Remembrances of Passovers Past

For now the Winter is past,

The rains are over and gone.

From the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s

The beautiful approach of Spring and Pesach might have been that way when Solomon wrote it, but not so here in Portland, Oregon. As I prepare chicken soup and gefulte fish. I am actually glad for the warm steaming scents of the soup and for the fact that my oven will be on to bake the fish balls. I love this holiday and am so excited about the Seder, as I was every year since I was a child. The “remembrance of things past” (lovely title, Proust) evokes these memories for me, as sweet as the Manischewitz  wine we sipped:

I recall sitting at a table covered by a lace cloth, before us the Seder Plate, and the covered matzoh. Every grown up, and those kids who could read, had a copy of Maxwell House Haggadah, stained with wine, brisket drippings, haroset blots, and even the beet juice in the horseradish.  Around me were Mommy, Daddy, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and our Bubby and Zayde. We all wore  our “dressy” clothes. We all looked towards Zayde reclined against pillows.  

I chanted the four questions until in subsquent years it was my sister Eileen’s turn, and after her, my brother Shelly’s. Always Zayde and the other grownups were smiling with delight, and we all laughed as Zayde launched into impossibly rapid chanting of the Haggadah in Yiddish accented Hebrew, until we were all in unison (sort of) dipping our fingers into wine. We  recited  the names of the plagues G-d visited upon the Pharoah for disobeying Him and not letting our people go. We were warned not to lick our fingers (I did, cause it tasted so good), because we were to diminish our joy in freedom, drop by wine drop, as each plague was called out.  We were admonished that many Egyptians died  from those plagues.

We kids watched where Zayde hid the afikoman when he washed his hands, and he made a show of hiding it in plain sight. Since the meal could not be over and the ceremony completed until everyone chewed a piece of the Afikoman (a broken off piece of matzoh), we kids had bargaining power. We got money/gelt. Zayde and Daddy played the game well, pretending to grudgingly give in.

 We always loved the Haroset made Ashkenazic style with chopped apples, walnuts, Manischewitz Wine, the crunchy matzoh that sandwiched it, but the chrain Yiddish for moror (horseradish) not so much.

The meal began with gefulte fish, then chicken soup and knaidlach, we hid our sneaks at wine instead of grape juice, but our very red cheeks gave us away. Years later Mom and Dad hosted Seders. Our sons knew them as the Elders. More English, less Hebrew became part of the recitation of our having been slaves in Egypt, but the food remained the same, as did the Maxwell House Haggadah. Then Paul and I took on the Seder; those memories stayed with me. We’ve continued the tradition.  Our Haggadah was customized to incorporate the significant aspects of our contemporary history: slavery in the Camps of the Shoa, quotes from the Civil Rights movement, poetry, new songs, and keeps changing.  The food remained mostly the same. 

Our parents are gone. We are the “Elders” now. Our family is concentrated in Portland, intermarried, and we all still love the Seder hosted at our son’s and daughter-in-law’s home, so 35 of us can all be together. We have  a wine-stained revised Haggadah. Our Seder Plate includes an orange; in addition to Elijah’s cup, we have Miriam’s cup on the table,  and the food choices at our meal have changed some, but not so much.

Pesach remains my favorite holiday. May yours be wonderful.