely intentional, I got to know some other folks by the end (and got to know that other person from the meeting better).

I gather that the seder ran a little longer than they're used to, though only some of that was the extra bits we added. More was the schmoozing, I think, and since schmoozing is a sign of a successful gathering, why fret? We started around 6:30 and I think I left around 11:15.

Thursday I had three guests for lunch, which was fun. (Tried for a few more but ran into conflicts. One couple will come on the last day of the holiday instead. I hadn't been planning for guests for that day, but now that I have some I will invite some more.)

Menu from lunch: chicken in a tomato sauce (with oregano, garlic, pepper), roasted veggies & potatoes (white, gold, red-skinned, sweet; plus carrots and onions), roasted asparagus, fruit salad, and these semi-cookie semi-candy toffee-like things I bought on a lark (never seen 'em before) that turned out to be a huge hit. Someday I will learn to make vegetable kugel, but this wasn't the day. (I figured people might be too loaded up on matzah to want farfel or the like.)

Tuesday I had received an invitation from a neighbor and former coworker to a second-night seder, but Thursday afternoon he called to say that his wife had injured herself and they'd decided against doing it. I hope she's feeling better soon. Some other time, then. (She edits her own haggadah every year and I enjoy reading siddurim, haggadot, and other liturgical materials. That's how I ended up with an invitation. I assume she'll save this one for next year.)

I didn't try to find another seder for last night; I don't observe a second day of the holiday so it's not necessary, and while I would like to broaden my experiences (I go to other synagogues sometimes too, just to see how other folks do it), walking around Squirrel Hill knocking on doors really wasn't appropriate. If I'd been seder-less on the first night, sure, but not for this. (Aside: most people who would hold a second seder also wouldn't answer the phone on a holiday.)

Shabbat will be quiet (no guests, no invitations). I'm leading services tonight, and there's no bar mitzvah tomorrow so our morning service can be leisurely.

Let me sing the praises of the disposable foil pan. Yes, it's wasteful, bad for the environment, etc; I get that. But because of disposable foil pans, there is an entire category of cookware that I do not have to have a duplicate set of for one week a year. That means I'm not shlepping heavy casseroles and roaster pans up and down the basement steps, storing them, etc. It is a marvelous thing to be able to cook for a dozen or more people without maintaining all the extra items I would otherwise need.

But alas, all is not perfect.

Dear manufacturer: I have certain expectations of even disposable cookware. I expect a pan called a "roaster" to be able to hold the weight of a roast, for instance. My pan of root veggies weighs considerably less than a roast, and is more distributed across the pan. And roasters, of course, should be able to handle fat -- juices from meat or, in my case, the oil poured over the veggies.

Your loss of structural integrity while I was rotating the pan was not welcome on this particular night. I already cleaned the oven once. :-( Yes yes, I know -- my oven sucks, and if I replaced it with a modern one maybe I wouldn't have to rotate my pans so things cook evenly. But, oh maker of the foil cookware, that should be my call, not yours.

Oh well. The oven is clean (again), maybe not as clean as the first time but good enough. Hey, it's not smoking. And my veggies are once again on their way.

The morning minyan has a particular person who always leads Hallel when it's included in the service (certain holiday seasons plus Rosh Chodesh, the first day(s) of every month). I lead the service on Thursdays, but if it's a Hallel day I turn it over to him at that point. A couple months ago he said "you need to start doing this"; I replied that I didn't want to usurp his role; he replied that I would do it next time. (Ok.) "Next time" is this Thursday, Rosh Chodesh Nissan. So I just ran through it; I'm comfortable with most of it, am unsure what melody to use in one place, and just plain don't know the melody he uses in one short place, but the world won't end if I just read that (and maybe I can get a quickie refresher before the service starts). Now, to see how this plan survives contact with the minyan. :-)

Err, yes, that does mean that Pesach is just over two weeks away. I'm looking forward to a seder with friends and singing. I should decide soon if I'm going to try to do something for the second night. (I don't hold it to be necessary, but it would be a learning opportunity. Hmm.)

Last week I co-led a workshop at my synagogue on a topic in prayer (the sh'ma and its blessings). Turnout was small and I felt kind of off the whole time, even though we prepared and I practiced. (The other person is a professional educator; I have no idea if she practiced, but if she didn't it didn't show.) I've received positive feedback from people who were there, but I still have the sense that I don't really know how to facilitate a discussion or teach an intimate class, though I'm a fine participant in either. (I don't know that I know how to present a lecture either, but I think I'd be on firmer ground -- but that's not what was called for here.) I'm not sure what to do about this -- the obvious answers being to teach more or teach less. (I'm leaning toward the latter but feeling like a bit of a coward for that leaning.)

Learning talmud with my rabbi and midrash with another of our rabbis continues to be quite nifty and engaging. For all that I can be nervous in a classroom (particularly if someone with superior knowledge is present), I really enjoy and hold my own in one-on-one study with people whose knowledge is vastly superior to mine. I wonder why that works like that. Sure, a lot of the comfort in one case comes from having studied with my rabbi (in various capacities) for more than ten years (!), but the other one is much newer so it's not just that. (I also wonder at what point I have the obligation to be the person with superior knowledge for someone else in a one-on-one setting.)

A previous entry has spawned a discussion in comments that I want to call out, because two days is forever in blog time and I have some readers who might be interested.

The magid (in many ways the main part of the Pesach haggadah) begins with the following declaration: "This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry -- let him come and eat. Whoever is needy -- let him come and celebrate Pesach!" (This is known as "ha lachma anya", for the opening words -- which are in Aramaic, the then-common tongue, so that they would be understood.)

I, and most liberal Jews I know, interpret this pretty broadly; we would invite a Jew or a gentile who expressed interest. Some traditional readings say this applies to a Jew only, pointing out that "come and celebrate Pesach" was originally about joining in the korban (animal sacrifice), which is only applicable to Jews. But (as someone pointed out else-thread), you must include your servants under most circumstances, even if they're non-Jews, so clearly there is some room for interpretation here.

I have a lot of readers who are learned in such matters, so I pose the question to you: whom do you feel obligated to include per "ha lachma anya", and who else would you include anyway? What are the issues?

Personally, I would include anyone who asked out of apparent sincerity, Jewish or not. I don't really care if the person is a seeker exploring Judaism or just curious; if he wants to learn enough to show up, he's welcome. The only bar would be to someone who has made it clear that his goal is to harrass, or who somehow poses a serious threat to me or my other guests. (That's hypothetical, but I include it for the sake of completeness.)

I am also mindful that I was that outsider once, that then-gentile who crashed a seder at the last minute because I realized it mattered. So there's some amount of "pay it forward" in my reaction, but it's not just that. I want to be the kind of person who says "of course; we'll just add a chair to the table", and the kind of person who is approachable in matters of religion.

Monica

always mount a scratch seder

seder

some seder notes

"Hagada - Mi Yodeya?", second edition!

culinary note: effort << results

seder #2

seder #1

Pesach

a small Pesach note

seders

"veggieducken"

Pesach

Haggadah Mi Yodeya!

Internet time

keeping the enslaved down

Pesach services

Pesach

Pennsic in bullet points

short takes (link round-up, mostly)

Pesach

strange Pesach conversations

Pesach (so far)

the conveniences [sic] of modern life

random (Jewish) bits

let all who are hungy come and eat

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