The Three Best Things About Passover This Year

By Susan Esther Barnes

The best thing about Passover this year is we had a seder! Last year, my father, alav hashalom, died two and a half days before the start of Passover, and although I had most of the ingredients already, I just wasn't up to cooking a big meal or making a seder. Don't worry, the unused food went into the bin at the synagogue for distribution to those who needed it.

The second best thing was the greeting I got from Ralph the morning after the holiday ended: "Pizza, pasta, or hamburger bun?" He asked this question, of course, because during the week of Passover we don't eat food with leavening in it, and many people include pasta in the list of forbidden foods, for reasons I won't go into here. So for a week, we get no bread, no pizza, no burger buns, no sandwiches. For a carb lover like me, it's tough, even though I do like matzo. My answer was, I ended my week-long bread fast with mushroom pizza!

The third best thing was the matzo ball soup reaction I've been getting at work. A few years ago, as Passover was approaching, one of my colleagues, who is Jewish but not observant, and I somehow started talking about matzo ball soup. I agreed to bring some in for her during the holiday. Other (non-Jewish) people saw it and wanted some, so I started a tradition of bringing some in for everyone each year.

Last year I was in mourning so I didn't make any matzo ball soup, and I when I mentioned it this year, people got so excited. In fact, there were a couple of people who were not going to be in the office on the newly announced Matzo Ball Soup Day, so I put aside one small container of soup (and matzo balls) for each of them to eat the next day.

And for next year: We've been using the same Passover haggadah (the book that lays out the Passover rituals and takes us through the Exodus story) forever. I have ordered two new versions, and I'm looking forward to looking through them, in order to have an even better seder next year.

What were your three best things this year, and what are you planning for next year?

Freedom Doesn’t Mean Everything is Perfect

By Susan Esther Barnes

When I think about Passover starting at the end of next week, I feel a bit broken, like the headset pictured above, which got into an altercation earlier this week with our cat, Thomas. Passover is one of my favorite holidays. I love the food and the celebration of freedom from slavery. I especially love matzo, which I associate with visits to my paternal grandmother when I was a child. I love the rituals of the seder plate and the four cups of wine.

I’ve always thought of Passover like the dandelion pictured below that I saw on a walk I took this afternoon: Delicate and short-lived, yet perfect.



But last year my father died just two days before the start of Passover. From now on, thoughts of Passover for me will always be connected with thoughts about his death. From now on, part of me will always feel a bit broken during this holiday.

It helped me to realize, though, that freedom is not about perfection. Just as the Israelites were afraid to enter the promised land after escaping from Egypt and had to wander in the desert for 40 years, just as the country of Israel represents freedom and self-determination for the Jewish people and yet has struggled for survival ever since, so too we remove 10 drops of wine from our cup at Passover to commemorate the 10 plagues and to acknowledge that our joy is lessened by the pain of others.

Freedom does not mean perfection. It does not mean unbridled joy. It does not mean all our problems are solved. Passover does not mean these things, either. And I’m okay with that.

I Don't Want to Have Passover This Year

By Susan Esther Barnes

Usually, Passover is one of my favorite holidays. A celebration of freedom, surrounded by matzah, brisket, chopped liver, and four cups of wine - what's not to love?

At some point a few years ago, I told my friend Rose, may her memory be a blessing, that I didn't like my seder plate. This is the special plate we use at Passover, which holds the symbolic Passover foods like an egg, bitter herbs, charoset, etc. I bought it because I needed one, and it was the one I disliked the least.

At the end of 2008, when my husband and I moved into our new home, Rose gave us one of her seder plates as a housewarming gift. Pictured above, it's lovely. I like it much better than my old plate, both because I prefer how it looks, as well as because it's from Rose.

In 2009, after we used Rose's seder plate for our first Passover in our new home, I wrote her a second thank-you note for her gift.

In 2010, when Rose was lying in bed, slowly dying, I thanked her again for the plate. She said she was glad she had given it to me, and to know it would serve as a reminder of her.

I have been saying the Mourner's Kaddish for Rose every week for eight months now. One would think that would be long enough for me to realize the reality and finality of her death. Yet somehow, similar to how her absence at Yom Kippur hit me hard, the thought of celebrating Passover for the first time after her death hurts more than I had expected.

I know it isn't Passover that I don't want. What I don't want - the thing that, like Passover, is inexorably advancing toward me no matter how much I wish I could somehow avoid it - is having to come to terms with the reality of a world without Rose.

The Sliding Scale of Kosher

By Susan Esther Barnes

Earlier this week, the tour guide we had on our trip to Israel last summer came to our synagogue to give a lecture. Those of us who were on the Israel trip were invited to come for dinner with him before the lecture, as a kind of reunion.

It was a Tuesday night, when there are a bunch of teens there for classes the synagogue holds weekly for kids who are not in Jewish day schools. Before classes start, the kids are treated to a pizza dinner. So that’s what we had too: pizza and Caesar salad, plus a nice spinach salad one of the women on the Israel trip brought.

As we were talking, I noticed our guest from Israel was not eating. I heard him mention cheese to one of the other people. I asked him, “Do you not eat cheese?” and he replied, “I eat cheese, but not just any cheese.” Oh, right.

He’s Modern Orthodox, so although there were three flavors of vegetarian pizza offered, and therefore no mixing of meat and dairy, the cheese itself was not kosher. Plus, since the pizzas were made in a place that also cooks meat, in an oven where meat is cooked, the pizzas weren’t kosher even if the cheese on them had been kosher before it was used. Similar issues apply to the cheese on the two salads.

Luckily, the rabbi ran over to the café at the JCC next door and bought our guest some tuna salad and a bag of Fritos so he wouldn’t have to go hungry. It did remind us, though, that what passes for kosher at a Reform synagogue doesn’t cut it with an Orthodox person, no matter how Modern they may be.

Last night, I went to a cafeteria-style burrito restaurant, where you walk down the line and point out the various items and condiments you want in your burrito (or rice bowl).

The woman in line in front of me happened to be from my synagogue. The man behind the counter grabbed the spoon in one of the two containers of beans and asked her, “Do you want beans?”

She said, “The other kind of beans, please, it needs to be vegetarian.” So he added the vegetarian beans, and then she asked for chicken on the burrito. He looked at her, startled, and repeated, “Chicken?” He was obviously confused, because she had just insisted on vegetarian beans. It made no sense to him that she would ask for meat with vegetarian beans.

Of course, to me it made perfect sense. In Mexican restaurants, the non-vegetarian beans contain either lard, or bacon, or both. The woman is Jewish, so she doesn’t eat pork, thus she wanted the vegetarian beans. But she’s not a vegetarian. Chicken is fine.

Along these same lines, which an Orthodox Jew might dub issues of “fake kosher,” I’ve also been contemplating the issues of “fake treyf,” or items that appear not to be kosher but are.

Probably the most common example of this is turkey bacon. Readers of my blog may recall that the thing I miss most about my non-kosher life is the bacon. (Please pause for a moment of silence while I reflect wistfully.) When I mention this to people, sometimes they ask, “Why not just eat turkey bacon instead? It tastes about the same.”

One helpful person even pointed out you can now get kosher bacon-flavored seasoning because, as the company’s slogan reads, “Everything should taste like bacon.”

Aside from my assumption that turkey bacon and fake bacon flavoring can’t be any healthier than “real” bacon, it seems to me to be missing the point. Why keep kosher if you’re going to eat things that appear to be, and taste like, forbidden foods?

Sure, one can argue we keep kosher because we’re commanded to, and since God didn’t command us to avoid eating kosher foods disguised as non-kosher foods it’s perfectly okay, but I’d like to think it’s deeper than that.

I’d like to think there’s something to the idea that we’re also learning a lesson about taming our desires. I’d like to think that by denying ourselves certain things, maybe we can learn to have a little empathy for others who have to do without things they would like to eat or have.

I would like to think that paying attention to what we eat reminds us of our covenant with God, and that we shouldn’t look for ways to weasel out of keeping kosher by using technicalities any more than we’d want God to look for technicalities to weasel out of God’s end of the bargain.

The same thing applies to Passover foods. On Passover, we’re not supposed to eat foods made with leavening, to remind us that when we fled Egypt we didn’t have time to let our bread rise. Yet the Passover section of the supermarket is filled with “kosher-for-Passover” cake and cookie mixes that look and taste like they have baking soda or powder in them even though they don’t.

In the end, it comes down to the letter or the law vs. the spirit of the law. Those who eat the turkey bacon and the Passover cake seem more interested in the former, while those who eat the vegetarian pizza seem more interested in the latter. And that’s how we get the sliding scale of kosher.

Adventures in Passover Shopping

By Susan Esther Barnes

I’m not a shopper. It’s a small thing, really, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. Whether it is food, clothing, or something else, my goal is to go in, get what I need, and get out as quickly as possible so I can get on with whatever it is I really want to be doing that day. Anything that slows me down is agitating.

Unsurprisingly, shopping for Thanksgiving is not my favorite thing in the world. I know the parking lot will be crowded, the store will be packed, and the checkout lines will be slow, but at least I’m confident that, with a bit of patience, eventually I will escape with everything I need. Not so with Passover.

Sure, in the days before Passover the store won’t be as crowded as it is leading up to Thanksgiving, but, depending on its proximity to Easter, it may not be a walk in the park, either. But, for me at least, the true tension has always been in wondering how many stores I will need to visit to get everything I need. Often, the trip involves at least one stop for staples such as chicken broth, another stop for various items the first store didn’t have in stock, and a third stop at one of the shrinking number of delis still in existence that carries chopped liver.

For those of you accustomed to the US Thanksgiving traditions, consider what it would be like if you arrived at the store a day or two before Thanksgiving and found you could get most of the things you wanted, but there were no turkeys or cranberries. On Passover, it’s worse. If you can’t get a brisket, that may feel like not getting a turkey on Thanksgiving, but you can substitute a chicken or something else for the main course.

However, the Passover meal isn’t equivalent to Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a religious holiday during which we remember our time as slaves in Egypt and celebrate our freedom. Some of the foods associated with the holiday, like the foods associated with Thanksgiving in the US, are purely traditional. Brisket and gefilte fish fall into this category.

On the other hand, in Hebrew the holiday is “Pesach,” which means “order.” As such, there are certain things we’re supposed to do in a certain order, such as eating bitter herbs with matzo. We may exercise some discretion in our choice of which bitter herbs to use, but the matzo needs to be there, it must be kosher for Passover, and there needs to be a lamb shank bone on the seder plate.

When I lived on the San Francisco Peninsula, I shopped at a local market. Some years they seemed to have everything I needed, and other years they didn’t, but they were always very helpful. Once, when I asked for brisket, the butcher shook his head, thought a moment, then asked me how many pounds I wanted it to be. He asked me to wait a moment, wheeled a side of beef out of the walk-in refrigerator, went zip-zip-zip with a knife, and plopped a nice brisket on the scale, saying, “Here you go!” In these days of pre-packaged meat, I believe that may be the first, and the last, time I’ve ever had the chance to see a real butcher in action. Similarly, in years when there were no lamb shank bones set aside, they always managed to scrounge something up for me.

Since then, I have moved to Marin County, which is, I’ve been told, the county with the largest percentage of Jews in the state. So you would think the stores here would know a thing or two about Passover. Unfortunately, although they gamely put out a display with some matzo and other niceties, they just don’t seem to have caught on to some of the finer points. Neither Lucky nor Safeway seem to have twigged to the notion that every Spring people come up to the meat counter to ask for a brisket and a lamb shank bone.

As a result, it has become a tradition for me to improvise by having a plan for a non-brisket dinner in my mind just in case, and to seek out the cheapest package of bone-in lamb I can find, so I can cut the meat off and pretend the bone is a shank. Not exactly kosher, but it’s closer to the real deal than the alternative of beets I recently heard is used by vegetarians to symbolize lamb’s blood in its place. And pity the poor man I encountered one year, whose wife sent him to the store in search of schmaltz, absolutely required for her chopped liver recipe, but unheard of in Safeway.

This year, finally, I did something I have never done before. Indeed, it had never before occurred to me. This year, I shopped at a particular store for no reason other than I had heard it was owned by Jews. Yes, I went to Mollie Stone’s, and there I found the answer to my prayers. There was chopped liver in the deli case, piles of brisket in the meat department, kosher-for-Passover horseradish in both the red and white varieties, cases of chicken broth – on sale no less! – you get the picture. Everything all under one roof.

The guy at the meat counter didn’t look at me funny when I shyly asked for a lamb bone. Instead, he said, “Of course!” and immediately handed one over. Free of charge. The guy at the check-out lane glanced over my items, recognized what they were for, and asked if there was something in Hebrew he could say that would be appropriate for others doing their holiday shopping. I recommended “chag sameach,” which he repeated several times and wrote down for future reference.

For the first time during my years of Passover shopping I felt like I’d been in a store that said, “Jews are welcome here!” It’s not like I’ve ever had an experience like my father did at a store in Idaho, where he asked for lox and was told, “Sorry, we’re out, all those Jews got it already.” But there is something so welcoming, that is such a relief, in knowing there is someplace I can go without worrying about whether they will have what I need or if they will look at me like I’m a nut when I ask. It’s a small thing, really, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.