Did you know that of all the Jewish traditions celebrated by Americans, the Passover Sedar is the most common. Pretty much every other Jewish holiday is lame– I mean on Hannukah we light candles, on Yom Kippur we fast, on Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) we blow out of a Shofar– but on Passover, at the Sedar, we chill out at the dinner table on pillows, consume 6 glasses of Manishevitz wine, sing, clap, dance and eat matza ball soup!
The traditional Sedar is long, and can go up to 4 or 5 hours. At my Grandpa’s house, my entire family used to sit around the table reading from the Maxwell House Haggadah from about 6 pm to 10 pm. He would droan on in Hebrew as the rest of us would pretend to pay attention and get excited when the songs came on. The Sedar plate would contain all of the correct ingredients, and we would follow the traditions to a T. My Grandpa would hide the matza and my brother and I would have to find it (obviously it was only hidden in two places every year- the oven and under a sofa cushion). We got pretty good at finding the afikoman and earning our gelt (money). We would always leave a cup out for Elijiah.
This year was quite different in my house. Now that my Grandfather has passed away, a lot of the old world traditions has passed away with him. We go to my other Grandparents house for the Sedar. We have an abbreviated version, which I must say I am quite relieved with. Basically my Mom’s cliff notes version of a Haggadah involves the overall story of the slaves in Egypt, the 10 plagues, and of course, the four questions. This appeals to me mainly because we get to the food faster. This year, we didn’t have enough wine, so my Mom said, “well, looks like we’ll have to drink Elijiah’s cup as well!”. It was very relaxed, no intense Judiasm, just my family and I spending a meal together, enjoying each others company
