Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Seder in the blogosphere

Bloggers observe Passover...

Rachel (Velveteen Rabbi): "The matzah balls are made. (They turned out light and fluffy, just like Eppie's, may his memory be a blessing.) The hunter chicken is simmering in the pot. The table is set with the embroidered tablecloth two Russian friends gave me years ago at Pesach-time, our blue-and-white china, and my mother's silver. The holiday is only hours away! ... Wishing you all a sweet, joyful, and meaningful Pesach! May we all find surprises and serendipity on the road to liberation."

Daily Intelligencer: "'All right,' said the rabbi. 'We'll try to get to the food as fast as we can.' Rosewater, the Haute Barnyard Park Slope restaurant, was holding its second-annual second-night Passover Seder, and the obstacle between the starving, secular attendees and the five-course prix fixe was an hour-long ritual leavened, as it were, with trademark neighborhood sanctimony. The plagues recitation became a mini-lecture on abused women (the modern-day plagues were rape, shame, and so on)..."

Eszter (Crooked Timber): "Who says there are no benefits to blogging? If it wasn't for CT then I would never have met Matt Gordon and would never have been invited to his wonderful Seder last night. Thanks, Matt! We talked about lots of things, among them how most Haggadahs lack enough information for a newcomer to really get the Passover story while making the central role of He Who Has No Name unmistakable (even while the rest of the story might remain a bit blurry and I don't just mean because of the amount of wine consumed)."

Jean Railla (Meal by Meal): "There was something quite sweet about a group of young (youngish?, under 40?) people, only three of whom are Jewish, taking part of this ancient ritual, going through all the sections, saying the prayers, talking about Elijah, even with the jokes and the irony and multiple glasses of pre-Seder wine. Warmed my atheist heart."

Carmen (Overmatter, via Universal Hub): "At the seder last night, my aunt served only white wine so that nobody would stain the new table cloth while we were finger-dipping the plagues. This didn't sit well with most of us, as white wine doesn't taste very good with brisket and red wine shows up better on the plate. 'You can't do the plagues with white wine,' one of my uncles said. 'It's supposed to look like blood. You can’t even SEE these plagues.'"

Coturnix (A Blog Around the Clock): "Usually we use a Haggadah I made by putting together bits and pieces of several modern versions, including secular humanist, feminist and environmentalist haggadah. But this year we used a Liberation Haggadah (similar but not identical to this one) which was pretty godless on top of being Marxist - to the point of being a spoof of itself. After all, does anyone really believe that Jewish slaves in Egypt a couple of millenia ago met for committee meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays to plot the socialist revolution!? Fun was had by all."

Posted by Joshua Glenn at 12:34 PM

Print | E-mail to a friend | Permalink | Subscribe via rss