I could sum up Jewish festivals — especially those with the most recognisable names, customs and pop culture references like Channukah (the one with the candelabra), Purim (the one with the fancy dress) and Passover (the one that's happening right now) — with one line: "They tried to off us, they failed, let's eat!"
None of these festivals encapsulates this line more strongly than Passover. Considered to be the second holiest festival of the Jewish calendar, Passover commemorates the story of Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. It's marked with not one but two full-blown nights of ceremonial custom and feasting.
Matza, a saltless Semitic version of the Salada biscuit, is utterly ubiquitous across the eight days of Passover. It's balled and broth'd and brei'd (more on this later). The flavours and fare during the feast component of Passover are dependent upon your family's origins. Ashkenazi families from Eastern Europe, like mine, veer towards classic comfort and schmaltz, while Sephardi families favour a North African, Middle Eastern spice extravaganza.
Both must endure what comes before.
Like a tightly wound event planner, everything from washing hands to asking questions to eating is set out in 15 steps that is called "The Seder", which literally translates to: "The Order". The overarching purpose of this order is to keep children engaged, for they are the future, and to reinforce tradition.
These steps and symbols were the subject of weeks of study at the religious Jewish school in Melbourne, which I attended all the way from grade 3 to VCE (not without some protest, might I add).
Most of my classmates were second if not third-generation Australians, with comfortable Caulfield homes, gleaming silver ceremonial cups and Shabbat candles nestled between sepia-toned photographs of the puffy-sleeved bar and bar-mitzvah'd siblings standing outside synagogues where pew plaques were emblazoned with their surnames.
"Tradition!" warbled our Jewish Studies teachers. "Tradition!!" I'd remind myself with a sigh, ambling to the second prayers after lunch. "Tradition!!!" We belted out from the State Theatre stage, launching into our final school musical, Fiddler on the Roof.
MARKED BY JEWISH PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD
Celebration: Passover
My role as Hodel, the second daughter of Tevye the Milkman, culminated in a tear-jerking train-station farewell. Hodel leaves the safety of the shtetl for the icy cold of Siberia and her love for a rebellious Jewish student imprisoned by the Tsar. Little did Hodel know that soon the whole shtetl would be dispersed, by the order of this same man.
I was too busy being an angsty teen to recognise that this is how my own grandparents were upended and resettled from other parts of Russia and Ukraine into Georgia, a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia that was absorbed into the Soviet Union, formally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR.
It was many years after we'd emigrated that I realised what a rebellious act our family Seder must have been back in the USSR. Growing up in Tbilisi, contraband matza and babushka Zina's boiled cod gefilte fish sat alongside mum's satsivi (chicken in walnut sauce) and pkhali (beet leaf dip). In fact, these dishes continue to grace our Seder table, though they have altered somewhat. Soon after we arrived in Australia, the gefilte was fished from a jar and the matza, less contraband, tasted more like cardboard.
Most of our ceremonial silverware and the prayer books — the relics of generations of my family's faith — were either lost with the Bolsheviks, or left behind in the move because we weren't allowed to take anything that could be considered "valuable to the state". The factory my grandfather was in charge of in the city of Rustavi held a funeral for his passing — but he hadn't died, he'd just moved to Australia. Despite his move, he remained a Communist and quietly sat at the table while his son, my dad, led the Seder.
A PASSOVER SEDER RECIPE
Vegetable pudding (kugel)
Dad's script, first printed and stapled from the early days of The Internet, then a frayed Haggada from Gold's Judaica is now an app (complete with prayers you tap to play)m which he deploys between monologues and always feels a little "out of order".
"Do you know why we leave the door open for Eliyahu?" Dad asks, a new question he's added to his repertoire from this new app of his. "It's because in the Middle Ages they thought the Jews were making matzah with the blood of Christian children. So they leave it open to show they have nothing to hide." We groan, tummies grumble.
We used to rely on babushka Zina to speed things along. She heckled her son to hurry up and get to the good bits. However, this is the first year our family has spent Seder together since she passed.
But we still pass the saltwater to each other to dip our eggs and radishes (half-time snacks to tide us over until the step with the actual eating finally arrives). Although, now we take turns in goading dad to get through his prayers quicker while forcing him to skip too many steps on the app through stifled giggles.
This is also the first year I crack out the second Seder plate I never knew we had. An accidental heirloom from Zina who'd bought it at an op-shop on Centre Road, Bentleigh in Melbourne to gift to our Israeli aunt, who'd at the time politely left it with mum rather than lugging it back to the land whence it very like came.
The Seder plate has divets to fill with symbolic food, like a burnt egg and bone to symbolise sacrifices in the temple, bitter herbs for bitter memories of slavery, a sweet paste of nuts and fruit, which symbolises the mortar and brick that built the pyramids, and one more vegetable that isn't bitter, to symbolise hope and new beginnings.
The Seder plate has divets to fill with symbolic food.
The silver Kiddush cup that dad fills to welcome Eliyahu the prophet, is one of the first of many gifts received from the Jewish Community of Sydney. It says: "Welcome to Australia".
Staring at these makeshift mementoes of my family's own exodus from a place where they could only celebrate such things in secret reminds me of why this is the festival that means the most to them.
As "The Order" reaches some semblance of completion, mum's matzah ball soup magically manifests upon the table, then her matzah brei — a sort of baked kugel made with schmaltz and soaked sheets of matzah (plus one egg per sheet to bind). We load our plates with salads and smoked brisket — a recipe my husband Nick's perfected over several of his family Christmases.
Now comes the reminiscing, the checking in with relatives cast wide across the diaspora from Haifa to Hamburg, the toast after toast for everyone at the table (a Georgian tradition) for everyone no longer at the table. This is the order we know best — the one whose rhythm my family is most comfortable with.
What better heirlooms can one be sure won't be left behind, by choice or by force, but stories? Our story begins in the Old Testament, but it never really stops. Jews, as a people, are wanderers, by choice or by force. And as they move, they stick to traditions, leave some behind and borrow others. Passover symbolises all of that.
They tried to off us, they failed, let's feast.
Love this story? Alice Zaslavsky is author of 'In Praise of Veg' and you can find her online as @aliceinframes on Instagram and Twitter.
