In the 1920s, when Esther Perkel was a young girl living in South Africa, she and her family traveled by tram and rickshaw to the Newtown Market in Johannesburg to buy bushels of fresh grapes grown in the vineyards around the Cape of Good Hope. Her family carted the grapes home shortly after Purim, where…
Not up for cooking for the Seders this year? Not a problem. Restaurants around North America are offering seats at the Seder table for those who are hungry for updated Jewish fare like matzo balls in a lemongrass broth, tropical haroset and Turkish flourless chocolate cake. At some, a Seder service will be led, while…
Jews who want to challenge the community use foods as a way symbolizing those challenges on the most heartfelt of Jewish rituals: the Passover seder. Each day, we will examine a different food and what it means. Passover has always been my favorite Jewish holiday. Even as a child, I remember being slightly embarrassed that…
I have long believed that Judaism is a system of vocational education — that is, of education for a vocation, a calling (from the Latin vocare, to call). I needn’t elaborate here on the substance and texture of that calling. I note only that such questions as ayeka (“Where are you?”) and such injunctions as…
It’s rare that an Orthodox rabbi chooses to omit an important Jewish ritual in his holiday celebrations. But in the spring of 2000, Rabbi Yosef Lipsker cleared his living room of furniture, set up three large dining tables and invited dozens of people to a special seder that included all the standard Passover observances –…
A town in northern Spain is preparing to hold its first Passover seder since the areas Jews were forced to flee during the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. The festive dinner will take place in the old center of the town of Ribadavia on March 25 and is being organized by the municipality’s tourism department in…
Last year I put a tomato on my Seder plate. I invite you this year to consider doing the same. The retelling of our liberation story at Passover is powerful, but we deepen the sense of the story through tasting it symbolically. We ingest the bitterness of slavery through the maror. The saltiness of the…
Passover, which starts on March 25 this year, is just around the corner. Families can keep children involved in the Seder with Passover Bingo, a board game invented by Denver lawyer Tamara Pester. “I have a niece and nephew who are now 9 and 12, and we always do Passover at my sister’s house in…
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