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Following the carp—the fish in gefilte—from lake to plate

By Jonah Lowenfeld The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles LOS ANGELES (Jewish Journal) — Big fish, cheap fish, sport fish, gefilte fish.

With apologies to Dr. Seuss, that’s a decent summary of the situation for carp today.

The fish has its share of devoted fans — some like it dead on a plate, others prefer it alive and tugging on a hook — nevertheless, by and large, carp still struggles with a bad reputation that’s as hard to shake as fish oil smell from clothes.

“I’m not a carp expert, but it’s a major ingredient for us in gefilte fish,” Paul Bensabat, one of the Manischewitz Co.’s two CEOs, told me.

“Carp, mullet, whitefish,” Bensabat said, rattling off some of the species that go into gefilte fish, a food with no particular symbolism that has long been a staple on the Sabbath and festival tables of Ashkenazi Jews, and is widely consumed every Passover. “Depending on the type of formulation you want, there’s more fish or less fish in the different styles,” he added.

The fish are shipped whole from the Great Lakes region where they’re caught to the Manischewitz factory in New Jersey, where they are processed into more than 50 different varieties of gefilte fish.

The vast majority of Manischewitz-brand gefilte fish, Bensabat said, includes carp.

But even a gefilte fishmonger like Bensabat can’t deny that, broadly speaking, carp isn’t a highly regarded species.

“Carp doesn’t have a great name, for reasons that are beyond me,” he said.

That it’s cheap might have

something to do with it.

“I was told that, by your family recipe of gefilte fish, you can tell how well-off people were,” Motti Polityko, the owner of Gordon’s Fish Emporium on Pico, said. “If the recipe consists primarily or solely of carp, it means you were dirt poor — and that was my family.”

Every year, around Rosh Hashanah and Passover, Polityko spends the week prior to the holiday filling orders for people making gefilte fish, and each order is slightly different from the next. Most customers buy his “classic fish mix,” made from three different types of fish (he wouldn’t say which kinds); a good number of customers want to make their gefilte fish exactly according to their grandmother’s or great-grandmother’s recipe.

“Some people will take a filet and grind it at home,” Polityko said.

“Some people will not only allow me to grind it, but they will also allow me to season the fish and shape it so they can take it home and cook it. And some people want me to cook it here also, and they pick it up here already cooked. We meet them at every stage of the way.” The stock is fresh but not alive; it comes packed on ice from the Great Lakes, including German carp and Buffalo carp as well as Spiegel carp, but the last has to be special-ordered.

A tiny fraction of Gordon’s customers actually ask for the fish whole, without even a slit in its belly.

Usually that’s for reasons of kashrut — Passover is a time when many Jews observe more stringent restrictions on what they will and won’t eat, after all — but there is also another time of year when Polityko sells whole carp.

“Chrismastime, I have lots of Poles, Czechs and Germans calling me for carp as well,” he said. “Guess

Happy Passover

what they call it — ‘Jewish carp.’ ” It was a Christmas carp at a friend’s house that turned Reggie McLeod, the publisher and editor of Big River, a bimonthly lifestyle magazine that covers the upper Mississippi River, into a carp fan.

He remembers how his own father always told him that carp was inedible, but now he counts the fish among his favorites.

“People are kind of crazy about these sorts of things,” McLeod said of various food prejudices. “A lot of people like shrimp and lobster — and they’re bugs.”

Some call carp ugly, but McLeod notes that koi, the very expensive and beautifully colored fish that can be found swimming in Japanese gardens around the world, are relatives of the common carp.

“It’s exactly the same fish,” McLeod said.

In 2008, McLeod started a carpcooking contest in Big River magazine as a way of promoting carp as a fish worth eating. “We had two entries last year,” he said, “and not surprisingly, they both won — first and second prize.”

McLeod still remembers that first Christmas carp, though; it was in his friend’s basement — alive, swimming around in a tub of water.

“I said, ‘Joe, there’s a carp in your washtub,’ ” McLeod recalled.

“And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s

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Omaha rabbi symbolically sells chametz to Warren Buffett JTA Staffer Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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(JTA)— A Nebraska rabbi symbolically sold some leavened bread products to the iconic investor Warren Buffett.

Rabbi Jonathan Gross of Omaha had reached out to Buffett proposing that the billionaire buy his community’s chametz, the stash of leavened bread products that Jews traditionally sell to a non-Jew prior to Passover only to buy it back after the festival.

While Buffett was receptive, he was unavailable to meet with the rabbi immediately before the holiday.

So the sale of the rabbi’s community’s chametz—generally conducted on the day before Passover— to Buffettt could not proceed. But a smaller, symbolic sale of some leavened products went forward anyway last month, partly to generate publicity for a local food bank, the Omaha World-Herald reported.

On Feb. 23, Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the

world’s third-richest man, greeted Gross and two other rabbis at his offices in Omaha.

In exchange for four 50-cent coins, Buffett received a bottle of Scotch, a challah and a bag of (non-kosher) Cheetos, reportedly the investor’s favorite snack. The sale also included a box of chametz in the rabbi’s home and three large containers of chametz in his synagogue that were being donated to the Food Bank of the Heartland.

Buffett joked that next year he would bargain down the price.

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Dalia Falistian lights memorial candles for her parents at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel, 10 years after the seder massacre there, March 27, 2012.

10 years later, Passover Massacre victims find solace in one another

By Meredith Mandell Jewish Telegraphic Agency NETANYA, Israel (JTA) — For many years, Moti Amir tried to block out any memory of the horrors that she witnessed on the night of the 2002 seder terrorist attack in this seaside city.

But on the 10th anniversary of what is considered the deadliest terror attack of the second intifada, Amir remembers the haunting images in painfully stark detail: Her 10-year-old son jolting backwards from the blast of the bomb, the doorpost that fell on him and the shattered window glass that cut into the boy as well as her husband’s stomach. She searched blindly in the dark to find her son amid chaotic screams and frantic

running. She says she’ll never forget the pools of blood and rescue workers carrying away bodies wrapped in black plastic bags.

Amir and her family survived, fortunately. She hopes her recollections, however gruesome they may seem, send a poignant message to the world.

“That I am a survivor and I didn’t let anyone kill me or take my family away from me — I’m stronger in life from this,” she said, while attending a memorial service this week for victims and family members of the March 27, 2002 attack at the Park Hotel seaside resort.

Just after sundown that night, a Palestinian suicide bomber disguised as a woman walked into the hotel’s lobby with a suitcase filled

with explosives and entered the dining room and detonated the bomb, killing 30 people and injuring 140.

Dubbed the Passover Massacre, the attack culminated what was among the bloodiest months of the second intifada in which 135 Israelis had been killed in terror attacks. The severity of the Park Hotel attack led the Israeli government to declare a state of emergency and order the immediate recruitment of 20,000 reservists.

The next day, the Israeli military launched a large-scale counterterrorism operation, Defensive Shield, in the West Bank.

Tuesday evening’s memorial convened an array of people: hotel MASSACRE on page 5

PASSOVER • B5

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HAPPY PASSOVER from

MASSACRE from page 4

JUDGE HEATHER STEIN RUSSELL, RANDY, TAYLOR & GRAHAM

workers, rescue workers, seder guests and family members.

Dalia Falistian, 52, did not find out about the attack until she came home from her boyfriend’s family seder. An only child, she spent the next five hours driving from hospital to hospital in search of her parents. At 5 a.m., her uncle called to tell her that she had to identify her mother and father, Dvora and Michael Karim, at the morgue.

“My mother didn’t look like an angel and my father was cut,” she recalled before bursting into tears.

The coroner simply handed over her parents’ jewelry. Her thoughts at the time: “My life was finished; I don’t have anybody to come and take care of me.”

OneFamily, a volunteer group that provides material and rehabilitative support to victims and their families, sponsored the memorial gathering.

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“That I am a survivor and I didn’t let anyone kill me or take my family away from me — I’m stronger in life from this,” Moti Amir

In a news conference before the ceremony, OneFamily’s chairman, the Canadian-born philanthropist Marc Belzberg, said the victims’ return to the place of the attack reflected their resilience.

“For a victim to go back to the place where he was hurt is a very difficult thing,” Belzberg said.

Belzberg and his wife, Chantal, established OneFamily after their daughter donated her bat mitzvah gifts to benefit the victims of a 2001 terror attack at a Sbarro’s pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem.

Fifteen people were killed in the attack.

OneFamily brings together people who have shared similar experiences. Most victims feel profound alienation from their community after the trauma of a terror attack, Belzberg said, noting that

Survivors of the seder massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel, join families of victims of the attack and returned to the hotel to commemorate the 10-year anniversary, March 27, 2012.

friends or family don’t know how to empathize with them.

“Every terror victim will tell you that there’s life before and life after, and life after is one of loneliness and separation from the group,” he said.

Falistian agreed, saying that since the attack she’s had trouble finding jobs and making ends meet.

OneFamily has helped her financially and emotionally, she said.

“This is my family now” she said, noting that her caseworker, Batia Weinberg, has invited her to her home for Passover this year.

Corinne Hamami, the daughter of the hotel’s owners, lost her husband, Amiram, in the massacre.

Amiram, the hotel manager, reportedly saw the terrorist enter the building and tried to chase him. He died of his wounds two days later, leaving Hamami alone to raise their six children, then aged 6 to 20.

“It was a very bad situation,” she recalled. “How to wake up in the morning and begin the day? I can’t imagine how to explain this … you want to die.”

OneFamily’s annual camps for terror victims, held at Chanukah, Passover and in the summer, helped her children cope with the trauma.

Hamami said the camp used “black humor” to help the child victims of terror, including her own children, to discuss what had happened to them.

“When they spoke about this with all the other children that have the same problem, it makes them feel something in their heart,” she said.

Hamami continues to work at her family’s hotel, which still holds an annual seder.

“We don’t want to close the hotel,” she said. “We just want to show all the Jewish people in Israel and outside that we are strong and that the Palestinians are not victors, we are the victors here.”

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By Dasee Berkowitz Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) — My children have carved out a role for me as storyteller, especially at bedtime. After reading the requisite three books cuddled on my son’s bed, he makes a soft demand: “Now tell a story.”

In the late hour, my mind wanders to the outskirts of creativity. To produce a little late-night magic, superpower strength and some basic facts are mixed together in the telling. But instead of drifting off to sleep, my son stays keenly engaged — interjecting, questioning, elaborating and correcting. When a story gets really good he’ll insist on acting out parts. While I never really follow a straight narrative line — who can keep any logical sequencing so late at night? — eventually we wind up with a happy ending.

Storytelling is essential to being human; it’s the way we make sense of our lives and derive meaning.

Telling (and retelling) the same story as a group can have the same effect.

It gives us a sense of who we are and shapes how we act and interact with the world around us.

During the Passover season, we all become storytellers par excellence.

The Exodus from Egypt is one of the central Jewish storylines. At the most basic level, we are commanded to “tell your child” the

Courtesy of Dasee Berkowitz

Dasee Berkowitz practices her reading and storytelling skills with son Morris.

story of the Exodus and “all that the Lord did for me when I left Egypt,” as it says in the Haggadah.

But if we were only to tell the literal story, we would open up the book of Exodus and begin reading.

We don’t. With our Haggadahs in hand, we weave together a powerful story, filled with it’s own kind of magic, which includes rituals and texts that date from the Bible, the Mishnah and the Midrash.

With the stated goals that “in every generation one should see oneself as if one had (personally) gone out of Egypt,” we are invited to add our own voice to the story. In fact, the Haggadah states, “all who expound upon the Passover story shall be praised.”

Reading ourselves into the story of the Exodus of Egypt is essential to the Passover ritual. As Avivah Zornberg, a Torah scholar pointed out in a radio interview on American Public Media, “It’s not telling the story so as to remember what happened. It happened so as to be the stimulus for a ... meaningful story.” In the end, she said, “you might find yourself telling a better story than what is actually written in the text. So long as there is some connection.”

And while “storytelling” on seder night might be known as one of the longest storytelling hours around (“when are we going to eat, already?”), how will the story about the Exodus from Egypt become relevant to you as you retell it this Passover? What will be your way?

Are you a parent or grandparent wondering how you can make the ancient tradition come to life for your children and grandchildren?

Seder night is the quintessential teaching tool. We encourage children to ask questions and seek answers. Toward the very beginning of the maggid, the “telling,” are the Four Questions. When the youngest at the table (whether a toddler, a teenager or a young adult) reads the questions, create an opening and see

what kinds of questions the children might have about Passover. For the young ones, it might be about what they see on the seder table (add some things to pique their interest, like candies or plastic frogs). For older children, the questions might have to do with the central themes of the seder, like what freedom from slavery really means for us today.

Are you a spiritual seeker?

Focus on your preparation for Passover this year. The ritual of “bedikat chametz,” searching for leavened bread, offers a perfect opportunity. Chametz symbolizes excess and all that “puffs us up.”

By contrast, matzah is simple food without any of the extra leavening to complicate matters. Passover is a time to return to simplicity. As we dust away the crumbs in our search, consider the things that “puff you up” or get in your way of connecting to your true essence.

Then take those last pieces of crumbs and burn them the next morning. This cleansing of your home might take on a purifying aspect for you personally.

Are you unhappy with the status quo?

Just think about how many questions there are throughout the Haggadah. The Four Questions at the start of the seder, then another set of questions that the four children ask. The questions aren’t placed there just to engage children. Asking questions is a profound act; it signifies that we are unsettled and eager to move things forward. Asking questions is liberating.

And before any question is asked, at the very start of the maggid we say, “This is the bread of affliction ... Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat ... This year we are here; next year may we be in the land of Israel. This year we are slaves; next year may we be free people.”

The positioning of the statement about the bread of affliction right before the Four Questions makes a profound statement.

Perhaps we need to first envision the ideal situation and then ask questions as a way of shaking up the status quo and potentially achieving profound social change.

What questions do you have for yourself this Passover that can make steps toward that change happen?

Are you (or are your guests) marginally connected to Jewish life?

When we come to the section of the four children, we read that in response to the simple child, who doesn’t know how to ask a question, as “patakh lo,” ordinarily translated as “you prompt him,” STORYTELLING on page 7

PASSOVER • B7

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

The last night in Egypt: Reliving the Exodus

By David Arnow Jewish Telegraphic Agency SCARSDALE, N.Y. (JTA) — The Passover Haggadah challenges us not just to remember the pain of slavery and the joy of freedom, but to relive the journey from one state to the other: “In each generation, every individual should feel as though he or she had gone out of Egypt.” How can we achieve that?

The Haggadah contains the answer in a simple phrase: “Whoever elaborates upon the story of the Exodus deserves praise!”

In that spirit, here’s an idea for a discussion to help bring the saga of the Exodus to life. If possible, conduct this activity in a room other than the dining room, before you sit down at the table. For those who haven’t tried it, you’d be amazed at how much easier it is to engage people when you’re not sitting at the seder table.

Here’s the background: It’s the Israelites’ last night in Egypt, the night of the final plague, the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn.

(Note: Sources are divided as to whether this plague targeted only males or included females as well.) When the Egyptians learned about this fearful plague, some Egyptian mothers decided to seek refuge for their firstborn in the houses of Israelites. Imagine the Israelites, sitting safely in their homes, and suddenly there’s a knock at the door and an Egyptian mother is pleading for the life of her firstborn.

Should the Israelites take in the Egyptian firstborn?

This works very well as a simple drama. Choose someone to be a door; he or she simply stands in the middle of the room with arms outstretched parallel to the floor.

Ask a few people to stand on one side of the door and play the part of the Egyptian mothers begging to save the lives of their firstborn.

STORYTELLING from page 6 but literally means “you open him up.” How might you engage those at your seder table who don’t see themselves as a part of the Jewish story? Consider asking them about their personal history and the Passover memories they have from their parents and grandparents. Have them share those memories at the table.

During “Dayenu,” after reading the traditional section, invite your guests to add their own words of “dayenu.” Move from the global to the local and the personal.

Some examples might include global concerns, such as “When we care for our environment the

Courtesy of JTA

David Arnow in “Creating Lively Passover Seders” suggests a simple drama of the last night in Egypt to heed the Haggadah edict of making individuals feel as though they have gone out of Egypt.

Ask others to be on the other side of the door and play the role of Israelites. Since Israelites don’t always agree with one another, some should argue for and others against letting in the Egyptians.

If you have lots of people at your seder, you can either let people participate in the drama from the “audience” or ask anyone with something to say to join the drama on one side of the door or the other. Remind everyone that these are matters of life and death, so amplifying the drama and emotion are fine. Arguments based on any historical periods are welcome.

Feel free to allow questions about the morality of the last plague. Also remember that Exodus 12:22 says that the Israelites should not leave their homes until morning. The Bible says nothing about whether or not to let others in or to keep the door closed.

When the drama has ended, ask your group to vote: Are you letting in the Egyptians or not?

Now share the following midrash (Exodus Rabbah 18:2) way we care for our own backyards, dayenu”; local ones, such as “When we care for the homeless in our community the way we care for our own families, dayenu”; and personal ones, like “When we cherish our Jewish inheritance, the way we cherish fine jewels, dayenu.” Encourage people to make up their own versions.

The seder experience requires us to be engaged storytellers, not passive participants. While the storyline might meander a bit from the script we have before us, as my late-night musings with my children, strive to see yourself inside the Passover story.

What is the story you need Passover to tell you this year?

WISHES YOU A HAPPY PASSOVER with the group. It was written down about a thousand years ago, but is probably based on a more ancient source. Before reading the short text, you might ask your guests to vote again about whether they think that in the midrash the Israelites take in the Egyptians or not.

When the Egyptians heard that God would strike down their firstborn, some were afraid and some were not. Those who were afraid brought their firstborn to an Israelite and said, “Please allow him to pass this night with you.”

At midnight, God smote all the firstborn. As for those who took asylum in the houses of the Israelites, God passed between the Israelites and the Egyptians, killing the Egyptians and leaving the Israelites alive. Upon waking at midnight, the Jews found the Egyptians dead among their surviving firstborn.

The midrash seems to suggest that independent of whatever divine plan may ultimately unfold, on earth we have a responsibility to act in accordance with human moral codes that stress the importance of saving human lives. In this light you might want to consider these questions: Have we stood idly by the blood of our neighbors (Leviticus 19:16)?

Have we remembered to “know the heart of the stranger because [we] were strangers in Egypt” (Exodus 23:9)? Have we used our memories of suffering and persecution — in Egypt and elsewhere — to nurture vengeance or to remember our responsibility to create a better world?

David Arnow is an author of Passover related books.

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Crafting a memorable Passover with unique ritual objects

By Penny Schwartz Jewish Telegraphic Agency BOSTON (JTA) — To prepare for their first Passover seders, Zoe Scheffy, Lesley Frost and Joanna Brichetto drew on their creative instincts: Scheffy pulled out her knitting needles; Frost gathered scraps of felt, braided ribbon and tacky glue; and Brichetto rounded up household items, her kids’ plastic frogs and Beanie Babies.

The three women, of different backgrounds, were making unique Jewish crafts that transformed their holiday celebrations from ho-hum to memorable.

Their ideas and projects are now featured in books and on Jewish Internet sites encouraging others to find crafts that enhance their Jewish observance of Passover—which this year starts on the evening of April 6—and other holidays.

Crafting is in, says Diana Drew, an editor of many craft books, including two by style maven Martha Stewart, whether as a reaction to an overly wired, fast-paced world or the harsh economy.

Scheffy and Frost are among the 30 artists and craftspeople from the U.S. and Israel whose work is profiled in Drew’s most recent book, “Jewish Threads” (Jewish Lights), which she coauthored with her husband, Robert Grayson. Passover projects include Scheffy’s knit seder plate, a quilted Ten Plagues matzah cover designed by Shellie Black of Seattle, and an afikomen envelope made of fabric designed by Claire Sherman of Berkeley, Calif.

More than a set of how-to instructions, the book reveals the spiritual journeys that inspired the artists to create their Jewish ritual objects or communal projects.

Drew and Grayson found a tremendous range and diversity of craft projects across the country.

Drew noted to JTA the ritual objects for the seder table and playful props that infuse the Passover celebration with more spiritual meaning and a personal imprint.

Embellishing ritual objects is nothing new, Grayson says, citing

Courtesy of Penny Schwartz

Zoe Scheffy at her home with her knit seder table runners, her first design for a knit seder plate.

examples of centuries-old hand embroidered tallit and Torah scrolls, as well as communalmade wedding chuppahs.

Drew says that creating highquality handmade Jewish objects reflects the concept of hiddur mitzvah, beautifying the commandments, and will evoke memories in years to come.

“That is what Jewish crafts bring to a person’s life and home,” she said.

Courtesy of Diana Drew

Zoe Scheffy’s hectagon-shaped seder plate with a Jewish star in the center.

In a conversation with JTA, Scheffy, a Boston-area mother of two with a doctorate in Scandanavian Sami folk art, said she was inspired to create her knit seder plate by her lifelong passion for fiber art. Rather than buy a conventional seder plate, Scheffy wanted to create one that combined tradition and innovation, a reflection of her own multicultur-

al identity as an African-American and Jewish woman.

The hexagonal design of the seder plate, with six triangles, features a Star of David in the center.

The Hebrew words for bitter herbs, egg, shank bone and other ceremonial foods are knit into the plate in a separate color.

While the idea of preparing her own seder was daunting at first, making the seder plate was a learning experience.

“I felt more prepared,” she said. The project also made an impression on her 9-year-old daughter, who took an active role in last year’s seder, Scheffy said.

Frost, a Britain native now living in New Jersey, told JTA that craft projects such as the Passover puppets became a way to express herself Jewishly and to learn about Jewish holidays along with her children. After years of attending her husband’s family’s traditional —and lackluster—seders, Frost, a Jew by choice and an educator by training, vowed to create a more accessible and livelier seder for her family.

At the time, she and her husband were raising their children in Houston. Inspired by the Exodus story retold in the Passover Hagaddah — and recalling how crafts were an important part of her own schooling in England — the mother of two created AfikoMan, a hand puppet made of felt and fabric. In subsequent years Frost added Moses, Aaron and Pharoah puppets that often sat on the Passover table and were used for play or a re-enactment of the Exodus story.

Frost, who also made Purim puppets, created sets of the puppets for her children’s Hebrew school. Eventually she built a small crafts business: For many years she and her business partner sold their crafts at Jewish educator conferences and presented puppet shows for schools and synagogues. This year, more than two decades later, she is extending her tradition to another generation, making a new Afiko-Man puppet for her first grandchild.

Raising her young family in CRAFTING on page 9

PASSOVER • B9

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

Making the seder fun again

By Dr. Erica Brown JointMedia News Service Three times in the book of Exodus and once in Deuteronomy, we are commanded to tell the master narrative of our people to our children. Sometimes it is because children ask, and we have a responsibility as bearers of a legacy to answer. Sometimes children do not ask, and we have to stimulate their curiosity by becoming wonderful storytellers. Storytellers need to know their stories to tell them well.

They need a terrific script and a pinch of creativity. Most of all, they need to feel inspired. It is impossible to tell a great story if it fails to move the storyteller first.

The rabbis of the Talmud wondered why four verses were necessary to communicate the obligation at Passover to retell the tale of the Exodus. They concluded that these four verses must represent four different kinds of children, offering an educational scale of learning styles or personalities who each must hear the story in his or her own way. One size fits all rarely fits anyone properly. Not only do we have to know the story well to tell it; we also need to know our audience well to make sure they hear it.

The best stories are fun to tell and fun to hear. They incorporate all our senses. They offer a range of emotional responses from laughter to tears, and good stories have staying power. They continue to inform our values long after they are shared. The Exodus story can be all of that. But most often, it is none of that. It is told in a tepid and incoherent way, read from a poor English CRAFTING from page 8 Nashville, Tenn., Brichetto was turned off by seders where children were unengaged and in another room. A seder at the home of a rabbi provided an aha moment. He included the kids, she recalls.

“I realized that seders don’t have to be adult centered and boring,” she said.

When Brichetto’s family decided to make its own seder, she and her children gathered up small plastic toys, Beanie Babies and household objects to make a crude version of a Ten Plagues bag. It was an educational way to connect, be engaged and have fun with the holiday.

Over the next few years the idea took off, with more elaborate objects to represent the plagues.

The plague bags became such a hit that she and a friend went into mass production, starting a Judaica business with the plague bags and other craft projects.

While Brichetto has heard occasional criticism of invoking humor with the plagues, she says

translation without color or charm.

It is the weak content warm-up to most family meals, even though it is one of the most observed rituals among American Jews.

It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old. Everyone appreciates a welltold story, so this year ask yourself: am I doing a good job in the chain of tradition at telling the exodus story? Is my seder fun? Will it be memorable for everyone around the table? If the answer is “not really,” here are a few ways to fulfill the biblical commandment to tell the story, and the way to make it stick.

Brush Up on the Details No actor reads his lines the night of the musical. Don’t just dust off recipes.

Take out a haggadah a few weeks before Passover and read it through.

You might want to assign parts to your guests and ask them to do something creative with it. Reading Exodus 1-15 never hurts either.

Use props Great storytellers use props because objects themselves are powerful storytellers. Find objects in your home that tell your family’s Jewish story and put them on the table. Or have every guest bring an object that tells his or her family story.

Decorate the Room You do it for birthday parties.

Why not for Passover? Why should anyone sit in a dining room in suburbia when they could be in downtown ancient Cairo? Try costumes.

We even had our kids write and read ancient weather reports. Chances are it’s hot and sunny. the bags provide a good conversation starter about demonstrating compassion for those harmed by the plagues.

Courtesy of Diana Drew

“Jewish Threads” reveals the spiritual journeys that inspired the artists to create their Jewish ritual objects or communal projects.

In her role as a religious school teacher and in outreach with synagogue families, Brichetto discovered that hands-on crafts projects

Sing the story with show tunes or ask the kids to prepare a rap song.

Just go online and you’ll find loads of lyrics. Here are a few of my top ten: Sung to the tune of “These are a Few of My Favorite Things” Cleaning and cooking and so many dishes Out with the hametz, no pasta, no knishes Fish that’s gefillted, horseradish that stings These are a few of our Passover things.

Sung to the tune of “Maria”: Elijah!

I just saw the prophet Elijah.

And suddenly that name Will never sound the same to me.

Elijah!

Sung to the tune of “Just a Spoon Full of Sugar” Just a tad of charoset helps the bitter herbs go down, The bitter herbs go down, the bitter herbs go down.

Just a tad of charoset helps the bitter herbs go down, In the most disguising way.

These are a few of my favorite things to help make Passover a living history lesson and a memorable evening each year. We are a people with no word for history, only memory. We are memory-makers. That is an awe-inspiring responsibility.

Let’s do it well on the most important night of our story telling year.

HAPPY PASSOVER MR. AND MRS. SAM BOYMEL, CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN STEVE, CAROL, JONAS, LAUREN, ASHER, MILES, EVAN, ALEX, ASHLEE, BECKHAM, SKYE AND AVNER BOYMEL BARRY AND PATSY KOHN CHASE, MICHELLE, AND GABRIEL KOHN JONATHAN, DEBRA, JORDYN, JAKOB AND MORGAN KOHN PAUL AND LAURYN SCHUMAN HAROLD, FAYE, ROBBIE, JEFFREY, JENNIFER, JORDAN, ZACHARY AND BRANDON SOSNA

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Dr. Erica Brown is the scholar-inresidence at the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. leveled the playing field for families from different backgrounds and religious experiences. There is value in making Jewish things with children, she said, from spending time together to educational moments to learn together about the holiday.

In 2008, noticing a void in resources for Jewish families, Brichetto started a website for Jewish parents, and Bible Belt Balabusta, a blog for Jewish do-ityourself crafts projects. Now there is an explosion of interest for Jewish family engagement and home-based activities; she’s even heard from Christian preachers who use her site as a model for their religious outreach.

Words of wisdom from the craftswomen?

Don’t be intimidated, each advised.

“Jewish Threads” (Jewish Lights), by Diana Drew with Robert Grayson. A pattern for Zoe Scheffy’s Passover table runners is available online.

Joanna Brichetto writes about Jewish parenting online.

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Seder can be splendid the second time around

By Suzanne Kurtz Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rabbi Stuart Rosenblatt, a suburban Washington spiritual leader, jokes that “The second night of Passover was invented because God knew there would be inlaws.”

The first seder may last late into the night as the ancient story is told, the questions are asked and the blessings recited. But when it is over — if you live outside of Israel — many will have an encore the next night.

In ancient times, before the days of a set calendar, a second seder was added to the celebration of Passover to ensure that Jews living outside of Jerusalem would get the notice in time that the holiday had begun.

In the modern world there is hardly any doubt over what day of the week that Passover falls or when to begin celebrating holidays. But Mark Leuchter, professor of Jewish studies at Temple University, says today there are more symbolic reasons for maintaining the tradition of preparing a seder on the second night of Passover.

“The second seder gives us an opportunity to affirm our identity as Jews in the diaspora,” Leuchter says. “It’s an affirmation of our ability to thrive outside Israel.”

While that may be so, is it still necessary to conduct a repeat performance of the first night?

Rosenblatt says that spending the second seder with different people either at home or by attending a community seder at a synagogue is one way to ensure that the evening is different from

Best Wishes for a Joyous Passover Season

Courtesy of Laurie Blumberg-Romero

Creating a colorful table can add some spice to the second-night seder.

the previous one. He also suggests using a different Haggadah for the second seder to help bring out different aspects of the Passover story.

“The Haggadah we use today is not the one Moses and the Children of Israel used. It has evolved over time and is a product of centuries of innovation,” says Rosenblatt, of Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, Md. Contributing commentary and fostering discussions is also encouraged, he said, adding that “whoever adds to the [Passover] story is to be praised.”

Jamie Jakobowitz appreciates the opportunity of having two seders in order to spend quality time with both her family and her husband’s.

The suburban Philadelphia social worker doesn’t mind reciting the entire haggadah again on the second night.

“As an adult I love it,” she says.

Jakobowitz does admit, however, that it can be “trying” to have her two small children sit through several hours of plagues and prayers two nights in a row.

To help families combat seder fatigue, the Union of Reform Judaism will host a one-hour webinar this month with suggestions for infusing some creativity into the Passover seder by adding new melodies, customs, questions and an interactive plague kit. The purpose, says the URJ’s Rabbi Rex Perlmutter, is to help people “go beyond the Haggadah” during the seder.

In addition, Cantor Alane Katzew, the worship and music specialist at the URJ, encourages activities for children at a seder such as performing skits and act-

ing out scenes from the Haggadah, as well as incorporating a favorite love song that can serve as a compliment to the traditional “Song of Songs.”

Families can also look to different cultural backdrops for ideas when making something as simple as the charoset, says Katzew. She recommends finding inspiration in the culture of Jews from places such as India, Italy or Morocco by using less traditional ingredients like bananas, cranberries, cloves and even different nuts in the dish.

“There are lots and lots of ways to be creative,” Katzew says.

“Begin with your own passion and whatever it is that might have relevance to you and will help bring [you] forth from a personal Egypt.”

For Rabbi Michelle Greenberg, the second night of Passover has become a more intimate affair than the first evening.

While she will attend the first seder with lots of friends and family, on the second night it is usually time saved for her father and stepmother. Together they recite all of the traditional Passover blessings before beginning a discussion on a theme like personal freedom or gratitude.

“We talk about our lives, but in the context of a seder,” says the Jewish educator from northern California. And over the years, the discussions have helped bring the family closer, she says, yet at the same time fulfilling the religious obligation of retelling the Passover story.

“We use the Haggadah and also our own lives,” Greenberg says. “Passover is all about the story, but writing one’s self into the story.”

PASSOVER • B11

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

Questionable behavior for after the seder

By Edmon J. Rodman Jewish Telegraphic Agency LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Why is the day after the seder different from all other days? Is it because we are exhausted? Or our clothes no longer button? Possibly.

More likely, I suspect the day after is different because of all the newly minted questions that drop into our brains like zuzim.

Hearing the Four Questions the night before at the seder just gets us started, and traditionally, by the next day when we meet another Jew, we have formulated four more: • At your seder, how many • people were there?

• How was the food?

• What time did you eat?

• How did you ever manage to stay awake?

Unlike the seder, where the Four Questions are usually asked by the youngest, the apres quartet are asked by friends, family and co-workers, and you will certainly want to respond with a detailed answer — a maggid, or story.

To that end, here’s a handy post-seder guide: 1. How many attended? That would seem the easiest to answer; even the simple son or daughter can count. What they really want to know is (in my best Four Questions chant), whose side of the family attended, and are they the ones that on Passover eat bread? Did the outof-town college students take a plane? And tell me, did you invite any neighbors? Was there anyone there who wasn’t Jewish?

A lot of questions, but here’s the key query behind them: How inclusive was your seder?

On the night of the seder we ask why we dip our herbs twice, but the next day we want to know if Uncle Herb the family atheist fell asleep, or did Aunt Phyllis show with her new partner. And what of the vegan cousins?

Our tales of seder tables filled with character relatives are greeted with grins and groans, but Dr. Ron Wolfson, author of “Passover: The Family Guide to Spiritual Celebration,” with Joel Lurie Grishaver, says at his seder he purposely leaves one seat empty.

“You leave an empty seat at the table for Elijah the prophet because you want Elijah to come,” Wolfson, the Fingerhut professor of education at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, said in a recent interview.

“Symbolically, leaving space is a metaphor for inclusivity.”

Wolfson believes the seder is a “wonderful opportunity to gather people” — colleagues, friends and family who have no place to go, or who are not Jewish — and that

“hospitality will hasten the day that Elijah will come.”

My family has found that inviting guests beyond family has brought new perspectives, flavors and songs to our seder. And as a bonus, everyone is on their best behavior.

Courtesy of Edmon J. Rodman

Seder guests the day after clearly will bring queries beyond the Four Questions.

2. How was the food? Beyond inquiring about the specific density of the matzah balls and the Scoville (hotness) rating of the maror, what people want to know — especially cooks — is whether your festival meal escaped from the servitude of old school Passover cuisine.

Wolfson says that asking food questions after the seder is a good way for cooks to up their game.

“A lot of people share recipes after the seder,” he said. “Creative cooks are somewhat challenged by Passover. ‘How do you make a pesadik lasagna?’ they ask.”

In our own home, we have found that creative uses of typical Passover ingredients like matzah, or nuts to make matzah roca, or an almond tort can help delay the inevitable how many more days of this can I take?

3. What time did you eat?

Sometimes known at the seder as the fifth question, the query expresses our need to compare levels of endurance.

At our seder the festival meal usually isn’t served until about two hours in. (Is that an “oy” I just heard from some contrary son?) In such instances, before you start, Wolfson recommends tipping off people to the length, so they can prepare.

“And let them know why you are doing this,” he adds.

Wolfson also counsels flexibility. “I have seen seder leaders say it’s OK if you have to go at 10,” he said. He also suggests that hunger can be assuaged by using points of the seder, like eating the karpas, to also serve hos d’oeuvres.

We usually serve artichokes.

After 20 pages it’s amazing how popular the pointy things become.

A post-seder question about length is really about our sense of time in responding to the Haggadah’s main dictate that “in every generation it is our obligation to retell the story of the

Exodus from Egypt.” How successful we are in reenacting the “going out” brings us to the fourth question.

4. How did you manage to stay awake? Few people actually ask this; it is more a question that every seder leader must consider. For in our “duty to tell the story of the departure from Egypt,” the more one tells of the departure in an unrelatable way might itself lead to a departure if not of seder attendees, then of their attention.

Wolfson suggests running the seder like a “committee meeting,” calling on different people to participate. He advises that prior to the seder, “Give them homework, so they can have an investment in the evening being a success.”

Depending on Jewish backgrounds of the seder goers, “edit judiciously,” Wolfson advises.

“Most guests have not a clue to what’s going on.”

At our seder, after the plagues, to give guests a clue, we get them outside where between two walls of blue tarp and while singing “Dayenu,” we shpritz them with water bottles to remind them of the crossing of the Red Sea. Afterward, there are lots of questions.

Edmon J. Rodman is a JTA columnist who writes on Jewish life from Los Angeles.

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Prophet motives The real story of Eliahu Hanavi

By Melissa Jacobs The Jewish Exponent PHIALDELPHIA (Jewish Exponent) — At seders around the world, millions of cups of wine are poured in honor of one man: Elijah.

Why is Elijah the Prophet part of the seder when he lived centuries after the Exodus? Why do children open the front door and call for Eliahu Hanavi? Who was he?

Elijah’s story is told in the book of Kings, and he lived in a time of kings who were at war with one another. Israel was split into north and south and throughout the land, there was conflict between monarchies and monotheists. “These were not good times for the Jews,” says Rabbi Joshua Z. Gruenberg of Congregation Beth El in Yardley.

“Most Israelites had broken their covenant with G-d and were following other gods.”

That was especially true in Northern Israel, where the king was Ahab, the queen was Jezebel and the god being worshipped was Baal.

Jezebel had introduced Baal from her native Phoenicia. She convinced Ahab and his Israelites to worship Baal. To ensure that would happen, Jezebel had G-d’s prophets slaugh-

tered. Into this came Elijah the Tishbite.

“Elijah was a zealot,” explains Dr. Saul Wachs, chair of the education department at Gratz College, director of the doctoral program and the Rosaline B. Feinstein professor of education and liturgy. “He resolutely believed that Hashem was the one and only god, the god of the Israelites. And he set out to prove it.

That resulted in the famous confrontation on Mount Carmel.”

Mount Carmel was the site of a deity smackdown. Elijah stood alone against 450 of Baal’s priests.

Two animals were slaughtered.

Elijah challenged the priests to have Baal start a fire that would consume their sacrifice. As is recounted in Kings 18, the priests of Baal spent an entire day calling on their god to start a fire. Nothing happened.

Then, it was Elijah’s turn.

With the Israelites gathered as witnesses, Elijah placed 12 stones, one for each of the tribes of Israel, around the pit that held his sacrificed animal. To make the challenge of starting a fire even more difficult, he had water poured over the animal, into the pit. Then, Elijah called – once – to G-d to send a ball of fire.

He did. The animal and all of the water in the pit were consumed by the fire.

“The people saw this and imme-

diately made a new covenant with G-d,” Wachs says. “It’s that covenant that Elijah now protects.”

The renewed covenant between G-d and the Israelites wasn’t the only thing that resulted from that miracle on Mount Carmel. The Carmelite nuns—officially known as Order of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel—were founded to honor Elijah.

But Elijah wasn’t done with those priests of Baal. He slaughtered all 450 of them. “And then he ran for his life, because Jezebel was after him,” Wachs says. “He ran to Mount Sinai, hid, and asked G-d to protect him. He waited to feel G-d’s presence. There was rain. There was an earthquake. There was fire.

Elijah waited and waited. Then, Elijah heard a small, still sound.

That was when Elijah felt G-d’s presence. The point is that you have to wait, and have faith, and be aware not just of the big miracles, but of the small, still wonders of G-d.”

Another miracle happened when Elijah died. “Well, he didn’t really die,” says Rabbi Micha Peltz of Temple Beth Sholom in Cherry Hill. “He was taken up to G-d in a fiery chariot. Elijah is the only person in the Bible whose life on Earth ends that way. So, we believe that MOTIVES on page 21

Matzoh Break

By Lise Stern JointMedia News Service Passover is one of the most social Jewish holidays, with multiple generations getting together to celebrate. It can also be one of

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the most labor-intensive, for those Jews who kasher their kitchens for Passover, changing dishes, lining counters with foil, stocking up on special foods, and preparing the many festive meals for friends and relatives.

Due to this, companies offering kosher for Passover getaways, in which everything is taken care of for the eight-day festival, have become increasingly popular.

Options range from stays in Arizona, Florida, California, the Catskills, Cape Cod, to Aruba, Mexico, France, Italy, Israel and more.

Abby Polin of Skokie, Ill., is a single parent who works two jobs, as a vice president of mortgage lending and cofounder of figvine, a website that brings together small service providers and users.

The ease of a Passover vacation is immensely appealing. “We’ve been going away for Pesach for about 13 years. We’ve gone to the hotels in Florida, gone to Israel a few times. My family is spread out all over, and it’s such a nice time to get together,” she says. “You don’t really have to prep the house.”

That was the draw for Jillian Segal of Needham, Mass. Now the mother of three, she started going away for Passover when she was in college. “It always revolved

around Pesach being a tremendous amount of work, ‘let’s go away,’” she says. “That way my mother could sit and join us and not be in the kitchen the whole time.” Segal’s grandparents lived in Florida then, so she, her parents and siblings would go to a Passover escape in the Sunshine state.

Florida is where the Passover vacations started. According to Robert Frucher, managing director of Leisure Time Tours, his father Daniel Frucher was the first to kasherize a nonkosher hotel for Passover, in 1972. Before that, the only options were kosher hotels in Miami and the Catskills. “These weren’t great hotels,” Frucher says. “Passover was their biggest piece of business all year. My father saw the need, specifically in Miami Beach. The demand was so big even for the lousy kosher hotels, they were actually housing people across the street and feeding them in the lobby, putting up tables everywhere.”

Leisure Time’s first venture was at an upscale property in Miami Beach, with spaces for about 400 people, and they sold out in six weeks. Today the company runs Passover getaways in BREAK on page 13

PASSOVER • B13

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

Writers—not rabbis—bring text to life in the ‘New American Haggadah’

By Josh Foer JointMedia News Service Jonathan Safran Foer, author of “Everything is Illuminated,” remembers that when he was growing up, his parents used a homemade haggadah for the Passover seder, put together from a variety of sources. The family joke was that this night was different from all other nights because copyright laws do not apply.

It seems this spirit of creativity was successfully passed down to the next generation. Foer is the editor of the “New American Haggadah,” published this spring by Little, Brown and Company. In a phone interview with JointMedia News Service, Foer seemed unfazed by the boldness of giving his text the same name that Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan—founder of the Reconstructionist movement of American Judaism—took for his versions of the Haggadah in both 1941 and 1978.

According to the 1978 introduction in Kaplan’s New American Haggadah, it was meant to “inspire in the new generation the same devotion to freedom that our ancestors gained from the ancient Haggadah.”

There were no rabbis involved in the making of the 2012 New American Haggadah. This is indicative of how the new American Jewish culture—perhaps inspired by Kaplan’s philosophy of “Judaism as a civilization”—is increasingly a product of fiction and non-fiction writers, historians and professors. A whole class of people without rabbinic training are empowered and committed to creating a new Jewish BREAK from page 12 five hotels, with programs serving 450 to 1,300 people.

In the four decades since that first Florida luxury offering, the Passover getaway market has exploded. Raphi Bloom, Londonbased owner and sales director of the Jewish travel website TotallyJewishTravel, notes that this year, “there are 135 disparate Pesach hotels around the world.”

He’s been running the site for a dozen years. The Passover business, he says, “has grown and grown and grown. It’s seen hard times, but this year it seems to have really weathered the economic downturn. You’re seeing far more new hotels coming in terms of Pesach.”

A typical Passover getaway is all-inclusive, for nine nights. They are not cheap; while some start at about $1,600 per adult, many are

text for their own era.

Foer told JointMedia News Service that he originally envisioned an anthology format for the New American Haggadah, with contributions from 20 writers. But ultimately, Foer said the writers “came to love the book we were working on” and realized that the best way to engage readers was to present the material and “get out of the way,” rather than obstructing the text with too much overtly contemporary or political material.

Therefore, Foer—along with Jewish studies professor Nathaniel Deutsch of the University of California at Santa Cruz—chose 10 moments for a smaller group of four writers to comment on. This format hosts sections titled “House of Study” by Deutsch, “Nation” by Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg, “Library” by philosopher and fiction writer Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and “Playground” by children’s author Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler).

Each commentator has short essays of three or four paragraphs that are themed around an examination of a particular theme. Goldberg asks questions like “How do we balance our faith’s demand to care especially for our fellow Jews, and care especially for the entire world, at the same time?”

Handler has an eclectic take on the seder, discussing such urgent matters as someone’s need to “check on the food”—which actually means “sneaking a few bites”— while adding that “it is the muddle and the mess around the order that represent the freedom that everyone deserves, and that far too many people have been denied.”

Deutsch writes movingly about

the contrasts between the “shalem” (wholeness) that is contained in the name of Jerusalem with the necessity in the Hassidic tradition of being broken (“tsubrokhenhayt” in Yiddish) and the possibility that as Jews, we are trying to find “wholeness in brokenness.”

Newberger Goldstein writes with astounding power of the need for the “tutored imagination” to involve ourselves in the narrative of the Passover story as we collectively “sanctify storytelling.”

Overall, the haggadah’s format of highlighting different voices on a particular theme works effectively to convey both a variety of ideas and a modern outlook on the text.

The haggadah’s design is by Oded Ezer, a modern Israeli artist and historian of typography.

Ezer has not only invented a number of popular Hebrew fonts, but also produces art such as Typosperma and Typembra, which give new aspects to letters by merging them with other life forms.

Ezer describes his work as “a great journey to try to bring forms from the past into the future,” and he incorporates fonts from different eras of Jewish history in the haggadah. Mia Sara Bruch, a fellow at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, wrote the timeline at the top of the page. The timeline is an interesting pedagogical device shedding light on the formation of the seder service, the languages Jews have spoken and where they have lived around the world, and what percentage of the world population Jews have constituted at any point in time.

$3,500 and up, depending on the accommodations. As Frucher says, “What’s happened with Passover programs, it’s the cruise ship concept on land.” They include three meals a day, plus a “tea room”— where food is always available.

There are daily services (usually Orthodox), plus lectures, study sessions, day camps for kids, teen programs, and excursions.

“We went to the Hoover Dam, and to the Strip,” says Yussie Awendstern, a financial advisor from Valley Stream, N.Y. One of his daughters lives in California, and they meet in Lake Las Vegas for a program run by World Wide Kosher Tours. “What I really like is spending time with my daughter and seven grandchildren.”

A relaxed time with family is the goal for Camp Ramah Darom in Clayton, Ga., which started offering a Passover retreat for about 300 people in 2002. The

camp itself was built in 1997.

CEO Fred Levick says the facility was “built to accommodate groups year-round. One of the first things we focused on was Passover. We’re primarily in the camping business, and have the experience of creating communal events, which are fun and educational. This seemed like a great opportunity for families.”

This April, Polin, her children, and parents are traveling from Chicago to Camp Ramah Darom to celebrate Passover with her brother from Israel and sister from Massachusetts. “It’s a nice time that the family could all be together, and great for all the grandkids to spend with their cousins,” she says. “It’s not just about the food and going away, it’s being able to do activities in a kosher for Passover setting. It’s not just a getaway, but incorporates the whole Jewish holiday.”

WRITER on page 21

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By David A.M. Wilensky Jewish Telegraphic Agency SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. (JTA) — Leading a seder for the first time this year? There’s an app for that.

Entries in the annual stream of new haggadahs this year include a Reform version that comes in hardcover, paperback and iPad app editions. Two others feature a gorgeously designed haggadah that features an array of literary celebrity contributors and one with an Ethiopian flavor.

The Reform Haggadah, “Sharing the Journey: The Haggadah for the Contemporary Family” (CCAR Press), is terrific for its introductions and artwork, bland in its content and promising in its use of technology.

“Sharing” excels as a guide to Passover for those who are new to the seder — sections help first-time leaders with planning — or need a major refresher. It covers the entire weeklong holiday, from searching for chametz before through the beginning of the counting of the Omer at the end.

But the seder itself is bland.

Responsive readings — a hallmark of Reform ritual that seemed to have disappeared with the arrival of “Mishkan T’fillah,” the current Reform siddur — unfortunately are back.

Too often the surface themes of the exodus story outshine the subtler values of the seder.

However, “Sharing” gets it right by taking prospective seder leaders straight from a section on leading the seder to one called “What Matters on Passover Is That Questions Are Asked.”

The highlight here is the artwork of Mark Podwal. His impressionistic illuminations in “Sharing” are a great addition to the tradition of Haggadah art. Podwal interprets one of the four children as a headless suit of armor with a book at its feet and one as a Torah with a book for a head. The other two have book torsos and heads — one open and facing us, the other closed and facing away.

A few years ago, “Sharing” might have come with a CD, but instead it suggests downloading tracks online to learn seder tunes.

(Of course, iPad app version users will have them at their fingertips.)

Despite emphasizing singing during the seder, “Sharing” misses musical opportunities, such as its replacement of the psalms known as Hallel with “interpretive readings” of two psalms. (More of Hallel appears in an appendix — in English.) Meanwhile, “Sharing” goes for music that was probably best left out. Two cringe-worthy songs feature the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

Coffee table art books have given birth to an entire sub-genre of

Courtesy of JTA

Some new Haggadahs for this Passover: “Sharing the Journey,” the “New American Haggadah” and “Journey to Freedom.”

artistic, if unwieldy Haggadahs, including the gorgeous “New American Haggadah” (Little, Brown and Company). Edited by novelists Jonathan Safran Foer and translated by Nathan Englander, this Haggadah aims not just to tell a story but to be about storytelling. It is far too unwieldy to be deployed in full at your seder, but that hardly seems to be its ambition — and it’s too beautiful to pass up.

“New American” was typeset brilliantly by Oded Ezer, whose ethereal illustrations are a striking break with the concrete representations with which Haggadahs are usually sprinkled. Though design occasionally trumps usefulness, each page is a delight. A meta-telling of the story runs throughout, a timeline of the history of Passover itself strung along the top margin of the pages. The imagery is based on Hebrew letter forms that match the period of the timeline on the page.

In addition to Englander and Foer, the seder is periodically interrupted by brief essays by the likes of Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg and children’s author Lemony Snicket. The interruptions include installments in each of four streams of brief essays, each stream by a different author. The streams cover four themes: “Nation,” “Library,” “House of Study” and “Playground.”

Why didn’t anyone think of handing the seder, the Jewish narrative ritual par excellence, over to novelists before? New American indeed.

The story of the ongoing immigration of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel seems to be a perfect thematic match with Passover. As interest grows in far-flung Jews with unex-

pected skin tones, an Ethiopian Haggadah was inevitable.

What a shame, then, that “The Koren Haggada: Journey to Freedom” (Koren Publishers Jerusalem) is such a whitewashed letdown. It’s “The Gould Family Edition,” edited by Rabbi Menachem Waldman and translated by Binyamin Shalom. While Waldman has written a number of books on Ethiopian Jewry, it is implausible that no priests of the Ethiopian community could be found to at least co-edit “Journey.”

In his introduction, Waldman says that “Journey to Freedom” includes “the traditions of and heritage of Ethiopian Jewry alongside the story of the exodus from Ethiopia.” Sadly this is not at all what “Journey” does. Instead it tells of Ethiopian Jewry in a series of sidebars and photographs interspersed among a standard Modern Orthodox seder.

The Ethiopian observance of Passover, which they call Pasika, is given some attention, but an introductory section spends a scant page or so on the community’s actual traditions for consuming the paschal sacrifice and telling the story of the Exodus. Instead, “Journey” buries their traditions under contemporary Orthodox ones, as the Israeli rabbinate has long sought to do.

Each of the three diverse Haggadahs fills a special niche and has a unique take on the seder.

Bring the “New American Haggadah” on your journey this year. And first-timers may appreciate “Sharing the Journey” as a guidebook. “The Koren Ethiopian Haggada?” It’s best left behind in Egypt.

PASSOVER • B15

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

Long before the Maxwell House Haggadah

TO ALL OUR FRIENDS & FAMILY

By Donald Altschiller JointMedia News Service For the past three years, President Obama and his family have hosted a Passover Seder in the White House for a select group of invited guests, both Jewish and non-Jewish. A Maxwell House Haggadah—probably the most widely used Passover Seder text among American Jews—was placed at each table.

The haggadah (the Hebrew word means “telling”) has a venerable and remarkably varied history, which long precedes the often wine-splotched classic published by the coffee maker.

Scholars have identified more than 3,500 extant editions and there is hardly a Jewish community in the world that has not produced its own haggadah. Although the earliest manuscripts have been lost, the oldest complete text was found in a prayer book compiled by the philosopher and rabbinic scholar Saadia Gaon during the 10th century.

The haggadah reportedly emerged as an independent volume during the 15th century.

Some scholars speculated about the origins of an edition that was published in Guadalajara, Spain in 1482, but the publication location has never been confirmed nor has it been definitively established as the first separately-published haggadah. In 1486, the Soncinos, a noted Italian Jewish family of printers, published a siddur to which a haggadah was bound.

Although it is not known whether such binding was common during this time, some historians consider this Soncino volume a separate and independent work.

The history of haggadahs and the Soncino edition is recounted in an erudite and elegant 1975 volume entitled “Haggadah and History.” Written by the late Harvard professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, this work traces the evolution of this classic Passover text, which reflects the variegated and tumultuous history of the Jewish people.

Most of this nearly 500-page work contains reprinted haggadah pages from around the world. The range of publishing locations and languages employed is remarkable: a Poona, India, text was published in the Indian language Marathi; the Istanbul, Turkey, edition is bilingual, written in Ladino and Hebrew; a Tel Aviv haggadah in Hebrew was produced in prestate Palestine. Also depicted is an unusual item: a parody of the haggadah. Published in Odessa, Russia, in 1885, this text used the

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Courtesy of JNS, Haggadah and History

A page reprinted from a Cairo volume Agudat Perahim (1922) which also includes the Passover haggadah. This illustration depicts an Arabic translation of the festive song “Dayenu.”

Four Questions to highlight the poor pay and treatment of east European elementary school teachers, comparing their plight to that of Israelite slaves in Egypt!

Yerushalmi notes that only 25 haggadahs were published during the 16th century, but the production increased to 234 in the 18th century and more than 1,200 during the 19th. Although this Passover text has been published for more than 600 years, the

Reprinted from “Haggadah and History” by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1975

A page reprinted from a Bombay haggadah written in the Marathi language.

majority of individual editions were issued in the last century.

Early haggadahs featured handdrawn illustrations and in more recent times, pictures were inserted to stimulate the “curiosity of the children…[and served] as a

lively medium of visual instruction, much like today’s picture books,” Yerushalmi writes.

The Sarajevo Haggadah is the most famous such work, a beautifully illustrated text originating in Barcelona in the 14th century, smuggled out of Spain during the Inquisition, transported to Italy and eventually ending up in the former Yugoslavia. Unlike many Jews, the Sarajevo Haggadah somehow survived the Nazi onslaught. The remarkable story of its survival has been evocatively told in the novel People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks, and in a network television documentary.

The Birds’ Head Haggadah, the oldest surviving Ashkenazi illuminated manuscript, was produced in Germany during the 14th century. This strikingly beautiful volume derives its name from the birdlike human figures depicted in the margins. Scholars claim that this animal motif is related to the Second Commandment that prohibits the creation of graven images. In lieu of drawing a human figure, the volume depicts distorted heads of birds, often wearing a headpiece and other garments.

The Sarajevo Haggadah is permanently displayed in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina while the Birds’ Head Haggadah is found in the Israel Museum. Unlike the ever present and dependable Maxwell House Haggadah found at many seders, these precious volumes are securely spared from matzoh crumbs, spilled wine and drippings of horseradish.

Wishing you the Best.

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B16 • PASSOVER

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New books: cleaning robots, Jerusalem tunnel adventures and an Old World feud

By Penny Schwartz Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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BOSTON (JTA) — A vacuumlike robot that cleans the house and a spunky Israeli girl on an underground adventure in Jerusalem are among the characters featured in new children’s books for Passover.

This year’s crop offers more than the typical retellings of the Exodus story. Two books have Passover as a backdrop for entertaining and imaginative storytelling that can spark conversation about the popular holiday’s many rituals and traditions. One retells an Afghani folk tale that gives families a chance to discover Jewish life in an unfamiliar part of the world. A lift-the-flap format book is aimed at the younger crowd.

Here’s a look at this year’s Passover book offerings for kids:

Courtesy of Kar-Ben Publishing

In “Jodie’s Passover Adventure,” Jodie and her American cousin Zach discover ancient secrets on their exploration of Hezekiah’s Tunnel in the Old City of Jerusalem.

In “Izzy the Whiz and Passover McClean,” a robot cleaner creates chaos during the pre-holiday house cleaning.

Jodie’s Passover Adventure Anna Levine, illustrated by Ksenia Topaz Kar-Ben (hardcover, paperback, ebook); ages 5-9 Award-winning author Anna Levine and artist Ksenia Topazas, paired for the second time, bring ancient Jewish history alive in an adventure tale story featuring Jodie, an Israeli girl who dreams of being an archeologist like her father. Jodie invites her visiting American cousin Zach, along with her older brothers, for an underground exploration of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the famous secret water passage in Jerusalem’s Old City. There are secrets to discover about how the tunnel was dug in ancient times, along with spooky shadows and a treasure. After the adventure, the family enjoys a Passover picnic in an outdoor park.

Izzy the Whiz and Passover McClean Yael Mermelstein, illustrated

by Carrie Hartman Kar-Ben (hardcover, paperback); ages 3-8 In this delightful rhyming tale, Izzy invents a cleaning machine to help his mother in the ritual house cleaning before the start of Passover. Mom takes a rest and leaves Izzy in charge. Think Dr. Seuss meets robot vacuum cleaner: “Izzy pressed the red button, McClean lurched and whirred, He cranked the green handle, it belched and it purred. The hungry machine chomped ten books for its lunch. Gobbled the rug, and continued to munch.”

Trouble of the “Cat in the Hat”-type follows, of course, but all is neatly tidied up before the start of the seder. Hartman’s cartoon-like illustrations are playful and lively — a perfect fit for the zany fun of this entertaining book.

The Elijah Door, A Passover Tale Linda Leopold Strauss, illustrated by Alexi Natchev This folklore set in an Old World town (at times Poland, at times Russia) explores the Lippa and Galinsky families, who shared their lives and celebrated holidays together before the parents have a foolish argument over geese and hens. The families stop talking and even board the door between their two houses, using side doors to avoid seeing each other. But Rachel Galinsky and David Lippa are in love and plot a scheme, along with the village rabbi, to end the feud and bring the village together for the Passover seder.

When it’s time to open the door to welcome Elijah, the hope of the prophet’s presence helps heal the bitter and angry hearts of the parents. Alexi Natchev’s beautifully colored block prints evoke an Old World feel but also are playful and filled with expressive detail and movement.

Courtesy of Kar-Ben Publishing

The Wooden Sword Ann Redisch Stampler, illustrated by Carol Liddiment Albert Whitman; ages 5-8 While “The Wooden Sword” does not have explicit references to Passover, the picture book of an Afghani folk tale includes a character who disguises himself in a visit to a family — a theme reminiscent of Elijah the Prophet stories often told at Passover. The tale is one that was part of Jewish life in Afghanistan for more than a thousand years, according to Ann Redisch Stampler, who won a National Jewish Book award for her retelling of the Yiddish folktale “The Rooster Prince of Breslov.”

In “The Wooden Sword,” an Afghani shah slips out of his palace late one night disguised as a servant. He is welcomed into the home of a young shoemaker and his wife celebrating the Sabbath.

The shah wonders how such poor people could be so happy. The shoemaker tells his mysterious visitor he has faith in God that life will turn out as it should be. Despite a series of edicts issued by the shah to test the man’s faith, the shoemaker remains content in his belief in God. The poor but wise shoemaker eventually teaches the shah about faith and persistence.

Carol Liddiment’s paintings portray what Afghani village life might have looked like with colorfully embellished clothing, floor pillows for sitting on during meals, men in turbans and the wife wearing a headscarf. In an author’s note, Stampler explains how she came to this Jewish retelling of the Afghani version of the story. The book sparks opportunities for discussion about Afghanistan as well as conversation about the diversity of Jewish life around the world.

What Am I? Passover Anne Margaret Lewis, illustrated

by Tom Mills Albert Whitman ($9.99); ages 2-5 A fun lift-the-flap book introduces young children to the customs and foods of Passover with easily understandable explanations and large, brightly colored, cartoonlike illustrations. “I am a mixture of apples, nuts, and a little wine. I am tasty and sweet,” reads the opening left-hand page. A bowlful of red apples and nuts is the clue.

Lift the “What am I?” flap on the right, and kids will be surprised by a young boy and his grandmother making charoset, reminding everyone of mortar used to build the pyramids. Other pages reveal other seder plate symbols, holiday candles, a Haggadah and a kids’ favorite, leaping frogs, to explain the Ten Plagues.

PASSOVER • B17

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

Have another shot of slivovitz

By Ezra Glinter The Jewish Daily Forward NEW YORK (The Forward) — The comedian Myron Cohen once said of slivovitz that it makes Canadian Club taste like vanilla soda. It’s been compared to paint thinner, lighter fluid and jet fuel, and has been pressed into service as a home cough remedy. In an air disaster scenario it might serve to disinfect a wound, or sterilize makeshift surgical tools.

But for many North American drinkers, slivovitz is a liqueur associated with holidays, family tradition and life-cycle events.

Many Jews drink it on Passover, because it contains no grain and a number of varieties are certified kosher for Passover. The late Israeli wine critic Daniel Rogov recommended pairing it with traditional Ashkenazi foods like gefilte fish, or matjes herring. In Croatian, Romanian and Serbian families it might be consumed at a wedding or anniversary, and perhaps as an after-dinner digestif.

And for some seasoned drinkers, the Eastern European plum brandy is an occasion all its own.

“Whether you call it slivovitz, or slivovica, it’s one of those seminal attractions that East European folks have enjoyed for many, many years,” said Gian Cossa, a self-professed slivophile who organizes a slivovitz festival each September in Lanham, Md. By day Cossa works at the District Department of the Environment in Washington, D.C., but in his nonprofessional capacity he’s part of a small cadre of slivovitz fans who believe that the oft-maligned liqueur is worth a second taste.

While slivovitz is usually associated with a squat green bottle kept at the back of a grandparent’s liquor cabinet, it has, in recent years, seen a small surge in popularity. In Tel Aviv you can find it on the menus of several Balkan and Bulgarian-style restaurants, while in the U.S. high quality brands are increasingly available.

According to the International Slivovitz Drinkers Association, there are more than 70 types of commercially distilled slivovitz on the market. And though all slivovitz has a distinctive (and some might say, overpowering) flavor, there are many differences among the brands, both subtle and pronounced.

Slivovitz is typically made from Damson plums, though other varieties, such as Quetsch or Italian prune plums, are also used.

Depending on whether the slivovitz is aged in glass or in wooden barrels, it will be clear or have an amber color, like whiskey.

Factors such as batch size, fermentation length, alcohol content and other subtleties of the distillation process create their own dif-

ferences. “It’s just like there’s different types of music, there are different types of slivovitz,” Cossa enthused. “You gotta have them all.”

Unlike many slivophiles, Cossa didn’t grow up with slivovitz, though his father, Dominic Cossa, a singer who performed with the Metropolitan Opera, made his own wine. Cossa remembers buying grapes from Italian fruit sellers at the farmers market in Paterson, N.J. He and his father would crush the grapes with another opera singer, William Ledbetter, using a press that had belonged to Cossa’s grandfather.

Slivovitz was a later discovery.

Cossa was introduced to it by Bill Radosevich, a lead contamination specialist from Minneapolis whom he met at an environmental trade show in 2002, and whom he credits as “the foundation for slivovitz in this country.” Radosevich, founder of the International Slivovitz Drinkers Association and the U.S. Slivovitz Festival in Two Harbors, Minn., helped Cossa develop his slivovitz palate, and in 2009 Radosevich sponsored Cossa’s application to become a Grand Master Slivovitz Judge. Though Cossa was reluctant to divulge the Drinkers Association’s precise procedures for naming judges, he did say that “every journeyman’s path is different, and customized to their distinct needs in traversing towards slivovitz enlightenment.”

Radosevich did come from a slivovitz drinking family. “When we were kids, if we were sick my dad would give us a tablespoon of slivovitz,” recalled one of his brothers, Pete, an attorney from Duluth, Minn. “All the Croatians in North Minnesota had a bottle of slivovitz in the cupboard over the refrigerator.”

For almost 40 years, until 2010, the Radosevich family owned the Earthwood Inn, a bar in Two Harbors, on the north shore of Lake Superior. One day in the spring of 2004, after his father retired, Pete was kicking around ideas with his brothers for a summer festival at the Inn. “Typically, rural bars will get a bunch of bands and a bunch of kegs of beer.

But we’re intellectuals, we’re nerds, we wanted to do something different,” he said. “Three days later my brother Bill called me up and had the whole thing planned out from A to Z.” The U.S. Slivovitz Festival includes music, food and a Miss Slivovitz pageant. But the main event is always the slivovitz competition. To evaluate slivovitz, Master Judges use a six-variable testing model that considers visual and aromatic qualities, taste, aftertaste and alcohol content, as well as a characteristic called “mouthfeel.” All of these criteria are laid out by “Radosevich’s

Slivovitz Festival Competition Score Sheet,” which gives directions for tasting and judging entries. Judges are instructed to determine if the slivovitz tastes like old socks or a chemical waste dump, and whether or not it makes the tongue go numb. More favorably, it might taste smoky, or have hints of oak. If the plums weren’t stripped of leaves before fermenting it might have an herbal flavor.

Judges are also expected to spit after each tasting, “albeit reluctantly.” According to the score sheet, it is mandatory to make a toast before each round.

Since its inception, the U.S. Slivovitz festival has drawn 400 to 600 people each year, and led to satellite festivals, such as a oneoff New York Slivovitz Klezmer Festival in 2006. Its slivovitz awards have become so coveted by distillers that in 2005 the thenPolish consul general in Chicago, Franciszek Adamczyk, used his diplomatic pouch to transport bottles of slivovitz from Poland that would otherwise have been impossible to import. Cossa’s festival in Maryland, entering its eighth year, attracts upward of 50 people and a number of NASA scientists from the nearby Goddard Space Flight Center have become regular attendees. Though the Radosevich family no longer owns the Earthwood Inn, the U.S. Slivovitz Festival continues this year at the Northeastern Hotel and Saloon on Dunlap Island, just outside of Cloquet, Minn.

The Slivovitz Drinkers Association has a motto: “Having fun taking Slivovitz seriously!”

And why not? As Cossa put it, “When you come together and enjoy something like slivovitz, it’s communal and it breaks down walls. That’s what it’s all about — trying to identify that one thing we all have in common.” Now that sounds like something we can all raise a glass to — if the slivovitz doesn’t kill us first.

Reprinted with permission of the Forward.

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A Passover return to the desert reawakens ancient memory

By Zelig Golden j weekly SAN FRANCISCO (j weekly) — Each year I wrestle with the Passover story: “Now we are slaves.

Next year, may we all be free.”

What does it mean to be slaves?

What would it mean to be free? The haggadah commands that in “every generation we are to experience Passover as if we ourselves went out from Egypt to freedom.”

I see our generations’ slavery in the environmental crisis and a crisis of personal isolation caused by our fast-paced society, which often prizes consumption over human connection. If this is our slavery, then our freedom is building multigenerational community and reconnecting to the natural world — it’s living our Exodus story for today by celebrating Passover in the desert.

Not so long ago, we Jews were connected to the land, the seasons and the cycles of the sun and moon. We were connected to one another as we wandered the desert, tended our flocks and celebrated our agricultural festivals.

Sadly, we have largely forgotten our ancestral connection to Creation; that our holidays are rooted in the seasonal cycle.

Today I see a yearning for something we had back in the desert when we circled our tents

Not so long ago, we Jews were connected to the land, the seasons, and the cycles of the sun and moon.

We were connected to one another as we wandered the desert, tended our flocks and celebrated our agricultural festivals. together. You can see it in our obsession with text messaging and the endless hours we spend on Facebook. You see it in a bustling farmers market, where we meet our farmers and pay extra for blueberries grown nearby.

Our yearning to connect with the natural world is not just about food, however. Research shows that connection to the natural world is an essential part of human health.

In “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from NatureDeficit Disorder,” Richard Louv provides sobering proof that “our society is teaching young people to avoid direct experience in nature” at the cost of mental, spiritual and physical health. Citing research that the rise in attention deficit disorder, obesity and autism is directly related to what he calls nature-deficit disorder, Louv concludes that “[t]ime in nature is not leisure time; it’s an essential investment in our children’s health (and also, by the way, in our own).”

Spending time in nature for personal health is just the beginning. The Torah teaches that in the wilderness God speaks most clearly and we encounter the Divine most directly. Moses discovers the burning bush while wandering in the wilderness with his sheep — there he begins his conversation with God. Jacob received his new name Israel, after wrestling with an angel in the wilds alone. Our tradition is full of tales of receiving prophecy, revelation, healing and wisdom — all received while in the wilderness.

This is why it is essential for me to celebrate Passover in the desert. Passover marks the season of freedom, renewal and the beginning of the yearly cycle. The desert air infuses me with a renewed perspective and I explore the deeper questions: “What personal story of enslavement am I ready to leave behind?” “What is

the freedom I’m walking toward this year?” “How does my personal liberation help my community’s liberation?” By leaving behind email, telephone and the other trappings of daily life, and stepping into the wilderness where I can more clearly hear the voice of the One, I tap into the ancient truth of the Exodus story.

During Wilder-ness Torah’s five village-building days in the Panamint Valley, which resembles Israel’s Arava Desert, I find time to wander alone in the vast silence and listen deeply to the small still voice that guides me; I connect to my tribe and the growth, evolution and mutual respect that emerges when we gather together with common purpose; I connect to the deep blue skies, the breathtaking mountains and the bright spring blossoms; and I connect deeply to my Jewish roots, remembering that we Hebrews found our freedom in the desert.

The Sfat Emet, the late 18thcentury Hassidic master, explains, “Torah is renewed on Shavuot in accordance with the freedom that has been awakened on Passover.

Even though we have already received the Torah, there is still a renewed revelation of Torah in each generation — a revelation particular to the time. That is why freedom needs to be renewed each year.”

Given the social and environmental crises of today, we must listen to this year’s unique revelation so that we may renew our relationship with ourselves, the Earth, our Jewish community and the whole world. By celebrating Passover in the desert, we can awaken our ancient memory and understand the essential freedoms needed by our generations today.

Zelig Golden is the founder and co-director of Wilderness Torah, which sponsors land-based Jewish holidays and rituals, including Passover in the Desert. (Reprinted with the permission of j weekly.)

PASSOVER • B19

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

Robin Cohen’s fruit conserve offers some seder sweetness

By Penny Schwartz Jewish Telegraphic Agency BOSTON (JTA) — Robin Cohen, a computer programmer turned national award-winning cook and food writer, recalls vivid childhood memories of her family’s Passover kitchen, when charoset was made in a large, oldfashioned wooden chopping bowl.

A small portion of the tasty fruit-and-nut mixture was placed on the seder table, a symbol of the bricks and mortar used by the Israelites when they were enslaved in ancient Egypt. The rest was reserved for the next day, when the flavorful combination of apples, nuts, wine and cinnamon, with a bit of honey and lemon, was enjoyed as a spread on matzah.

The fragrant flavors of charoset past inspired Cohen to create Seder Sweetness, a new jarred fruit conserve that will be available in Boston-area shops.

The recipe is not hard for home cooks to follow, she says.

The idea for Seder Sweetness jelled last fall, when Cohen began selling her fruit conserves and preserves at local farmers’ markets.

Cohen, who won Micheal Ruhlman’s 2011 national holiday cooking challenge for her rugelah, had just launched Doves and Figs Kitchen, a home-based business devoted to making and selling fruit preserves using local fresh fruit.

A Rosh Hashanah variety made from apples, figs, almond and honey became a popular seller; it reminded some customers of charoset. Since then, Cohen has tried several recipes for an authentic charoset flavor, tweaking apple varieties and the balance of other ingredients. Despite the New England winter, she’s still able to use local apples, along with local honey, she told JTA. Cohen makes a sugar syrup with sweet kosher wine, lemon and honey, then adds chopped apples and toasted walnuts (recipe below).

She is branching out with other Passover-inspired conserve recipes, including savory ones. Her winter carnival recipe made from cranberries, apples and pears is a perfect accompaniment for brisket or lamb, and was awarded a prize last October from the American Lamb board. She is now testing recipes for an apple-horseradish preserve embellished with mint as a touch of Passover greenery.

Horseradish is trendy in the food

Courtesy of Robin Cohen

Childhood memories of her family making charoset at Passover inspired Robin Cohen’s Seder Sweetness recipes.

world right now, Cohen says.

Last Passover, Cohen got playful, offering a recipe on her blog for Wicked Son Eggs and Drunken Passover Grilled Cheese using kosher for Passover cheddar cheese, matzah and sweet kosher wine.

But making jams, conserves and preserves is her passion, and a family tradition. As a child, Cohen spent summers on Montauk, Long Island, where she and her brother helped their dad pick beach plums and grapes to make jars and jars of jam. They used the old-fashioned method of boiling the fruit for a long time to enhance the natural sweetness while using only a small amount of sugar and no pectin.

Jewish family gatherings were a time when the jams were served.

House guests always left with jars of the summer jams as gifts, she recalled. Offering a jar of the charoset conserve as a gift to a seder host adds something homemade and local, she suggests.

ROBIN COHEN’S SEDER SWEETNESS Ingredients: 8 cups apples (measure after peeling, coring, and dicing) 1 cup water 4 cups sugar 1/2 cup nuts 1/4 cup kosher sweet wine 2 tablespoons honey 2 tablespoons lemon juice Zest of 1 lemon 1 cinnamon stick Preparation: Toast walnuts in a 350 degree oven until lightly toasted and fra-

grant. Set aside to cool. Combine sugar, water, wine, lemon juice and spices in a large pot and cook over medium high heat until slightly thick and syrupy (about 10 minutes). Stir in apples and cook over medium heat until apples soften slightly. Boil until liquid starts to set (will be softer than a traditional jam). Remove cinnamon stick, mix in nuts.

Refrigerate or can. Yield: 8-10 8-ounce jars.

Happy Passover

B20 • PASSOVER

Recipes to please the crowd and de-stress the chef

By Jamie Geller Jewish Telegraphic Agency

salmon and using good quality canned salmon.

NEW YORK (JTA) — Passover may be the mother of all kitchen yuntifs, but stay cool and don’t stress. Here are some of my favorite recipes from last Passover that you will love this Passover and all year.

Last year, 99 percent of what I made for Passover weren’t actually Passover recipes. Of course they were kosher for Passover, but they didn’t require any major Passover ingredient tweaks. These recipes were developed with Passover in mind and have become staples in my year-round repertoire because they were super easy and got the most oohs and ahhs.

OK, real gourmet chefs don’t keep a tally of how many people flipped over this or that dish — but I really need to know. The winners on my menu get to come back and try for eternal stardom.

And the winners are:

• Zucchini and Red Bell Pepper Saute: Shamelessly simple and super beautiful, it is pleasing to the eye and the palate. Audience applause told me that the zucchini actually tasted better when prepped this way.

• Salmon Croquettes with Tropical Fruit Salsa: You can make this even easier by skipping the fresh

• Pomegranate Braised Brisket: So tender and so sweet, this piece of meat just melts in your mouth.

Follow my lead, and this year every dish you serve will be truly delicious, not just “pretty good for Pesach stuff.” Chag kasher v’sameach – Have a happy and kosher holiday!

SALMON CAKES WITH TROPICAL FRUIT SALSA Croquettes are cute and elegant for your starter course. They’re also wonderfully light and refreshing. The tropical salsa is a combination of fresh pineapple, mango, red onion, jalapeno, cilantro and lime juice—the perfect complement to the richness of the

salmon. The balance of sweet and savory flavors instantly pleases the palate. This is a starter with zing!

Times: Preparation: 15 minutes Cooking: 45 minutes Ready: 60 minutes Servings: 10 cakes Ingredients: For cakes: 1 (2-pound) side of salmon, skin on 1/2 cup red onion, diced 2 tablespoons matzah meal 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 1 teaspoon kosher salt Freshly ground black pepper 4 tablespoons olive oil For salsa: 1 cup diced pineapple 1/2 cup diced mango 1/2 cup diced red onion 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro 1/2 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped Juice of 1 lime 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

HAPPY PASSOVER FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT VISITING ANGELS Now offering Dimentia Care.

Courtesy of Joy of Kosher with Jamie Geller

Salmon Cakes with Tropical Fruit Salsa are an elegant, light and refreshing starter course.

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease a large baking sheet. Bake salmon skin side down for 25 to 30 minutes or until cooked all the way through. Let cool completely.

Once salmon is cooled, gently flake away from the skin and break into large chunks. Place in a large bowl and combine with eggs, red onion, matzah meal, salt and pepper. Stir to mix well.

Scoop about 1/3 cup at a time into your hands and form into a round patty about 1/4-inch thick.

Place on a sheet pan and repeat with remaining mixture until you have formed 10 cakes. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl combine pineapple, mango, red onion, cilantro, jalapeno, lime juice and salt. Mix well and set aside.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Fry 5 cakes at a time for about 5 to 8 minutes per side or until golden brown and crispy. Drain on a paper towel-lined plate while frying remaining cakes.

To serve, top each cake with a few tablespoons of salsa.

bell pepper and saute 5 more minutes or until warmed. Stir in paprika; salt and toss to coat.

POMEGRANATE BRAISED BRISKET Times: Preparation: 5 minutes Cooking: 4 hours Ready: 4 hours, 5 minutes Servings: 8 Ingredients: 1 four-pound first cut beef brisket 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 4 tablespoons olive oil, divided 3 medium onions, peeled and cut into eighths 6 cloves garlic, smashed 2 cups pomegranate juice 2 cups chicken broth 3 tablespoons honey 3 bay leaves 1 small bunch fresh thyme

Ingredients: 3 tablespoons olive oil 4 medium zucchini, sliced into ribbons using a vegetable peeler 4 cloves garlic, minced 4 roasted red bell peppers, thinly sliced 1 teaspoon paprika 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions: Preheat oven to 375. Season brisket with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large roasting pan or dutch oven over medium high heat. Sear brisket about 4 minutes per side or until browned. Remove and set aside.

Add remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil and saute onions and garlic for 5 minutes over medium low heat until softened. Return brisket to pan and add pomegranate juice, broth, honey, bay leaves and thyme. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cover. Transfer to preheated oven and roast for 2 hours.

Flip brisket over and continue roasting for 1 to 1 1/2 more hours or until tender. Let brisket rest for 10 minutes before thinly slicing against the grain. Strain liquid and serve on the side as au jus.

Directions: Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add zucchini ribbons and saute 6 to 8 minutes or until slightly softened. Add garlic and saute 3 minutes more. Add

Jamie Geller is the author of the best-selling “Quick & Kosher” cookbook series and creator of the Joy of Kosher with Jamie Geller magazine. She is also a host of a popular online cooking show.

ZUCCHINI AND RED BELL PEPPER SAUTE Times: Preparation: 10 minutes Cooking: 15 minutes Ready: 25 minutes Servings: 8

PASSOVER • B21

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

CARP from page 3 Christmas dinner.’ ” “The Carp in the Bathtub” is the title of Barbara Cohen’s 1972 children’s book, in which two children try to save a fish from meeting its fate in advance of their Passover seder. Cooks traditionally put the carp in the tub for a few days to fatten it up before cooking.

These days, for Jews in Los Angeles wanting to follow exactingly the old traditions, there is at least one store where live carp can be purchased — the Seafood Paradise Fish Market in Rosemead, which gets its stock from a farm in Northern California. According to manager Vincent Truong, almost all of Seafood Paradise’s customers are Asian or Asian-American, and most of those who buy carp are Chinese and Vietnamese.

“We usually cook it with soup,” Truong said. “It’s very tasty.”

There’s also one more way to find a live carp in Los Angeles: Grab a pole.

“Carp are in virtually every body of fresh water in Southern California,” Andrew Hughan of the California Department of Fish and MOTIVES from page 12 Elijah is waiting with G-d in Heaven and will come down to Earth and be the harbinger of the Messiah and the time of redemption.”

What does all of this have to do with Passover? “At the seder, we’re talking about a time of redemption when G-d delivered the Israelites out of slavery,” Peltz says. “Elijah is honored because he will signal the next period of redemption.”

“But Passover is not the only time that Elijah is present,” Peltz says. “He is part of our worship when that covenant with G-d is made, renewed and celebrated at different moments in our Jewish lives.”

“For example, at the end of every Havdalah, we sing ‘Eliahu Hanavi,’ to honor our covenant with G-d,” Gruenberg says. “The Saturday immediately preceding Passover is Shabbat Hagadol, the great Shabbat, and refers to a passage in Malachi that on the day of redemption, G-d will send Elijah to herald the Messiah. And, at a traditional bris, there is the Elijah’s Chair.

The person holding the baby sits in that chair and as the circumcision is performed and the new covenant is made with G-d, Elijah witnesses it.”

Witnesses – and confirms.

WRITER from page 13 Nathan Englander, who translated the haggadah service from Hebrew to English for the New American Haggadah, told JointMedia News Service that the task gave him a “new identity and ownership of the material.”

Englander ended up spending three years on a project that he had

Game told me. “They’re what’s called a non-regulated species.

There’s no limit and no season — so you can catch them to your heart’s content.”

Most anglers who fish for carp don’t eat what they catch, though.

“We practice catch and release angling purely out of respect for another animal’s life along with the environment it lives in,” Wayne Boon, director of the American Carp Society, wrote in an email.

Boon mostly fishes the lakes around L.A., but he said that some sections of the Los Angeles River are known to be home to carp as well.

Whether the carp in any given body of water is safe to eat is another matter. “Carp are in the middle range among game fish,” said Sherri Norris, executive director of the California Indian Environmental Alliance, a group that works to educate members of tribal communities about the dangers posed by legacy mining toxins, like mercury, that can seep into certain species of fish that live in particular areas.

In some waterways, carp is off limits to all people; in others, adult men and women beyond childbearing age may eat the fish sparingly.

“In that case,” Norris said, “you really do need to know for a fish like carp whether the body is highly contaminated or not.”

For instance, the carp in Magic Johnson Park Lake, an urban lake in South Los Angeles that is stocked by the California Department of Fish and Game with trout and catfish, should not be eaten by anyone, according to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

Anglers, for their part, are mostly out in search of big carp to catch — and those might be the most dangerous carp to eat. Carp can live for decades, and the longer they stay in any body of water, the more pollutants they can pick up.

What’s more, the big carp are also believed to be less tasty.

“In the case of carp, the smaller fish—up to 10 pounds—are the tastiest, so I’m told,” Boon told me.

Then again, if your carp’s ultimate destiny is to become gefilte fish, you can just douse it in horseradish.

“Elijah is the one who tells G-d that the Israelites are not observing the commandments,” Wachs says. “He accuses the Jewish people of breaking the covenant, so now he comes to the bris, to the seder and Shabbat to ensure that Jews are observing the commandments to perform those rituals and honor our covenant with G-d.”

That, the experts say, is one reason for the tradition of opening the front door and calling for Elijah. “In a sense, it is calling for Elijah to witness our seder,” Gruenberg says. “In another sense, it is giving the kids something to do.”

Wachs offers a third interpretation. For centuries, European Jews suffered terribly during the time between Passover and Shavuot, which coincides with Easter, Wachs says. “It was commonly believed that the Jews killed Jesus,” he says.

“There was a horrible calumny about Jews killing Christian babies for their blood to mix with the matzo. It was preached from pulpits, as was the statement that the Jews were drinking blood at seders.”

“It got so bad that some rabbis had people drink white wine,” Wachs says. “So, opening the door was their way to say, ‘Come into our house and see what we are doing.

Let anyone who is hungry come and eat with us at our table.’”

On that table is Elijah’s Cup. Why do we have a cup of wine for him, as opposed to another chair?

It’s a cup of wine for a reason, the experts say.

“The four cups of wine that we drink honor the four promises that G-d made to the Israelites in Egypt,” Peltz says. “’I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will deliver you from their bondage, I will redeem you with an out-stretched arm, and I will take you for my people.’ Those four things have been done. But there is a fifth promise: ‘I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.’

Now, that didn’t happen until after the Exodus, after the story that we are telling in the seder. So should we drink a fifth cup of wine during the seder or not? Elijah’s cup is that fifth cup – but we don’t drink it.”

“There are a few questions like that one that rabbis can’t answer,” Wachs says. “For those questions, there is a saying, ‘We’ll wait until Elijah comes and ask him.’”

We hope he’s thirsty.

thought might take six weeks. He found a partner to study the text with in a chavruta (one-on-one study) and examined a variety of haggadah texts. The result is a translation that conveys the Passover story’s meaning to an Englishspeaking audience in mellifluous, thoughtful, and fluid language.

“All who are expansive in their telling of the Exodus from Egypt

are worthy of praise,” Englander reads from the haggadah.

Foer said that “the central trope of the Haggadah, ‘you yourself should feel as if liberated from Egypt,’” is a “radical” idea if taken seriously. The New American Haggadah—intended to bring Jews together around the notion of shared memory—should help any reader fulfill that obligation.

Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Journal of Gr eater Los Angeles.

Reprinted with permission of The Jewish Exponent.

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