A month ofpreparations gets us set or Passover.
echnically, we have just embarked on a celebration of religious freedom that
is merely eight days and eight nights long. So why have we had matzah meal
cake loaves and Passover candy-fruit slices in our homes for weeks?
In actuality, we've had Passover on our minds since about the time the spe-
cial five-pound packages of matzah crept into the supermarket in February.
Since then, everything in our kitchens has been replaced or scrubbed or salvaged from
last Passover. Our pantries and refrigerators are stocked with bunless hotdogs and plastic
silverware for bag lunches and two-liter bottles of Pepsi for trips to the movies.
For Passover 5759, as always, the trick is in the preparations.
Hillel of Metro Detroit, for example, got into the swing with a pre-holiday "all-in-fun"
seder on the theme of chocolate. Loosely following the order of a full-fledged Haggadah-
using seder, the group replaced wine with chocolate milk, celery dipped in salt water
became strawberries dunked in chocolate sauce and all the matzah was chocolate covered.
Sitting around their "mock seder tables," guests choked down the bitter unsweetened bak-
ing chocolate instead of maror, and when program director Sharon Wise listed the 10 plagues
of chocolate-eaters, she included such punishments as "weight gain, acne and cavities."
For kosher caterer Paul Kohn, preparation for Passover meant baking hundreds of
chocolate oblivion desserts (90 at a time), cooking more than 3,000 pieces of gefilte fish
and making 6,000 matzah balls.
Then, he said, when his customers' food is ready, he works "twice as hard" entertaining
"a minimum of 12 houseguests" with outings and "wall-to-wall food and round-the-clock
meals." He gets a break at home, where his wife, Leah, is in charge of the kitchen.
In preparing for the Women's Campaign and Education Department Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Detroit's Women's Seder, co-chairs Sissi Lapides and Nancy Gad-Harf
GETTING READY ON PAGE 17
4/2
1999
14 Detroit Jewish News