April 13, 2015

Well-traveled Pesach Food

Short version: Luggage Found

Long version below:

For those who read my Casablanca post, you will know that my luggage was lost en-route. The bulk of that particular bag contained Kosher for Passover food for me to enjoy during the holiday. While not of terrible urgency, it is certainly a time-sensitive product, becoming highly desired for Pesach, but much less attractive immediately afterwards.

As fate would have it, on the last day before the final day of Pesach, I received a call that my long-lost bag had been located, but would only land that evening (when it would already be the holiday and I could not travel to retrieve it). Yesterday, Sunday, I finally retrieved my possessions from the airport, just a few hours after the completion of Pesach.

Everything was there, though no longer in pristine condition. It seems it had quite a journey. To recount: After departing from Tel-Aviv my bag landed in Istanbul where it waited several hours for its next flight. Unannounced, the bag was forced to stop in Casablanca, where who knows how it may have been manhandled. From there it crossed the Atlantic to arrive in Sao Paulo. However, traumatized from accompanying me, it decided to escape from my presence, removed its identifying tag and grabbed a flight to Santiago de Chile. There it enjoyed its view of the Pacific Ocean and the mountains and volcanoes surrounding the city. However, eventually, despite its best efforts at escape and subterfuge the authorities tracked the bag and forcibly put it back on a flight to Sao Paulo. It just couldn’t blend in as a Chilean bag. Resigned, the bag cooperated and deemed it time to be reunited in Montevideo.

The bag had enjoyed a two week vacation from me, and the results were readily noticed. Crumpled, wrinkled, smushed – it obviously did not travel well, despite its globe-trotting escapade. The prized Kosher for Passover food just didn’t have the same allure after Pesach.

One of the many unforeseen blessings of not having my bag (I’m sure there are many, though I have trouble enumerating them) is that I was transported to the Pesachs of my youth, where the food selection was minimal. I remembered palatatively, viscerally, Pesach. It is curious that one needs to travel to Uruguay to feel Pesach.

In Israel, in New York, in the many beautiful hotels and resorts around the world that cater to Kosher-eating Jews, the menus are so rich, so varied, the baked goods so bread-like that there is little to remind one of Pesach besides the barely eaten Matza at the table. There is something unrecognizable about our modern-day Pesach. I ponder this as I munch on stale coconut macaroons.

April 6. 2015

 Pesach Preparation, Experience, Quality

There is a communal Pesach Seder that has been sponsored by a local family for a generation. Last year, was the first year the patriarch of the family, who had initiated this noble tradition, was no longer counted amongst the living. In his honor his children and grandchildren continued the sponsorship and attended the Seder in full-force.

I had the distinct honor of leading that Seder. Over the years, the Seder became almost the exclusive venue for the needy and the infirm. Their main interest seemed to be the food. Immediately after dessert, 200 participants performed their own Exodus from the proceedings, leaving a handful of die-hard Hagaddah readers left.

This year, the sponsors decided to upgrade the level of the catering, hiring perhaps the best Kosher caterer in Montevideo. They also very generously donated beautiful Hagaddot – last year’s Hagaddot were ancient, poorly constructed (no page numbers and pages out of order) and insufficient.

I also came prepared.

After understanding first-hand the nature of my clientele and their interests I went on the offensive.

I consulted with my Rabbi in Israel as to what is the absolute minimum of the Hagaddah that needs to be said. I printed out a guide as to the page numbers we would be covering and handed it out to everyone. At the beginning of the Seder I announced that I would make a deal with the participants that were eager to leave immediately after dessert. I would shorten the event if they agreed to stay 15 minutes after dessert. They nodded their agreement.

We made Kiddush and drank the 1^st cup of wine. We washed hands (not enough washing stations – note for next year). We ate the Karpas. We broke the Matza. We sang the popular songs. I made the youngest person at each table stand for Ma Nishtana.

We were 250 people in a large hall. 30 tables. Three long rows of 10 tables each. I divided each row into “Pesach”, “Matza” and “Marror” and had each section practice screaming it. When it came time to declare Pesach, Matza and Marror, the hall shook from the force of everyone yelling it. We did the plagues. We sang Dayeinu. We drank the 2^nd cup, washed for the Matza (biggest critical path – must have more washing stations). Ate the Matza, ate Marror, ate the Sandwich and had a sumptuous meal.

I made a point of visiting every single table at least once, if not twice. The people were ecstatic with the Hagaddah, the service and especially the food. For some of them, it was likely the best meal they’ve had in years. There were a number of families that paid to participate. There were some families with young children, as well as lone elders, disabled and social services clients. We hosted a Russian-Israeli engineer who was visiting from Nigeria to work on a Uruguayan natural gas project. We also had the emissary of the Keren Kayemet together with his wife.

I got to field a variety of questions and issues, including why the Kosher chickens this Pesach had more feathers, one drunken crasher that needed to be kicked out and advising the guests that the Hagaddot were not gifts and to please not steal them from the premises.

My highlight and I think as well for many of the participants was Crossing the Sea. Between the main course and dessert I forced everyone to stand up. Then I marched them out of the dinning hall into the smaller foyer. I got four volunteers to hold blue tablecloths between them. They created a wall in front of the crowd. I recounted how our ancestors in their escape from Egypt found themselves chased by the Egyptian army and trapped by the Sea. The Jews complained (what else is new?). God commands Moses to take the people forward. The two tablecloths suddenly parted and instead of a wall we had a passageway. Two hundred people marched through the shimmering blue passageway, surprised, excited, chatting happily as they made their way to freedom and dessert.

After an excellent dessert I was mildly surprised to see almost everyone sitting and waiting expectantly. I had them eat the final Matza, the Afikoman, a Rabbinic command, which they had missed out on last year. We then drank the 3^rd cup of wine (my head was really spinning at this point, given the large goblets we were using). We sang Echad Mi Yodea, drank the 4^th cup, sang Leshana Haba Beyerushalayim and then to the surprise of many, I dismissed the crowd and thanked them for their participation.

They didn’t need to skulk off while the service was still going on. They had made it to the end — perhaps for the first time in their Communal Seder history. Almost everyone came up to me smiling to thank me as well as for the wonderful food. Many said it was their best Seder ever.

Last year I was sick going in to the Seder, couldn’t talk by the end of it and it took me a while to recover. This year, I could still speak by the end, was feeling good (though tipsy) and actually made it to and participated in the end of another Seder I was invited to.

By the next day I was already getting feedback how people thought it was an amazing Seder, and how others already want to sign up for next year.

I suspect it was mostly because of the food, though I like to think the managing also had a bit to do with it. There is something to preparation and experience that improves the quality.

Pesach and Genetic Memory

As a child, I would sometimes have nightmares. The nightmares were filled with emaciated, starving people, crowded into dark wooden barracks. And they were filled with fear. Fear of an unknown, unspoken, imminent, gruesome death. There was no hope. It was no longer a question of “if”; it was only a question of “when”.

My grandmother survived the extermination camp of Auschwitz. My grandfather survived both the German and then the Russian labor camps. They never spoke of their experiences. My father also never spoke of what little he knows of their Holocaust travails. Yet somehow, without a spoken transmission, I have always had a strong visceral aversion to all things relating to that dark period of our history.

I might have been influenced by a Jewish education that remembered and commemorated the Holocaust in somber annual ceremonies and educational activities. It might have been the few pictures and accounts we saw and heard from others. It might just be a heightened sensitivity to such a horrid past or just a hyperactive imagination. But for whatever reason, I have a strong irrational loathing of Holocaust matters.

Where do these feelings come from? Have I unconsciously inherited some of the trauma of my grandparents? Or can memories be passed on genetically? There are some scientists that now believe it is possible.

In December of 2013, Brian Dias and Kerry Ressler of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, published a tantalizing discovery in the scientific journal, Nature Neuroscience, (link to scientific article: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n1/full/nn.3594.html and link to the less technical version: http://www.nature.com/news/fearful-memories-haunt-mouse-descendants-1.14272#/b1).

They describe experiments where a mouse is exposed to a smell while simultaneously receiving an electric shock to its body. The mouse learns to fear that smell. What is surprising is that both the child and the grandchild of the mouse also exhibit fear of the smell, despite no previous encounter with the smell. This seems to prove some type of inherited memory, or at the very least sensitivity to an ancestor’s experience.

If in fact, humans also have the capacity to inherit memories from their ancestors, or at least some sensitivities, it may help us better understand some of the rituals in Judaism.

In Jewish custom and tradition, there is perhaps no ritual that aims to transmit some experiential memory as strongly as the Pesach Seder.

Pesach celebrates and commemorates the exodus of our newborn nation from the enslavement of the Egyptian empire more than 3,300 years ago. It was a momentous, transformative event in the history of the world, when one people was separated and removed from the midst of another, with accompanying miracles, plagues, terror, and destruction, including the divine annihilation of the Egyptian military, the strongest fighting force in the world at the time.

To remember our exit from the bondage of Egypt and the formation of our people, the Torah itself, in its recounting of the event, mandates a variety of actions that are meant to be repeated for generations and are critical components of membership in the nation of Israel. This is so much so, that one who does not fulfill some of the specific commandments of Pesach is considered as if they are “cut off” from the people of Israel.

The most famous commandment is the eating of the Matzah, the unleavened bread. We also have the eating of the Maror, the bitter herbs, the drinking of four cups of wine (or grape juice); the abstention from and removal of Hametz (leavened products) from our diet and our possession; the recounting and elaboration of the Exodus event at the family table. There is the explicit demand of the Hagada (the text we use at the Pesach Seder) to feel as if we ourselves escaped Egypt.

Can you imagine the taskmaster’s whip brutally lashing into your scarred back, reopening barely healed wounds, forcing you to inhuman feats of strength, though part of you is ready to die? Can you imagine the relief and the wonder when plagues start to hit your Egyptian oppressors, giving you, finally, the much prayed for break from the arduous enslavement? Can you imagine the sight of all your brothers and sisters, all your cousins and uncles, your entire tribe, the entire people of Israel getting ready to leave the cursed land of Egypt? Can you imagine the fear, the awe, the amazement, as you, together with your fellow escapees of the people of Israel have your back against the sea, with the entire Egyptian army bearing down on you, only to have the sea miraculously split, for you to walk on dry land within the sea and then to see the Egyptian army drowning at your feet? Can you imagine all of this? Can you talk about it? Can you convey this to your children? That is what the Pesach Seder is about.

If we say that on the Seder night we are reliving the events of the Exodus, then it hints at the possibility that we may, in some fashion, have lived through those events. What if memories somehow can be transmitted biologically? What if there is some momentous memory that our ancestors have passed down to us that is nestled deep within our subconscious? There would at the very least be some comfort, some familiarity, perhaps even a sense of déjà vu at certain reenactments. The Seder would serve to reinforce those memories. Those memories would continue to breed true in future generations.

At the Seder, our senses are exposed to a variety of memory triggers. We have the unusual but memory-stirring food, the strange but familiar aromas, the ancient time-worn liturgy, the ancestral songs, the Biblical rituals and all in the presence of family. If there is any holiday that demands the presence of generations together, of parents, children, grandchildren, it is the Seder.

There is something unique in the power of the Seder. It is perhaps our strongest anchor to our memories and connection to our past. It is the perhaps our strongest anchor for the demands, tasks and challenges of the future. Let us prepare ourselves well for our role as physical, spiritual and educational conduits of this great chain of our history.

Chag Kasher Ve’sameach,

Ben-Tzion