briefly, about a relatively brief Passover seder

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 03:11:28 GMT

Our seder more-or-less worked, even though Adrian is unwell. Being sick meant both that she wasn't able to do as much of the preparations as she'd intended, and that she wasn't up for eating much of the festive meal.

Since Adrian had run out of time to edit last year's home-made Haggadah, she fell back on a Reform Jewish haggadah from the 1990s. Because she wasn't feeling well, we skipped almost all the singing, and skipped or shortened some things that she would have liked to include.

One thing she used last year and this was "Praise the Contrary and Its Defenders," by Sue Swartz. It begins "Praise rising up. Praise unlawful assembly./Praise the road of excess and the palace of wisdom./Praise glass houses. Praise the hand that cradles the stone." I would probably like it even without the line "Praise Red Emma. Praise her pistol and praise her restraint," but that line is part of why I was pleased when Adrian handed that page to me to read today.

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Seder at Adrian's

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 14:07:41 GMT

Friday night's small, somewhat improvised* seder at adrian_turtle's apartment worked quite well. I hadn't realized the extent to which using a different haggadah than I was used to from my family seders would have me thinking more about the whole Passover story and liberation more broadly. Some of that, I think, was the specific texts -- my family always used the Maxwell House haggadah, as did many other American Ashkenazi Jewish families, and Friday night we used (part of) "Gates of Freedom," a more recent Haggadah published by the Reform Jewish movement, with a few pages of other material Adrian found online.

Beyond that, and beyond the more contemporary language -- the Maxwell House haggadah is full of quasi-King James Bible phrasing and grammar -- both different phrasing for the translations from the Hebrew, and the added short pieces by other writers meant that I was thinking more about the meaning of the words, rather than things like "this is where my aunt makes a joke about Rabbi Jose."**

The menu was also slightly experimental: Adrian made a Moroccan Passover chicken recipe, and put some caramelized onions in the matzo ball soup because she had them available. The sauce for the chicken was sweeter than I really liked, but that was OK, there was this dish of horseradish right there, which cut the sweetness nicely.***

* Until Tuesday morning, Adrian was planning to go to Virginia and spend the holiday with her other partner and his family, but various pandemic-related reasons led to her postponing that trip.

** There's a story about several rabbis discussing Passover and the Exodus, including "Rabbi Jose the Galilean," almost certain pronouncing "Jose" like "Joe's," but my aunt liked to pronounce it as if it was Spanish. A small thing, not exactly a joke, just a thing that was always there when we were having a seder at her place.

*** I was in my forties when I started liking horseradish (other than in shrimp cocktail sauce), rather than putting the tiniest amount possible on the matzo with the charoses.

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Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

briefly, about a relatively brief Passover seder

Seder at Adrian's