Newsletter Post – April 25, 2024

Originally Publsihed April 25, 2024

Macaroons and matza toffee, brisket, salmon, or chicken, gefilte fish, matza ball soup, charoset (in so many different varieties!), huevos haminados or hard boiled eggs…our list of beloved Passover foods goes on and on.  Whatever foods you enjoyed at your seder earlier this week – traditional or new – I hope they were a delicious background to fruitful conversations and connections.

Rabbi Hara Person, writer and the chief executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, weaves the foods of the seder into her poem, “Passover Love Song.” (https://haraperson.com/2013/03/passover-love-song-a-poem/) Rabbi Person’s closing words remind us that our Passover recipes and all the preparation that goes into them are not mere foods:

“This is more than a recipe for nostalgia.

This is an urgent coded message of survival

Adaptation

Love

Read between the words.”

What is Judaism if not an ongoing process of survival, adaptation, and love? Food, on Passover in particular, is just one of the tools with which we engage in this process.

Tomorrow (Friday), I’ll be talking on CBC-KW about exactly this – our Jewish foodways and Passover. Tune into 89.1 (or online at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo) at 7:40 am on Friday, April 26 to hear the story. Especially this year, it is affirming to have stories of Jewish life, Jewish holidays, Jewish ritual lifted up for a broader audience.

Chag Pesach Sameach!