Seder Supper for Passover

Last night was the first night of Pessah and throughout the city, people were burning little fires on the side of the road in in parks to burn the last of the chametz in their house. We were invited for Seder meal at my boss' parents-in-law's in Rehovot in the evening. The boss picked us up and as we booted it out of the city in his new car (he is very proud of it), we could see a line of cars trying to get to Jerusalem that reminded me of the 400 leaving Toronto on a July friday night.

The evening was what a family dinner is all about and we are very glad to have been a part of it. The whole family are really nice and super interesting people. There were five kids under the age of nine so the volume of the dinner party was quite high and the mood energetic. There are so many details of the evening that I could tell you about, but I have done my best to adhere to the code of blogging brevity.

Out from deep in a closet, Sarah, the family matriarch brought out a bunch of well loved copies of the Haggadah, a book with the ceremony of the Seder written in it. James and I played "guess what page we are on" with our English copies as the lengthy texts were read and sung by everyone at the table throughout the meal. The boss' six year old son put my Hebrew reading to shame even though the text was like Shakespeare-Brew.

The Seder itself is a traditional meal where many of the food items are symbolic of the story of slavery in Egypt and the exodus. There were matsot, hard boiled eggs, a paste of apples and pecans, chopped liver (it was a lot less tasty after I was told what it was), parsley dipped in salt water, bright red horseradish, red wine (some of which is flicked about when each of the plagues were mentioned) and some odd fish blobs that were over processed to the point of hotdog status. I guess really traditional people still buy the fish alive and keep them in the bath tub for a couple of days and there is a whole ceremony to making these fish blobs. This solves the mystery of why we had seen live fish for sale for the first time at the market on tuesday.

And then there is the feast part. Lots and lots of yummy food. After we had read and sung and ate our way through the Seder, Rami the Grandpa brought out his accordion and played as the rest of us hummed along and chatted and drank coffee.

By the way, James says the kippah he was lent really hides his bald spot well. I have a sneaking suspicion the one he was given was a old reject children's kippah, so perhaps we should buy him his own to keep on hand.

Late, late in the evening, full and happy we piled into the car whereupon James and the Boss' six year old son nodded off on the drive home.

I will end this post with the phrase that ends the Seder:

Next Year in Jerusalem.