A beautiful evening

Tonight was the first night of Passover and my hub and I were invited to a friend's home. Silvana is from Argentina and a renowned baker and cook. Wow.

Let me say that again. Wow.

From fish to a carrot and ginger salad.... to rice with pine nuts and onions...... and chicken cooked with apricots and plums...it was heavenly.

Then came dessert......a triple chocolate torte and a plum torte.....obviously this woman has a divine gift.

All of this, accompanied by bottles of Malbec wine from Argentina.

And wonderful company....a family from Israel.....other folks from the community ...I think we were a group of 15.

It was so amazingly pleasant....and sweet.....and it looks like Silvana, who has never made her bat mitzvah wants to be my partner.

We already picked out the dates....October 18 and 19. Amazingly...her husband was born on October 18 and mine on October 19.....so how fitting....we would do our two day ceremony on their birthdays...two years from now. I need to study a lot more than she does....and her mother-in-law is very ill....so this is nothing we can rush. But how wonderful to get it settled.

My tummy is full and happy.....and so is my spirit tonight.

Why is this night different?

I"m a little nervous right now.....in a couple of hours I'll be attending a Passover Seder at George and Ellie's house.

I don't know them very well....they are short and sweet and retired and nod at me when I see them at temple. They have been kind enough to invite me to join a group of family and friends to celebrate the first night's Seder because Passover is a community and family event.

For the last two weeks, there's been a palpable buzz among the congregation....as everyone finds a seat....a table...a family for Passover. Some houses have mega celebrations with 30 or 40 people...others fill a dining room. I've been told George and Ellie hold a "traditional" Seder which means I will probably have to do a considerable amount of lip-syncing and pretending....as my Hebrew is at the kindergarten level and I only know one song very well.

I will never forget the first Seder I attended a couple of years ago. It was a second night Seder at the temple....where congregants plus anyone in the community is invited to experience this ritual.

As my seat mate carefully explained the Seder tradition......I realized that the first night Seder....the most important one during the week long celebration of Passover....is traditionally held in people's home. I was awed by the concept that a religious community would "allow" its members to celebrate..."unsupervised"..... one of the most important holidays in the Jewish faith. Having grown up Catholic....it would be the equivalent of performing the Christmas or Easter mass at your house.

No Catholic would ever think of doing that because: a mass can only be said by a priest, a specially ordained person, a lay person is not worthy or holy enough to do this.....it must be conducted in a church or pre-approved spot, and the liturgy is uniform/consistent/approved.

And here are Jews.....celebrating and honoring their faith and experiences in their ordinary homes as ordinary people... reform or liberal congregations can even add or revise elements of the ritual and select different texts ...hagggadahs....to use.

It was an astonishing thought to me that each man or woman was "good enough" to participate in the ceremony....that a family could "handle" the rituals without an ordained spokesman .....that a group of people....could, in effect, be responsible to praise God directly from their own dining rooms.

I remember I was so excited about this idea of ordinary people celebrating and handling their religious rituals....about the sense of community and level of responsibility each person had for their own lives.....I decided right then and there....to act on the tug I always felt toward this faith and begin studying.

In essence....it was the start of my own exodus from one place in my life....to another.

And that is why on a personal level.....I know why this night is different .....for me.

Passover Belly.....

What happens when a gentile belly meets gefilte fish, horseradish, matzohs, eggs and Manishevitz wine at the Temple?

Oy....obviously some kind of gastric meltdown....because 6 Tums and 1 Pepcid later.....I'm still suffering from Second Seder Night dinner which I attended Sunday evening.

This week is Passover, the Jewish Holiday which commemorates the release of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. Saturday was the first day of Passover and the evening ritual and dinner is called a Seder. In our city, the Temple holds a Second Seder or a second night dinner in its hall which is open to the community and friends of the Temple.

Andy invited me a couple of weeks ago to Second Seder.....and.....as always being Ms. Maven....I didn't want to sit there clueless....so I asked him to drop off some reading materials....so I could be the Informed Gentile Guest.

He promptly dropped off a book called the Haggadah, a script for the ritual with songs and prayers and plague masks. I guess he figured if I didn't understand the script.....at least I could understand the plagues.

Raised Catholic, I knew about the plagues....but they are very minor in our storytelling.....so everything was a bit fuzzy.

But .....with my handy packet of plague masks....I soon mastered lice, boils, hail, darkness and blood. The masks are for kids and used during religious lessons.....but they are so cute....(my favorites are lice and boils) that I stapled them to the wall in my study in a sort of plague collage.

I didn't do as well with the Haggadah....because a fair amount of it was in Hebrew....so I hit the Internet and stumbled upon ....."Jew U".....a set of U tube videos (I believe there are close to 300 videos) which explains everything Jewish. A short jovial round rabbi from Chicago explains things like Seder, prayer shawls, prohibitions, and customs. 5 Jew U lessons later.....I felt much more at ease and ready to go.

But everything seemed to go wrong when I started to get ready for the event.

I jumped in the shower after work and immediately developed bad hair. Not a small amount of bad hair...but massive bad hair...my bangs hung funny....something was sticking out at my neck...and of course the only thing I could think of to remedy the situation.... was to grab the scissors......so snip snip snip and I had shorter bangs but the rest was still chaos.

With all this fussing I was running close to late.... so I just threw on my preselected clothes....and discovered my black top....had somehow grown two sizes larger at the dry cleaner's........and showed way too much cleavage.

I would have changed....but Andy (who describes himself as ostentatious) had decided to wear a long silky white Arab-type garment and had warned me not to be late since he didn't want to stand in his apartment complex parking lot....looking like an immigrant from a foreign land.

So I decided not to change...... gunned my little convertible to his house....and arrived exactly on time....however...my top was permanently and dangerously opened by now....and so I issued strict instructions to Andy: LET ME KNOW IF MY BREASTS FALL OUT OF MY BLOUSE DURING DINNER.

He shrugged and agreed in principle.....but I was not sure he would remain vigilante ....and I could just imagine the Rabbi saying to his wife after services....did you see that blond woman who was flashing her breasts at me????

Once seated....the Rabbi explained what would happen....and encouraged us to try all the foods.

Andy suggested I try the gefilte fish.....but encouraged me to lather horseradish on it .


Gefilte fish is a mixture of fish, egg, matzoh meal and onion. I'm not sure what it taste like because the amount of horseradish I spread on it....cleared my sinuses down to my toes and made my eyes water.

Unfortunately, I was hungry and ate some more....placing a bonfire in my gut. As part of the ceremony ...you also make a Matzoh/horseradish sandwich....which was the equivalent of throwing kerosene into my stomach.

I was actually grateful to see the matzoh ball soup arrive...hoping it would calm the fire. People at our table told tales about their mothers...... and the quest for the lightest floating matzoh balls...which was considered a culinary accomplishment. Our table became like a little family of stories.

Then dinner was served.....and right in the center of the plate was a......BUN....even I knew this was a no no.

A significant part of Passover ritual is to avoid leavened products.... hence the switch to Matzohs......and here was this big old bun in the middle of the plate.

Andy leaned over and said to me...."I hope this is made of Matzoh meal....because if my father was here.... he would have a heart attack...." but even I knew it was a regular bun and.......suddenly the Rabbi jumped up and said...."OOps....off with the buns now"....and a woman stood up and started collecting our rolls.

Apparently the catering company had tried to be generous for the special ceremony and included a roll to fill out the entree. I am sure this will become a famous story in the temple.

After a flourless chocolate desert ( and yes I know you shouldn't combine horseradish and chocolate ....but I did).....there was time set aside for prayers and songs.

Maybe it was the wine....but...I felt very nostalgic....sitting there listening to everyone sing. All our family parties.....when I was a little girl....included singing. Most of my relatives had been born in Eastern Europe and singing was an integral part of any celebration. Because I didn't know the language (Polish), I would often close my eyes and just sway and listen to the voices and the robust melodies.

And that's how some of the songs felt to me now too....so I just closed my eyes...and listened to the voices....and perhaps swayed....just a little.

Thanks to my Jew U education, I actually could sing part of the little goat song.....so it was nice to participate.

Towards the end of the ceremony.....Rabbi read a line....from the Haggadah....which I thought was beautiful......and calming.....and somehow very appropriate.


"There are links between heaven and earth which promise an answer and resolution to life's perplexities."

I scribbled the sentence down and handed in my Haggadah......

both breasts had remained in my top.....so I left knowing the Rabbi had just one good bun story from this event.....instead of two.
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