Seders can last for hours, so like many other organizations, we have tried over the years to include events to keep everyone’s attention, especially the children.
Get the recipe: apple and nut halo set
What makes our seder different is that our family has been playing it for over 40 years. It’s always the same: God, the sheep, grown Moses, baby Moses, Miriam, and Aaron and his brothers. The kids leave the table a little after the main course to rehearse or rummage through their closets for costumes. In the past, only children performed, but now there are many children in their 40s, and guests in their 90s also appear. It’s always the same, always cheerful and a great joy for all of us.
I remember one year, when the play ended, this crowd became a community and fell silent. It felt like no one wanted the night to end. It wasn’t just a dinner party. I loved it because it was a sacred space. Many of the participants are now deceased, but from Alan’s uncle Henik, who enjoyed his life in Auschwitz, to Alan himself, who died at Auschwitz. I feel that I will continue to live within the strength I have gained. Our Seder leader and my life partner for many years.
Since the mid-1970s, I have written about Passover every year for various media outlets. For years, I went out to the second seder because our family’s custom is to only host the first night. As a result, I observe many traditions that are new to me, such as Persian Jews hitting each other with leeks during prayers and Iraqi Jews staging a play in which children pretend to be poor while holding bags. I was able to. He is carrying a matzo wrapped in a handkerchief on his back. The leader asks them where they came from and where they are going. He says they were slaves in Egypt, but will find freedom in Jerusalem. I especially like the Moroccan tradition of holding a Seder plate over each guest’s head so that they can relive the Exodus and feel themselves moving from slavery to freedom. It’s a great habit.
I learned these customs and the delicious foods that come with them, and since they were so different from my own, I wanted to share the knowledge I gained. I had the idea to create what is now an evergreen documentary known as Passover: A Tradition of Freedom. This work was aired nationally by Maryland Public Television in 1998 for 12 years. To make this film, which I produced with Charles Pinsky, we and our crew went to Israel and replicated a very early seder, but we didn’t replicate it in Jerusalem. Instead, our seder took place in a Bedouin village. There, to this day, when they slaughter a lamb or goat, they rub the blood on the tent posts to ward off evil spirits.
The Bedouins also made bread for us as visitors. Made from flour and water without leaven. Why not? They want to provide only pure food to their guests, through Bedouin expert Clinton Bailey, our interpreter and the person who brought us to this village, and the yeast He described it as a pollutant of civilization and cities. So they mixed flour and water, quickly rolled out a very thin round dough, and then slammed it against the side of a taboon oven (like an upside-down wok) and baked it. It was delicious and shaped similar to what we know as shmura matzo.
All my adult life, I would put some Haroset dip on the table as a first course and eat it with bitter herbs on top of matzo, symbolically called a Hillel sandwich. Each dip is different depending on its geographic and historical journey to reach our plates. I try to tell that story as part of the Seder. This is exactly what the historic supper was once held outdoors on Jerusalem’s hillside, with pre-dawn roasted lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs, as described in the Book of Exodus. One of the best aspects. For me, haroset, although not mentioned in the Torah, explains the wanderings of the Jews in the worldwide diaspora more than any other food.
I try to offer at least three, and sometimes five, halo sets. The oldest is probably Iraqi date syrup, served with walnuts, representing Jews from all over the Middle East. Years ago, I watched Bombay-born Mozelle Soffer, who received the message in prison as a Gandhi volunteer, and her Rangoon-born husband, David Meyer Soffer, slowly roasting dates with a little anise in a large pot. I watched it boil down. It is then strained through cheesecloth throughout the day, creating smooth, thick, and sweet silane molasses, or date molasses. This is the original honey from the “land of milk and honey”. You can now buy things already prepared. I love halwa and ice cream all year round especially.
Of all the haroset recipes out there, the paste made from apples, nuts, amazake, and cinnamon is the classic and most beloved one for most American Jews. As a child, I helped her mother chop apples and nuts in a wooden bowl with a chopper. Now I pulse it in a food processor. When my kids grew up, I kept some apples and cut them in the chopper to share my pre-food processor experience. My mother-in-law used to chop it finely. My family preferred the thicker Haroset and I still do to this day. The only thing I do differently is that I toast the nuts and use local varieties of apples.
Nathan is the author of 12 books, including Jewish Cooking in America and King Solomon’s Table. She lives on Martha’s Vineyard in Washington, DC.
Get the recipe: apple and nut halo set
