1 COMMENT I WE AT JACK DEMMER FORD Extend Best Wishes For A Happy, Prosperous And Above All HEALTHY PASSOVER `Created' Family Does Own Seder JANE ARNOLD Special to The Jewish News CI01111; FORD OPEN LATE MON & THURS. 'TIL 9 P M. MICHIGAN A PLAN HEADQUARTERS Across from Ford's Wayne Assembly Plant 37300 MICHIGAN AVE. AT NEWBURGH ROAD - WAYNE, MI I-275 EXIT 22 TWOMILES EAST *bold 15 721-2600 • 1-800-878-FORD fr,41=- Livonia Fireman Dearborn Ann Arbor Ypsilanti Northville Nov Canton Westland AT JACK DEMMER FORD...SERVICE IS AN ATTITUDE NOT JUST A DEPARTMENT! RECIPIENT OF THE QUALITY CARE PRESIDENT'S AWARD. Ronald D. Kerwin, M.D., P.C. is pleased to announce the relocation of his Dermatology Practice to the Atrium Medical Building 6330 Orchard Lake Road (North of Maple Road) West Bloomfield, Michigan 48322 (313) 855-3366 Orchard Ridge Campus Oakland Community College Semi-Annual Student Pottery Sale April 5, 6 & 7th Center Court $ WANTED $ Herman Miller and Knoll Furniture 1940s - 1970s (w) 398.0646 (h) 6614236 Ask for Les $ TOP CASH PAID $ 11.:1 1 Thursday Friday 10-9 Saturday 10-6 WEST BLOOMFIELD • MICHIGAN Orchard Lake Road • North of Maple Air Conditioning and Heating 24 HOUR EMERGENCY DISPATCH Ask about Preventive Maintenance Program FREE ESTIMATES • 642'4555 • 33514555 66 FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 1990 CLASSIFIEDS GET RESULTS! Call The Jewish News 354.6060 T his year's Pesach marks our twelfth first-night seder and our fifth second-night seder. We have no blood family to come to our seders; we have created a Jewish family of our own to celebrate the holidays. The friend who started the seders with me has moved to California but when he talks about coming "home" for Passover, he means coming back to us. The music teacher, the single mother and her daughter, the now-divorced couple who helped found the Reconstructionist Havurah — these people are our Jewish family. And as a family, we come together at Pesach to celebrate our coming out of Egypt. Because we all come from assimilated backgrounds, we have no long family traditions to build on. So our Jewish family has had to create its own traditions. Every year we call the local Hillel and tell them we wel- come guests at our seder. It has become a tradition that I assure Mrs. Masters at the Hillel that we welcome inter- faith couples, and that she tell me again the story of the dreadful time an interfaith couple was turned away from the seder where she had sent them. It has become a tradition that we invite at least one non-Jew to our seder, so that my husband is not the only non-Jew at the table. It has become a tradition that we use the Birnbaum Haggadah, but we entertain requests for extra material. One year, my husband, who had spent several months memorizing it, recited Psalm 137 in Hebrew. Another year, a friend wanted to read the meditation following the Amidah. Last year, to satisfy our daughter, "David, Melech-Israel" became our standard Pesach song. It has become a tradition that my husband will hide the afikomen, every year in- sisting that "It's right there in plain sight" as the sear- chers become more and more discouraged. It is rapidly becoming a tradition, and a joke, that our guests will be offered their Jane Arnold is a writer in Massachusetts. choice of red or white, sweet or dry wine, and that the resulting confusion of match- ing glasses to people will add 15 minutes to seating the guests. It is rapidly becoming a tradition, and not quite a joke, that no matter how ear- ly I tell people to arrive, some- one will straggle in at least a half-hour after we plan to start the seder. And it has become a tradi- tion that every year I will mutter, "Someday, we're go- ing to do this right. We're go- ing to do the whole thing in Hebrew, all the way through, and everyone will sing. Some- day, we're going to have a real seder." A real seder. What is a real seder? When I asked myself that, I thought back to the New Jersey shore in the 1960s, where a small town boasted a It has become a tradition that we invite at least one non-Jew to our seder, so that my husband is not the only non-Jew at the table. coffeehouse called The Ink- well. Dimly lit, Dylan on the jukebox, coffee concoctions served on red-and-white tablecloths, dark rumors about what went on upstairs: the local teenagers gathered at The Inkwell and longed for California and real cof- feehouses. Many years later, a friend who made it to Berkeley, who lived the hippy scene and the artistic scene and the drug scene, said to me, "I didn't know it at the time, but The Inkwell was the real cof- feehouse." Last year at Pesach, as I reluctantly agreed to abbrev- iate Hallel for the sake of whining children and ex- hausted parents, as I darkly pointed out that someday we were going to all chant Hallel, in unison, in Hebrew, all the way through, that someday we were going to have a real seder, I stopped and looked at the seder table. Three generations of Jews gathered together in love and friendship, meeting as a fami- ly, to celebrate our freedom from bondage. Children of 1,2,3 and 12 learning that we, too, came out of Egypt with