In 1980, my husband, Alan, and I hosted the first Passover Seder in our home.
There were about eight of us: my husband’s uncle Henik, who had his Auschwitz number on his arm, my Polish parents-in-law who had had to flee to the Soviet Union, a few friends, and our toddler daughter, running around and making us all laugh.
We sipped wine from the silver bar mitzvah cups my father brought from Bavaria, but the rest of the traditions were mostly inherited from my husband’s family. In my more assimilated German family, we would have started the Seder with gefilte fish on Manischewitz, shredded with toothpicks, and herring in a cream sauce. But at this first Seder, where I learned how traditions are adapted, how each family makes their own, and what marriage compromises are, it was my husband’s Polish-Jewish tradition: a plate of gefilte fish with carrots stuck in the eyes, sweet Manischewitz.
At Passover, the Seder table becomes the altar. Each family’s journey brings its own twists of customs and recipes that make the holiday unique. As the world is in flux, traditions distinguish each of us from everyone else, for better or worse. But sometimes traditions need a refresh.
Once a spring festival of renewal in the desert, Passover dates back thousands of years and has always been a ganzeh, or big event, as my mother always said. As outlined in the Book of Exodus, the original menu consisted of marol (known as arugula, which later came to represent the suffering of slaves), a round, open-fire baked unleavened bread (matzoh), and a whole lamb roasted before dawn. And that’s it. No halothes, no gefilte fish, no chicken soup, and no matzoh brittle.
In more recent times, in addition to bitter herbs, parsley and carpaccio, symbolizing the fruits of the earth awakening in spring, are steeped in salt water to recall the tears of the slaves. Hard-boiled eggs baked in the oven or with matches represent birth and rebirth. Roasted lamb or beef shank bones, chicken thighs or (for vegetarians) grilled beets represent the sacrifices of the festival.
And, of course, traditional gefilte fish is also commonly served at the dinner table, though the way it’s prepared has changed over the decades. Still, there’s something mystical about making it.
Take my mother-in-law, for example. She taught me how to shape minced pike, carp, and whitefish into oval gefilte fish, just like they did in Poland before World War II. She insisted on cooking the fish balls for two and a half hours; I quickly cut the time to 20 minutes. After all, what’s cooked is cooked.
I still make my own version every Passover during what I call a “gefilte fish in” with friends, bringing along the pot, the fish paste, the ingredients, and the recipe to make the fish balls, but these days, as fewer and fewer people eat this Eastern European specialty, I sometimes substitute it as one of the appetizing courses with a salmon or halibut terrine, or a simple but delicious smoked whitefish salad served with matzo instead of a bagel.
For years, our Seder ended with my dad’s favorite kremslach (his favorite matzo fritters growing up in Germany) and kisses, also known as Schaum torte, which is basically a big meringue topped with strawberries, a symbol of spring. The torte recipe, carefully handwritten in German, has been passed down in my dad’s family for generations; my mother learned to make it from the German-Jewish-inspired Settlement Cookbook.
Though traditional, I’ve always found the torte too sweet, so I was delighted when David’s future mother-in-law, Eva, served up a similar meringue cake while visiting my son’s new parents-in-law in Denmark. The cake, called Eva’s cake, was filled with bitter chocolate and roasted hazelnuts to cut down on the sweetness. Now the torte has been passed down through generations of Danish families and is part of our family’s Seder.
In my decades as a food writer, I’ve been fortunate to host a variety of special seders. One particularly memorable one happened about a decade ago. More than 40 people gathered, and after dessert, we watched kids act out our annual Passover play, a decades-old family tradition. When it was over, there was an incredible silence, and no one seemed to want the evening to end. It wasn’t just a dinner party, it was a sacred space.
