8 | APRIL 18 • 2024 J N 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.