Things are still a bit crazed on my side of the computer screen, but we did take the time for a quiet family seder on Friday night for the 1st night of Passover, and joined our Uncle & Aunt in VA for the 2nd seder.
This was the first year that the Pipsqueak could really handle reading the four questions[1] and she more than rose to the task. There were a couple of little glitches with some unfamiliar words (Dude, some of those words are said only twice a year!) but the phonetic Hebrew was more than recognizable and the English-language versions were as good as any we'd heard. Miri was so proud of her reading skills that, as we went around the table with individual readings from the haggadah[2] during the seder, there were several times she specifically asked to read some of the longer passages herself. (As you can imagine, there was a lot of kvelling going on in the room -- and AJ & Cousin E were both very relieved that the Four Questions was no longer their job.)
On the 1st, we joined some very close friends (the term "extended family" is heard often) for our annual Easter celebration & egg hunt. Since one had grown up Jewish, they want their kids to understand that part of their family heritage -- so we all did a very fast (think Warp 8) abbreviated seder that explained the holiday, its meanings & traditions, and the associated foods to everyone before digging into food that we all wanted to keep eating long after our bellies begged us to stop. We then had the kids occupy themselves while the Grownup Brigade hid brightly colored plastic eggs filled with candy all around the yard -- and this year we didn't get rained on while doing it, hooray! The egg hunt was its usual fun, loud, chaotic self, and I'm proud to say that a couple of the eggs I hid were bypassed several times before being found. (Should I be concerned that I'm proud of making something more difficult for a bunch of elementary school kids? ...Naaah!)
I have a bunch of photos of these & other events, but I'm still in the process of clearing space on my laptop to download them so I'll make some more detailed posts with photos in the coming weeks.
Oh, and of course there was a Winter Weather Advisory posted for that night... but the stuff all melted by mid-morning so that was OK.
More (and better) posts coming soon, I promise![1] During the Passover seder, it is traditional for the youngest person present to ask four specific questions about what makes [this] night different from all other nights, leading to the retelling of the story of the Exodus from Egypt as mandated in the Torah. People with a cynical bent -- you know, people like yours truly -- have been known to mutter the introductory phrase, "M'a nishtanah haleilah hazeh mikol ha'leilot..." ("why is this night different from all other nights...") under their breath when things go wrong in everyday life.
[2] The haggadah is a book used specifically at the Passover seder; it has all the prayers, readings, blessings, commentaries, etc. and leads the celebrants through the seder in the proper order. There are modern abbreviated versions that just hit upon the major prayers & readings that can guide a family through the pre- and post-dinner portions of the seder in maybe an hour, while more traditional versions can take several hours to read through. (My folks both have childhood memories of sitting impatiently at the table from sunset until late at night before dinner was served, then finishing the post-dinner portion of the seder well after midnight.)
No comments:
Post a Comment