l'avventura grande: Passover with Family and Friends

OK, so I cried a lot this holiday season. It is a Passover of firsts and lasts. When we didn't live in Seattle, 1968-1971 and 1981-1992, I called my mom three times while making gifilte fish for seder. The questions were mostly, "How much pepper do I add to the fish?" For the past four years I have missed mom a lot, but especially think of her while making gifilte fish. Tears are salty thank goodness, because there is also some salt added to the fish. Those of you who know me well know I NEVER add salt to anything other than fried matzah, chopped chicken liver, and limited breads. The fish always gets a healthy dose of tear salt. This year, as Tasha prepared for seder in California she called me...you guessed it, three times to ask about her fish. I cried a lot this year. Next year we'll Google+ the fish making, right? The 18 hour time differnce won't bother me at all.

Then, there was Eric's birthday - 39 for the first time. It was first seder and I recalled all the joy of having him as our son. Remember the closet clubhouse - a dormer closet that he and his best buddy spent hours in every day, particularly when there was pop corn involved? Remember hiking in the Sierra's with another friend when during the night your tent rolled down the hill because we camped so late you didn't bother staking your tent, you and Matt just went to sleep? Remember hitting the school bus when backing out of your friend's driveway or the speeding ticket not ten miles from our house when you had a carful of girls heading to a BBYO gathering in Charlotte? Why was it we thought you would drive safely under those circumstances...lapse of judgment on our part.

And then, Lita's contribution of larb gai to our seder table. Lita has brought new perspectives on freedom of choice and freedom to have divergent beliefs to our table. Of course, she also brought two of our fabulous grandkids into the world, our favorite granddaughter and favorite future engineer/lacrosse playing grandson. I was particularly happy to have the two kids as assistants and prep cooks for seder. They carried (Greyson) and set the tables, helped put together the seder plates (Greyson taught me how to blow the shell off a hard-boiled egg, which he then washed without any coaching - good training Lita and Eric), helped make charosis, kugels and desserts. Then, Kelsey wrote another good play about the ten plagues and the story of the exodus. Each kid - well, ten of the 11 - had parts, including carrying rocks around the room for the slaves. The 11th kid was only 7 weeks old, so he was excused from hard labor.

It was a good seder. Dayenu.

Second seder I totally forgot to take any photos. It was adults and one infant, Alexa. We had some good discussion and on-going commentary, about a recent URJ article which reported that there is no archeological evidence that the Jews ever were in Egypt, much less as slaves, at the time period the exodus story takes place. The bottom line of the discussion was that whether we were slaves or not, whether we were in Egypt or not, what matters is the retelling of the story of freedom every year and to teach each generation of the responsibility to help all people be free in the broadest sense of the word.

It was a good seder. Dayenu.

Tonight, Thursday, Aunt Marge, Aunt Alice and Uncle Bert and Janet came for rossl borscht, another family tradition. I believe it came about as follows: When the family lived in Russia, all the root vegetables were cellared for the winter. Great-grandmother told the kids that if they ate beets during passover, they would have freedom from beets until winter came again. They jumped right on that idea. Well, those beets had been stored in piles for months underground by then and had started to ferment. They were pretty rank, so great-grandmother made a soup out of them, probably with nearly the end of the onions for flavoring. We get the results of all those beets and all those winters. On Purim, the beets are scrubbed, peeled, and cut into edium sized pieces and placed in a crock where they are covered with water. From day 5 onward, every day the top is skimmed. The liquid turns a brilliant, dark purple, and the beet ferment. Then, during passover, we make a borscht from them using only meat, onions, a teaspoon of sugar for a huge pot, and lemon juice if the beets are not tart enough. Yum. It sucks the saliva right out of your glands, and has the added benefit of curing the passover blues, caused by too much matzoh. If meatless, it can be cooled and an egg yolk bet into the broth, which made a dark, dark lavendar colored soup.

Makes for a perfect Passover. Dayenu.

Next year in Jerusalem says the hagadah. For us it will be Next year in Melbourne. We truly hope our seder guests will get together without us. We have spent many years together for first seder and several years for second seder. Barry, we are bringing two sets of hagadahs to you. Janet, you make the rossl borscht next year. Jeff will just have to eat something else.

It will be a lovely holiday next year, whereever we all are. Dayenu.