During Passover, we are all young again. We gather around the seder table and delight at how our positions have changed. Those who eagerly -- or reluctantly -- asked the Four Questions now lead others in prayer and song. As we remember our rich journey from slavery to freedom, we look forward in hope. And we are all young again...
Jewish transitions are marked in a number of ways. For example, I used to sit at the kids' table for Passover -- you know, that folding card table placed at the end of the long, bedecked dining-room table. The kids' table didn't get the fancy tablecloth or the fine china. Our table was covered with a nice enough cloth, but...
Passover brings Jews together -- across generations, denominations and distances -- as we travel to see parents, children, aunts, uncles and friends at our annual seders. Three-quarters of the Philadelphia-area's Jewish households will participate in a seder next week, according to a 2009 study sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Much of this holiday is about food --...
For most of my life, when Pesach arrived, I would try, as the Hagaddah instructs, to think of myself as someone who had personally gone out of Egypt -- and fail. My problem wasn't that I was a comfortable, middle-class American Jew rather than the beaten, starving, abject heir of 400 years of enslavement. No, the problem was that I...
After prepping for Passover by preparing matzah-ball soup, kugel and everything in between, Shelley Chamberlain of Cheltenham is more than happy to sit back for a catered second seder at her synagogue. Growing up in a Reform home in Pittsburgh, the now 52-year-old said that her family almost never took part in two seders: One was considered enough. After all,...
Sivan 16, 5773
