34 April 18 • 2019
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s families and friends gather 
for Passover, they look for-
ward to seders with familiar 
customs, food and participants. But 
sometimes circumstances take us far 
from home, and we share a seder with 
strangers that creates long-lasting 
memories.

IN THE LAND OF KALASHNIKOVS
Rabbi Shneur Silberberg, outreach 
director of the Sara and Morris 
Tugman Bais Chabad Torah Center 
in West Bloomfield, was a 19-year-
old yeshivah student in New York 
City when he was chosen to organize 
a seder in Russia. He was one of 100 
students assigned by the Chabad 
Federation to travel in pairs to Jewish 
communities that had no rabbi.
“We were sent to Izhevsk in the 
Udmurt Republic, where Kalashnikov 
rifles are made,” Silberberg recalls. 
“We went a week in advance to pre-
pare the meal. We had to kasher 
a kitchen and rented a bar for the 
seders. We brought grape juice and 
other supplies and bought local fish 
for the meal. We had a young transla-
tor as we didn’
t speak Russian.” 
The first night drew 100 people, 
most of whom were inexperienced 
with seders. “We had to pick out a few 
things for an abbreviated seder. They 
quickly ate the matzah on the table, 
and we had the sense that we were 
feeding them. The one song that they 
knew was ‘
Hevenu Shalom Aleichem’
 
— not a Passover song — but we sang 
it together.” 
Silberberg had traveled widely by 
then but remembers this Pesach as 
“the one time I recall missing home. 
We were in the middle of nowhere and 
we couldn’
t communicate.”
Closer to home, this year Silberberg 
hopes to visit Jewish prisoners in two 
local jails, bringing them Passover 
foods if allowed by correctional offi-
cials.

A WAR-TIME SEDER IN CAIRO
Murray Green, a young podiatrist 
from Detroit, served in the U.S. Army 
Medical Corps during World War II. 
Around Passover one year, he was 
stationed in Cairo. As there was no combat in the 
area, his work duties were light and one day he 
roamed the dusty, narrow streets of Cairo. “I saw a 
Jewish star above a doorway, and a man inside the 
building invited me in,” he said. 
Communication was limited as neither spoke 
much of the other’
s language. However, the 

Egyptian man was able to invite Green to a seder 
at the synagogue that night. After returning to his 
base, Green recalled, “I took a pillow case and put 
all of the Passover food and other items that had 
been sent by American Jewish agencies to Jewish 
soldiers. They (the Cairo congregation) were 
amazed at the American matzah — how white and 

clean it was, compared to theirs. They 
were as poor as church mice.” 
The memories were still strong 
when he told the story to family 
members in the late 1960s. (Green 
passed away in 1997.)

EUROPEAN SEDERS WITH ARMY BRASS
Naomi Levine’
s father, the late Rabbi 
Alan Blustein, was an army chaplain, 
and the family moved every three 
years as he was transferred to new 
posts. She was born in France and 
remembers seders during the late 
1960s and early 1970s in Nuremberg 
and Stuttgart. “It was challenging 
being an observant Jew, especially for 
Passover,” she said. 
The family relied mainly on lim-
ited Passover foods from the Army 
base store and kosher butchers in 
Munich and Strasbourg. “We could 
get chicken, salami, matzah and gefilte 
fish. There wasn’
t any kosher ketch-
up or potato chips,” said Levine of 
Farmington. 
“Usually the first seder was a com-
munal seder with the Jewish soldiers 
in the area. The very top brass would 
come to these seders,” said her moth-
er, Judy Blustein, who now lives in 
Florida. Sometimes the seders were 
held in the Officers Club, which had 
to be kashered. 
The second seder was mainly family 
members and friends. During the late 
1950s and early 1960s, she remembers 
including Holocaust survivors at the 
table. “The rotating chaplains would 
tell us, ‘
Take care of this family.’
”
Once a large group of North African 
Jews who had recently immigrated to 
France came to the Blusteins’
 seder 
when they lived in Orleans, France. 
However, their Sephardic Passover 
customs were quite different. Blustein 
says that they ate beans, rice and 
other foods that are prohibited for 
Ashkenazi Jews during Passover.
When another army rabbi was 
responsible for the communal seder one year, the 
Blusteins spent Passover in Lugano, Switzerland, at 
a kosher hotel with Jews from all over Europe. “On 
Yontif, they would parade in their finery on the 
boardwalk. Any place we were was very different,” 
Blustein remembers. ■ 

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Far from
Home

SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

passover

In new places, seders are familiar but also
very different.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Dr. Murray J. Green, a 

podiatrist, in uniform in 1942 with his grandpar-

ents and aunt; Lt. Rabbi Alan Blustein of the U.S. 

Army Chaplaincy Corps; Rabbi Shneur Silberberg 

and Zeesy Silberberg; Judy and Rabbi Alan 

Blustein.

