8 | APRIL 18 • 2024
J
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PURELY COMMENTARY
essay
My ‘Different’ Israeli Passover
W
hen I was a child,
we joined the family
seder at my father’s
parents’ apartment in the Bronx.
Grandpa led the ritual; Grandma
produced feasts on
successive nights
for 12 or 15 people
in that narrow
kitchen. When
Grandma died, the
big family seder
moved across the
Bronx to my par-
ents’ house, and my
mother had responsibility for the
feast; later my sister inherited the
responsibility. She had learned
how from helping Grandma. My
father led the ritual, as he had
learned it from his father.
When I married and had chil-
dren, my wife and I could not
keep going to the family seders.
We were on our own; my wife
produced the feasts. We did the
ritual as we had learned from
my grandfather and our other
teachers.
Then one year, we happened
to go back to the Bronx for the
seders; at the end of the second
seder, my father surprised us
by announcing that next year
the family would come to us in
California. And so it happened,
with the unexpected change that
my father died that fall. Now
my sister came to us a few days
before Passover to help my wife
prepare the family seders; and
they worked together nearly every
year for the next three decades.
Now it has changed again: We
have moved to Israel.
To recreate the ritual, we adapt
and change. The seder remains,
enacted by a changing cast of
characters as we come and inevi-
tably, eventually, go.
Why is this night different
from all other nights? Let me
count the ways.
We will have one seder this
year.
After many years as the hosts of
the seder, implementing the ritual
(with my wife) as we learned it
from my grandfather and our
other teachers, we now plan to
be guests at the seder as my son,
his wife and their children have
developed the ritual. My grand-
parents will be present among
the streams contributing to their
seder.
And what else will be different:
Instead of unpacking the pots,
pans, dishes and silverware, red-
olent with memories of Passovers
past, we intend to buy, all new,
the few utensils we will need for
the intermediate days and the
last days of the festival. Buying
new should be easy: We expect
the housewares stores in this
neighborhood to stock up for the
onrush of customers who need
pots, pans, dishes and silverware
in time for Passover.
Now, as I write, Purim has
just ended. The past few days, all
across the neighborhood, I have
seen people in costume. Passing
strangers, not necessarily Jewish,
greeted me “Purim Sameach”
(Happy Purim). Broadcast and
internet news programs began
and ended with that greeting; the
announcers and talking heads
started and ended their inter-
views with that greeting. On the
roads, sound trucks rolled by
from time to time, playing Purim
music. The public space gets
occupied by Purim here the way
the public space gets occupied by
Thanksgiving in Michigan.
When Thanksgiving ends, the
public space in Michigan gets
occupied by the next big national
holiday. When Purim ends in
Israel, the public space begins to
get occupied by Passover.
Purim has ended, and now
the website for our local super-
market, Shufersal (the name
means “Beauty basket,
” but some
English speakers read the name
as “Supersal” = “Super basket”)
leads with a banner advertising
products for Passover: cleaning
products at 50% lower prices,
reduced prices for wine, wine
vinegar, cooking oil, kosher-for-
Passover baking ingredients and
baked goods, canned foods, all
sorts of prepared foods, and also
specials on locally grown fruits
and vegetables.
I checked the website of a com-
petitor supermarket and found
some advertising for Passover
products, but not yet as extensive
a promotion; not yet.
When we ordered grocer-
ies from the supermarket in
Michigan, a habit that we got into
during the COVID lockdown,
we had to tell the shoppers, “No
substitutions.
” That applied all
during the year: Without that
message, who knows what we
would get when the market
did not have exactly the item
we ordered. “No substitutions”
especially applied to shopping
for Passover; the market typically
had a small kosher-for-Passover
section in aisle after aisle of other
foods. Here in our neighborhood
in Israel, all the supermarkets
have only kosher foods, and, for
Passover, only kosher-for-Pass-
over. Just about every minimarket
(in Hebrew, “Makolet”) also.
If the store’s shopper substitutes
an item, at worst it will contain
“kitnyot,
” edible seeds that are not
leavened grains (“chametz”), but
which Ashkenazic Jews avoid eat-
ing on Passover. The substitution
will not include anything we need
not to own on Passover.
And the supermarket will have
plenty of those products made
with kitnyot. Most Jews in Israel
are not Ashkenazi; the ready-
to-eat prepared foods under the
Passover banner include rice-
based dishes, pastries made with
rice flour, soy flour, chocolate
crunch bars with rice, rice-based
breakfast cereals. The canned
foods include green peas and
beans. Those who want to keep
the Ashkenazic customs need to
remain alert as they order their
provisions for Passover.
Louis
Finkelman
Contributing
Writer
TOP: A container of hummus with
a prominent “Kosher for Passover”
label. The label specifies “for those
who eat kitnyot.” Most Michigan
Jews come from Ashkenazic
families, who, on Passover,
traditionally avoid eating kitnyot
products such as hummus, made
from chickpeas. The majority of
Israeli Jews, from Sephardic, Mizrahi
or other backgrounds, generally
would eat hummus on Passover.
ABOVE: A container of tahini with
rabbinic certification for Passover.
A similar story. Ashkenazic Jews
typically would also avoid eating this
since it is made of sesame seeds.
Non-Ashkenazi Jews generally do
not have that restriction.