But what makes a book “good”?  I read many different kinds of books.  They’re all good but they’re good in very different ways.  Because my days are filled with liturgy and nonfiction, in my free time I read mostly fiction and poetry.  I read a lot, but my list of books read in any given month do not make a lot of objective or easily classifiable sense.

There is fiction I read because the language takes my breath away.   These books push me to become a better writer.  They inspire me to think more about language.  The characters are complex and the writing is smart, poetic and challenging.  The imagery is dense and well-drawn.  The dialogue and the relationships are thick and multi-dimensional.  Sometime there isn’t even that much of a plot to this kind of book, but oh, the writing.

There is other fiction I read where the writing is perhaps a little more pedestrian, a little less lush and gorgeous, but the plot is captivating.  With these books it’s all about the story.  I read these books when I want a story to sink deeply into, when I want to get caught up in a before and a during and an after.  I read these books to find out what happens next.

And then there are mysteries, one of my (not-so-entirely-secret) pleasures.  A good mystery is a puzzle to solve, along with some satisfying story-telling and compelling characters.  The “why” and the “how” are much more compelling than the “who”.  And yes, they’re fun.  Sometimes I need a little fun, even if it comes with a side dish of murder.

So if you’re interested in some good books for the summer, here’s a recommended list of books culled from my reading list over the last month, with titles from all three of the groups above.  They’re not all literary masterpieces, but they’re all good books.

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout

The End of the Point by Elizabeth Graver

The View from Penthouse B by Elinor Lipman

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Schroder: A Novel by Amity Gaige

The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler

Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear

The Book of Killowen by Erin Hart

A Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths

No one influenced my love of books and reading more than my mother.  A former children’s librarian, and then later a professor of education specializing in literacy, my mother turned me on to books from birth.  Language, stories, and books filled my childhood.  She read to me for years, and introduced me to beloved classics. One of her childhood favorites was Heidi; I insisted on drinking my milk from bowls after being introduced to the mountain dwelling Swiss girl and her adventures. Of course I loved the picture books of early childhood, but my real loves were chapter books that allowed me to take my place in new worlds – The Borrowers, the Little House books,  All-of-a-Kind-Family, the Narnia series, Little Women, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Anne of Green Gables, The Little Princess, and The Secret Garden.

I didn’t just read those books, I lived those books; I was those characters.  It didn’t matter that, at a year younger than my classmates, I was shy and somewhat immature – I had my books and the worlds contained within them.  I didn’t need a whole lot else.  There was a period of time when I went to school wearing hiking boots and a long pioneer-like pinafore with a sash, my hair in long braids, à la Laura Ingalls Wilder.  These books contained different worlds and experiences from each other, but they all featured strong, smart characters, mostly girls, who came out ok in the end, no matter the hardships they endured. Those stories reassured me that I too would make it through.

My mother did occasionally have to tell me to put down a book, like when I was crossing a street, but most of the time she just encouraged me to read, read, and read more.  Once in a while she made an attempt to get me to look out the window at the cows (when on car rides) or to go outside and get some fresh air (whatever for?), but mostly she just let me be.

There were also the Holocaust books. It is subject that fascinates her even today.  If a new Holocaust book comes out, she reads it.  As a child I was given a constant stream of holocaust books like The Upstairs Window, When Hitler Stole Pink Blanket, and of course Anne Frank.  It could be argued, lovingly, that there was some excess in this area – I read them hungrily but I’m not sure that for a child growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960′s and 70′s it was normal to occasionally wake up in the middle of the night from Holocaust nightmares.  But she wanted me to know my history as a Jew, and I did.

I do have to admit though that I have never come to love my mother’s absolutely favorite book of all time - Pride and Prejudice, but in an attempt to better understand her devotion to it I did take a class in Victorian Fiction in college.  Though Emma turned out to be my top pick from the curriculum that semester, I did gain a better understanding of the genre and can now appreciate, if not share, her passion.  And though we don’t see eye to eye on P&P, we are a great source of recommendations on new titles for each other.

My grandmother, z”l, was also an obsessive reader.  There was always a book in her hand or right nearby.  It didn’t matter where she was – at the pool, at a restaurant, at work, drinking a glass of white wine or a cup of coffee.  She loved biographies, mysteries, and epic (often melodramatic) multi-generational family dramas.  I picked up my late night reading habit from her, or maybe it was just passed down genetically – chicken or egg?  Either way, from her I learned that it was normal to stay up late at night in bed reading, regardless of what time you had to wake up the next day.  A good book took precedence over everything else.  When I got married her counsel to me concerned the importance of a reading light on the nightstand – that way I could stay up late reading without bothering my husband, thereby making for a conflict-free marriage.  If only she had lived to see the solutions provided by Kindles and iPads.

And then there’s my mother-in-law.  Another lover of books, she shares my taste in literary fiction.  We have swapped books for years as I’ve introduced her to American fiction, and she has introduced me to writers from South Africa and other parts of the British empire.  Thanks to her, my world has enlarged to include Doris Lessing, Andre Brink, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, and many more. Where would I be without The Golden Notebook, one of my favorites of all time?  

It would not be fair to end this piece without mentioning that both my mother and my mother-in-law are not only readers, but also writers.  They have both published multiple books, including my mother’s magnum opus, The Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, and the book that we wrote together, Stories of Heaven and Earth: Bible Heroes in Contemporary Children’s Literature.

All these mothers shaped me into the reader that I am today.  Thank you for that amazing gift.

Rivka Miriam, born in Israel in 1952, is a child of Holocaust survivors who became a published poet at the age of fourteen. Her earliest poems were inspired by what she had learned about the Holocaust and her family’s experience. She is similarly influenced by Jewish texts and religious and theological ideas, some of which seeps into and infuses the poetry.

Rivka Miriam’s poems are deceptively simple at times. The language is straightforward, yet worlds are contained within it. Some lines come directly from Biblical or liturgical texts, while others could be everyday speech.

Biblical characters are featured in many poems, as in “The Stripes in Joseph’s Coat” which employs an economy of language to paint a rich history of Joseph’s whole ancestry. “The Song to Jacob who Moved the Stone from the Mouth of the Well” is a powerful, moving interpretation of the relationship between Jacob and Leah, told from Leah’s perspective, which contains the lines, “Flocks of sheep hummed beneath our blankets,/ tent-flies were pulled to the wind,” and ends with the lines, “And he didn’t know I was Leah/And flocks of sons broke through my womb to his hands.” This poem functions as modern midrash, which gives Leah a voice and adds a perspective missing from the Biblical text. God, too, appears frequently in the poems, an intimate presence with whom the poet is in relationship, as in “Still,” in which God knocks on the window and enters the room.

Many of the poems use maternal imagery such as breasts and nursing, as in “I Nurse a Very Old Woman,” or “Oh My Mother.” Sometimes these images are comforting and nurturing, but they can also be quite disturbing, as in the images of children suckling ash and leaves in “Never Will I Be Like the Mother in the Picture” or fire asking to be nursed in “The Fire, Blushing from Fear.”

The land of Israel is also a common theme in Miriam’s poetry. She writes of a mystical connection to the land, markedly different from so many of her Israeli peers who respond with irony when exploring a connection to the land. Hers is an unironic relationship, one that is deeply physical and sensual. The land in her poetry is a living being, a friend and sometimes a lover. In “These Mountains” the mountains sit in armchairs and eat cake like comfortable visitors while in “Lest it Be Revealed” in which “Only when my land is asleep/spread out before me/I whisper whisper her name/and she moans.”

There are references in this poetry to the pain and trauma of the Holocaust that Miriam’s family experienced. The two related poems “Chaya’s Unborn Child” and “And Shalom, Chaya’s Husband” speak of violence and loss with poignancy while avoiding any hint of sentimentality. These poems are disquieting, disturbing. There is a sense that the poet cannot help but bring forth what her legacy has bequeathed her, and that she is continually trying, over and over, to make sense of her family history of European suffering and the struggle of modern Israel.

Linda Zisquit has done a masterful job in these translations. She manages to convey both the directness and the richness of the Hebrew, while making the poems read as if they were always meant to be read in English. I can only hope that Miriam and Zisquit will continue to collaborate for years to come, and bring forth many more such volumes of achingly beautiful poetry. This volume includes an interview with Rivka Miriam, notes, and a translator’s note.  Go, fast, order it now!

Our regular routine becomes disordered.  It’s wonderful, it’s exhausting, and it’s messy.

My Passover dishes are made of blue glass.  It’s a family tradition that started with my grandmother in the 30′s, and I love the idea that it’s been carried forward.  These plates speak to me of Passover.  When they come out of the cabinet, in their vinyl storage cases, it’s an unmistakable sign that Passover is about to arrive.  And seeing them on the set table, against the white tablecloth, a few hours before guests arrive is a beautiful sight.

It’s a big job getting them out of the cabinet, which is hidden behind the side of the stove and difficult to reach.  There’s a reason we only use that cabinet for Passover dishes.  And there are a lot of them – a lot.  Every year I swear that I will find a way to make it all work more smoothly next year.  I will figure out how to cut down on the amount of work involved.  And yet here we are, all over again, looking at piles of blue glass Pesach plates that, with some effort, will go back into storage in another few days not to emerge again until next year.  And that’s not even to mention the furniture – the couch has to be moved back into place and the rest of it has to be carried down from upstairs – and everything else that has to be moved back into place.  It will be a while before the house is back to normal.

And yet all this chaos makes sense. Looking at a map we marvel that the ancient Israelites should have journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land in a matter of days or at most weeks.  But the road to redemption is not a straight line.  Figuring out who we are as individuals and as a people is complicated, and complex.  Those forty post-Exodus years of wandering in the desert teach us that becoming a mission-driven people united in covenant with God is a messy prospect, full of road blocks and obstacles.  It’s a disruptive, disrupting course that requires intentionality, not being on automatic pilot.  Choosing to be in covenant means making thoughtful, proactive choices, over and over as we move forward.

Passover throws us off course, every year, all over again.  The cycle of the calendar turns again and here it is, to jolt us out of our routine once more.  To remind us not to take our routines for granted.  To move us out of complacency.  So we move the furniture and change our diets and switch our plates.

Shaken up, pushed out of our comfort zones, we’re then able to begin the journey toward Sinai that culminates on Shavuot.  Passover gives us the chance to clean out not just our cabinets but our souls.  It reminds us to rethink our assumptions, and to clear out our heads by venturing off course.  The change in routine enables us to remember and rethink what matters, what motivates us.  Suddenly the view is different and we’re forced to recommit to our core values and our deepest aspirations.

I have a lot of reorganizing to do in the next few days.  But all those piles of blue glass plates are more than just a Passover inconvenience.  They are signposts on the path to revelation and rededication.

Since it was written, it’s already become a moment frozen in time as Passover in our house has continued to evolve and change.  Nothing stays the same, and nothing is ever done exactly the same way again.  Little changes happen every year until you step back and realize just how much it has all shifted.   Grief and illness, marriages and births, college acceptances and new jobs all impact on the guest list, the menu, the conversation.  That too is part of our ongoing story.

Passover Love Song  

The seder is a love song written

in the language of silver polish

and dishpan hands

freshly grated lemon zest

blanched almonds

ground pecans

shelled pistachios

pitted olives

sliced meat

matzah meal

white tablecloths

to-do lists

trips to Boro Park and Sahadi’s

This is how it’s done.

ashkenazi haroset

vegetarian chopped liver

my mother’s real chopped liver

Bonnie’s matzah ball soup

Israeli salad

gefilte fish terrine

chesnut farfel stuffing

tzimmes

leek and shallot kugel

salmon in grape leaves with pine nuts

turkey and brisket

coconut macaroons

sephardic lemon pistachios cookies

pecan meringues

chocolate dipped apricots

Remember.

tables stretched the length of the house

tulips on the mantle

my grandmother’s blue glass plates

Aunt Hannah and Uncle Joe’s silver

Nana’s candlesticks

the silver salt bowls from my mother

Frieda and Solly’s cut-glass horseradish pot

the wedding present seder plate

grape juice stains on the tablecloth

thin paperback hagaddot

our mismatched family of friends

silly half-versions of songs

and don’t lick the wine from your finger after the plagues

Don’t be fooled by the easy domesticity of these words.

This is more than a recipe for nostalgia.

This is an urgent coded message of     survival

adaptation

love.

 Read between the words.

© 2007 by Hara E. Person.  All rights reserved.

This poem originally appeared in The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (URJ Press, 2008).  

The things we do for our children.  My original motivation to create a special Passover experience came from being a parent. Or at least that’s what I told myself at the time. I wanted my children to have something unique, meaningful, and wonderful to remember.  I wanted them to learn the meta-messages of Passover, and to experience the joy of this holiday of hope and renewal.

Guess that plague!

This wish led the development of many new traditions and the reclaiming of some old ones as well.  Over the years, as my children have transformed from babies to young adults, our family tradition, and their roles in it, has continued to evolve.

What is tradition one year becomes history the next year, and what is new and experimental can quickly become standard, until it’s not anymore.  There’s a dynamism to the tradition that enables us all to keep growing.  The plays they used to put on during the maggid section of the seder, generally focusing on Moses, Pharaoh, and the plagues, gave way to paperbag dramatics as they emerged into adolescence, which then morphed into a Passover theme charades game, and now has likely receded into fond memories entirely.

Elijah arrives!

One of the traditions my husband brought from his family’s seders centered around the arrival Elijah.  When it was time to open the door and welcome Elijah, suddenly who should be standing on the doorstep but Elijah himself, also known as Uncle David.  This custom had a long history in their family, going back at least one generation further to my husband’s grandfather.  My husband became our family’s Elijah, mysteriously disappearing from the table and arriving on at the front door in full costume, much to the delight of the young children.  And now, it has become my son’s job, a role he takes very seriously.

My daughter has taken on the role of commentator on the Four Children, a part of the seder that she finds troubling.  For the last several years, she has led us in discussing the problematic nature of this element of the seder.  The orange on the seder plate is also her contribution, and she carefully explains its role to any newcomers around the table who might not be familiar with this new addition.

Our evolved seder plate.

I am proud that they have found ways to make parts of the seder their own, and to contribute to our ongoing evolution of tradition.  Every year draws on past years, and is a little bit different too as we all continue to learn more and grow.  Last night my son came home from post-confirmation class at the rabbi’s house and announced that he had some good material to talk about at the seder.  I can’t wait to hear what it is.

At this stage of parenting though, I have to look back and admit that much of what was done in the name of my children was really as much for me as it was for them.  When they were young, there was plenty I did with them not only because they would like it, but also because it gave me an excuse to do it.  Spend the afternoon in the park on a sunny afternoon? Let’s do it!  Play with playdough?  Sounds fun!  Put together a Lego Hogwarts?  Um, yes!  So too with the development of our seder rituals.  It was for them, yes, but thinking about my children’s needs and development gave me permission and courage to imagine what kind of seder I wanted for myself.  Parenting provided a framework within which to think about what Passover could and should mean, and then actually make it happen.

Which brings me back to President Obama.  It’s great that you want your children to get the message of the haggadah, Barack, but it’s ok if you enjoy it too.

My sister, Jenni Person, created the term Culinary Midrash, the concept of cooking as a midrashic response to text.  It’s a great way to learn, and she’s created many wonderful text study experiences that result in the creation of midrashic dishes using this technique.  In keeping with the Passover methodology of learning from food, I borrowed my sister’s concept to create a new Seder recipe.

When the Israelites are wandering in the desert, they begin to complain.  The trek through the desert is hard, and they are not yet fully on board with the mission.  They cry out that things were so much better back in Egypt, forgetting how difficult their lives were.  ”We remember the fish we used to eat  freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic” (Numbers 11:5).  It’s a very human response to challenging times.  When the future is uncertain, it’s easy to  romanticize the past.

Out of that episode, I’ve created Leek and Artichoke Kugel.  On Passover we can celebrate our freedom with the foods that the Israelites longingly recalled on the long road to liberation.  Admittedly it’s not an exact match – I’ll leave the fish for the gefilte course, and the melon for the dessert course. I’ve replaced cucumbers with their cousin the zucchini, and added in artichoke hearts in homage to Italian Jewish cuisine and to add some flavor.  But despite the changes, this dish is inspired by the Torah verse in which the Israelites, still a people more used to slavery than freedom, lament being brought out of Egypt by Moses.  This dish prompts us to hold onto hope and optimism even when our present seems bleak, while reminding us of the responsibility to work for a better future for all people.

B’tayavon! 

Leek and Artichoke Kugel, based on Numbers 11:5

8 Leeks, chopped

4-5 large shallots, chopped

2 teaspoons chopped garlic

1 cup carmelized onion (or two cups chopped onion)

4 jars artichoke hearts

4 zucchini, shredded

8 eggs

1-2 cups whole grain matza meal, depending on how loose you want it

salt, pepper to taste

1. Chop leeks and add to carmelized onions over medium flame.
2. Chop shallots and add to mix.
3. Drain artichoke hearts.  Reserve liquid and chop hearts.
4. Shred zucchini and add to mixture.
5. When mixture is close to wilted, add chopped artichoke hearts.
6. Sauté mixture.  Add 2/3 cup artichoke marinade and let it evaporate in pan.  Add salt and pepper.
7. Remove from heat and cool.
8. Beat eggs together.  Add to mixture and mix well.
9. Add matza meal.
10. Pour into greased baking dish (may make two batches depending on depth of baking dish).  Bake at 350 until it browns at the edges.

Never mind the challah on the cover. Another basic, must-have resource with good Passover recipes.

Books are a central part of my ongoing Passover education.  I don’t mean haggadot, though those are of course also essential and beloved, and I don’t mean our traditional texts dealing with Passover, though I study those as well.  What I’m talking about here is cookbooks.

Even though I was born Jewish, Passover prep, beyond the basics, didn’t come naturally to me.  It had to be learned.  In rabbinic school I studied codes and laws and customs related to Passover.  And at home I read cookbooks.

A good cookbook is much more than a collection of recipes.  Other than baking, where precision and chemistry matter, I rarely use cookbooks for the actual recipes.  I tend to create recipes based on ingredients and experience.  What I go to cookbooks for is history, the culinary byways that collections of recipes represent.  Why these spices were used, and why this ingredient is prevalent.  How changes in recipes over time represent changes in immigration patterns, or ruling powers, or economic status.  Jewish cookbooks are full of lessons in the day-to-day history of the Jews.

There’s this myth that authentic Jewish practice gets handed down seamlessly from one generation to another, but it doesn’t always happen that way.  I  learned about Judaism at home, enough to whet my appetite for more.  But since childhood I’ve been on an ongoing

A must-have Passover resource.

journey, taking what I was given at home and deepening, updating, and enriching that original experiential base.  I’ve added back in things that were discarded along the road toward Americanization, and created new traditions.  Intentionally learned practice, once adapted and made your own, becomes as authentic as what’s handed down from ancestors.

I imagine that in generations past, women learned from their mothers and grandmothers and thus kept recipes and traditions alive, handing down knowledge from one to the next.  But that is not my story.  Many of my seder traditions are gathered from cookbooks, from years living in Israel, and from friends.  Modern concerns like vegetarianism, veganism, organics, food sourcing and so on have also impacted the seder table.  But maybe it was always like that, an ongoing evolution of tradition-meets-current-reality, and I’m only imagining a romanticized past.  For example, developments in beet sugar processing in certain parts of Europe meant that Jews in those areas began to eat a much sweeter diet than Jews in other parts of Europe, who relied on salt and pepper for taste.

My great-grandmother was supposedly a terrific cook.  I don’t remember much about her food, but I do remember her homemade blintzes, and I remember helping her stuff and fold them at her porcelain table in the Bronx.  But my grandmother, the only one I had,

My mother’s copy of the balabusta cookbook.

was not much of a cook or homemaker. No traditional bubbe was she.  Widowed in her forties, she went to work everyday as a bookkeeper.  She was not one to pass on recipes and techniques.  The only thing she took great pride in was her homemade gefilte fish.  Watching her make the gefilte fish was part of our pre-Passover ritual, until the year where we realized she didn’t remember that she had already added the salt – several times.

My mother cooks within the traditional Ashkenazi style, using family memories and what she, my sister and I call the “balabusta cookbook” but is actually called The Complete American Jewish Cookbook, by Anne London and Bertha Kahn Bishov.  For my mother, this is the essential reference, the one that has THE  correct recipes for the Jewish food she ate growing up.

When my sister and I got married, my mother gave us each a copy of THE book, now in paperback.  It was the must-have for us as we started our married, adult lives.  I don’t use the cookbook for that many recipes, but it is a great, basic resource.  Neither my sister nor I make the kinds of seders we grew up with, but for both of us the “balabusta cookbook” remains a touchstone, a connection to a certain

My copy of the book.

kind of cooking of the Jewish American past and to each other.

Passover preparation often begins with menu exchanges between the three of us.  Our respective menus are always very different.  My mother’s seder menu always includes chicken soup, gefilte fish, chopped liver, tzimmes, brisket, and potato kugel (she comes from the salt and pepper school, not the sweet). Of course there’s also a green salad, turkey breast (surely a new world adaptation), marinated grilled vegetables (a nod to living in a traditionally Italian part of Brooklyn), and desserts.  Plenty of desserts.

My menu draws from around the Jewish world.  It uses some of the Ashkenazi traditions I grew up with, but also borrows from other times and places in Jewish history.  My recipes take inspiration from the flavors of Italian, Moroccan, Syrian, Iraqi, and other Jewish communities, like pomegranate molasses, preserved lemon, pistachios, and artichokes.  I am a vegetarian and so there are many parve dishes for the non-meat eating crowd, but I also do serve meat (including my mother’s brisket).

Contains some good Passover recipes, including great nut-based cakes.

Expanding the seder tradition out of the traditional Ashkenazi realm has been an intentional response to the reality of Jewish life in the 21st century.  My childrens’ heritage includes Germany, Poland, Russia, Alsace-Lorraine, Lithuania, South Africa, Israel, and Brooklyn, with some Portuguese roots thrown in.  I want them to connect to their (mostly) Askenazi legacy, but to also have an affinity to the whole of Jewish history.  I am far enough removed from the shtetl, and my children even more so, that it feels natural to claim all of Jewish history as our own rather than just one narrow slice of it.

For my mother, Passover cooking is a way to connect with the past.  Her “balabusta cookbook” is a guide to memories and tastes from back then.  For me, Passover cooking is about creating a new Jewish present that embraces the past while reaching toward the future. The “balabusta cookbook” is one of many that serve as guides to the culinary adventure of Passover.  Some are specific to the holiday, others are more broadly Jewish, and some aren’t Jewish at all but offer a recipe or two that fit the Passover guidelines.  All contain gems.

So if you’re looking for ways to expand your Passover creativity, do some text study and consult cookbooks.

Amazing history of Jewish vegetarian dishes, with some Passover recipes.

Some of my favorites include:

Classic Italian Jewish Cooking by  Edda Servin Machlin (Ecco, 2005)

Joan Nathan’s Jewish Holiday Cookbook by Joan Nathan (Schocken, 2004)

Essence of Chocolate: Recipes for Baking and Cooking with Fine Chocolate by Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger (Hyperion, 2006)

The New York Times Passover Cookbook by Linda Amster (William Morrow, 1999)

Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World by Gil Marks (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)

Entree to Judaism: A Culinary Exploration of the Jewish Diaspora by Tina Wasserman (UJR Press, 2009)

Not a Passover cookbook, but it’s got an incredible flourless chocolate cake: Orbit Cake.

Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York by Claudia Roden (Knopf, 1996)

Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews by Poopa Dweck (Ecoo, 2007)

But Passover is my personal holiday.  It’s about the home.  It’s about the family.  It’s about the story.  And it’s about the food.

Passover has it all – slavery, degradation, trials, miracles, missteps, charismatic leaders, and eventually the triumph of liberation. Whether or not it contains actual historical truth – and that’s a question I’ll leave to the ongoing scholarly debate – it contains profound narrative truth.  The ultimate truth of the Passover story is its power to bind the Jewish people together for generation after generation.  The truth of Passover is its ongoing ability to teach us about continuity and survival, to impart the value of caring for the stranger, to call us to remember while pushing us forward toward the future, and to connect us to God.  It is our defining story, the story that shapes us as a people.

When I first began to think about how Passover was to be observed in my own home as a young adult, I searched for ways to make it special.  My motivation at the time was admittedly more parental than spiritual.  I wanted to create an approach to Passover that would make my children feel special rather than restricted. I wanted to create rich and meaningful memories for them.  And I wanted to create something that was unique to who we were as a family.

I grew up with seders that were fun and delicious.  There were readings from our minimalist haggadah that were especially beloved by different family members – my mother lighting the holiday candles, my grandmother carefully enunciating the words of the Ten Plagues, my father particularly drawn to the Edmond Fleg reading “I am a Jew because…”  And of course who didn’t love searching for the afikoman and getting a silver dollar from my father?  The rituals of the seder shared the spotlight with the food, which emerged from the kitchen in slow stages over the course of the long evening, each with its own meaning and history.

Later I encountered different kinds of seders: a Hillel seder in college which was tremendous fun despite the mediocre food shipped in from a kosher caterer across the state, a hundred college students drinking unlimited amounts of cheap kosher wine; a kibbutz seder held in the vast communal dining room, in which corn and rice held places of prominence on the table, the seder leader used a microphone, and the focus of the haggadah was on agriculture; a seder with my Moroccan flatmate’s family in Hadera featuring tumeric-yellow piquant fish in a spicy tomato sauce instead of gefilte fish, and many unfamiliar songs to which I could not sing along; a seder with ex-South Africans in Ra’anana with many little cousins spilling bottles of coke across the white tablecloths and an Elijah who miraculously showed up at the door demanding wine.

What’s evolved over the years at our home is a second night seder that I think of as our big annual performance art piece (I went to art school before I went to
rabbinic school).  I don’t mean that the seder is merely a performance put on for an audience, but rather that it’s meant to be a participatory experience in which all senses of those gathered around are fully engaged.  This is art created as interpretation of the Passover story, art that is meant to be lived and tasted and felt in the gut, an extension of what our tradition brilliantly began by imbuing certain seder foods like charoset with narrative meaning. It’s the four questions writ large – we eat this because…

Our seder involves weeks of planning and preparation.  It is the one time of year that my secret inner Martha Stewart comes out.  I have lists and charts and know what has to get done on what day in the weeks leading up to the seder.  I track which ingredients have to be bought when, and from where; which dishes can be made two or three weeks ahead and frozen, and which need to be made fresh right ahead of time.  It’s the one time a year that I can indulge in being the balabusta I don’t have the time or inclination to be the rest of the year.

The laws of Passover are important.  Reading the Haggadah is important.  But the real lessons of Passover in our home are food-based.  Each food tells its own part of the collective story.  The tastes, the smells, the colors, the textures are all important elements of shinantem l’vanecha - teaching our children what it means to be part of the Jewish people, part of chain of tradition that reaches back farther than we can see.

Much of this is centered around the food, but it’s not just about the food.  And this is not just an update on my mother’s Askenazi lineup of greatest hits.  A menu has evolved, with small annual tweaks, that draws on my family’s history, my personal history, and Jewish history. And it’s more than the food – there are tables and chairs to order.  There’s the “eating down of the freezer” to make room in the weeks leading up to Passover.  There’s cleaning the cabinets and storing the chametz and getting out the special pesadik dishes.  And the guest list – who’s coming back from prior years?  How many new people do we have room to include?  There are tablecloths to clean and flowers to buy and silver to polish….

All of which sounds extremely mundane.  Yet it’s very spiritual, even the lists.  The making of order out of chaos, the cycle of the preparations, the turning back around to hope and liberation, the coming out from winter into spring, checking last year’s menus and guest lists and making updates while remembering seders past and former guests no longer in this world – all of this speaks of our ongoing story, of the importance of memory, of our ongoing survival and adaption and interpretation.  The extensive planning and preparing and cooking aren’t ends unto themselves, but a way to participate in the constantly unfolding miracle of the ongoing story.

After much prodding and encouragement, I am starting this blog to write about books, stories, words, texts and publishing – the main topics that occupy my days and nights.  And of course I can’t write about these topics without also touching upon Judaism, which for me ties much of this together.  Not clear yet if any of this will be of interest to anyone other than me – we’ll see.

I’ve procrastinated starting this blog for a long time, but the timing finally feels right.  We are currently inching ever closer to our grand narrative of liberation, our central Jewish story.  Passover, the commemoration and celebration of our liberation from Egypt, begins next week and I am already knee-deep in planning and preparation.  Packed as it is with many stories, from the ancient to the modern, Passover is probably my favorite Jewish holiday.

As I prepare for Passover, I think even more than usual about stories – my stories, my family’s stories, and the stories of our people.  The stories are what underlies everything about Passover – the preparation, the food, the dishes on the table, the seder plate, the discussion around the table, and of course the retelling of the Passover story itself.

All holiday observances contain stories: why we celebrate this holiday, why we celebrate it this way, how it’s been done in our family, and so on.  But Passover, because it is such a home-based holiday rather than centering around the synagogue, is unique in its layering of stories upon stories.  As I prepare for Passover every year, I feel myself continuing to build upon those layers as I create new ones.

There is the way in which Passover is detailed in the Torah itself, the way the rabbis taught about Passover, the way Reform Judaism approached Passover, and the way I was taught to make Passover by my mother, based on what she learned from her mother and from her grandmother.  And then there are traditions we have created in our own home, some of which reach out to touch places and moments in Jewish history, and some which reach forward to the new.

So as I dip my toes in the blog-waters, I’ll be focusing for the short term on Passover.  Then we’ll see what comes next.  Thanks for joining me on this journey.