Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 14, 2020

The Seder was different for everybody this year. Gatherings were smaller, some were live-streamed, others had empty seats where family members should be sitting. But digital technology also brought some people together for the first time in years. Here are four stories; maybe they match your own.

Shank bone doorpost blood/angel of death pass over/thank you little lamb

Hallie Dolcourts haiku about the shank bone was just one of the untraditional elements in her familys Passover seder this year untraditional for most, perhaps, but perfectly in line with the style of the Dolcourt family, she said.

Were rather irreverent, and we have a lot of fun with it, she said. Really a lot of kidding.

For the Sunnyvale resident, there were a lot of things that were the same at this years seder, in spite of coronavirus: the vegetarian dishes, the multiple generations, the wise-cracking over the haggadah. But unlike other years, Dolcourt wasnt seeing anyone face-to-face, and once the seder was over, she was eating by herself. Thats because the 75-year-old has lived alone since her husband, Victor, passed away in February.

That felt a little bit lonely, she said.

For the most part, Dolcourt said she had a fabulous seder, joined by 13 members of her extended family, including children and grandchildren from around the state. Older generations were there symbolically, with her mothers candlesticks, her husbands shofar Kiddush cup and her daughters cup for Elijah.

The family kept it light for the seder. Instead of the usual potluck, they shared pictures of the food they made, which is always experimental in the Dolcourt family. One matzah ball soup was beef-based with Asian flavors, while another turned mauve after the broth was cooked with purple potatoes. Hallies own dinner was what she called a seder salad.

I took mixed greens and threw whatever was on top of the seder plate on top of the greens! she said.

One family tradition was already perfect for a virtual Pesach: They forgo hiding the afikomen, and instead play a fun little game. The winner gets to decide which charity the family will donate to each year. This year, of course, coronavirus and the economic effects of the shutdown were on everyones mind.

Were going to give to one of the food banks because so many people are going hungry, she said.

Living alone, Dolcourt has been dealing with the shelter-in-place order with optimism. Her kids are checking in regularly, and shes keeping active.

I dont feel isolated, she said. And I think that Im lucky.

Or, as she put it in another haiku: 2020 plague/seder on the internet/next year in good health.

Maya Mirsky

Last year, Chabad of Pacific Heights Rabbi Moshe Langer hosted more than 300 people on the first night of Passover, at a seder held at a coworking space in SoMa. This year, it was just him, his wife, Taliah, and their four children.

Langer, who grew up in a Chabad house in the Richmond District before becoming a rabbi himself, is used to celebrating Jewish holidays with scores, even hundreds of others often people he has never met. But this year, due to shelter-in place orders, it felt like there was a void.

In the haggadah we say, Everybody who is hungry should come and eat, Langer said by phone Monday morning. The foundation of the seder is to invite a guest. You have got to invite a guest to your seder.

So, instead of inviting guests to his home this year, Langer brought the seder to theirs. Through Chabads seder-in-a-box program, inspired by initiatives that bring holiday essentials to soldiers and Jewish prisoners, Langer and Chabad of San Francisco delivered matzah, wine, seder plate materials and full meals to about 500 people across the Bay Area. Theirs and similar efforts were covered by KPIX, the local CBS affiliate.

Most meaningful, Langer said, was delivering the items to isolated seniors, many of them Russian emigres who were afraid to leave their homes because of the coronavirus. Those visits served two vital purposes:

We gave them basic food in a time of crisis, and an opportunity to connect to their heritage, he said.

At the Langer household, there certainly was a silver lining to the intimate family gathering. Langer said he, Taliah and the children read the haggadah together and had a discussion about the Four Questions.

I think the kids really enjoyed it, he said. They got a lot more attention.

Gabe Stutman

After several years in New York, Alex Schwarzstein moved to Palo Alto in 2017 to live closer to her family in Los Angeles. One benefit of the move was being able to go home for Passover, something she has done for the last few years.

But like everyone else in the Bay Area, her Passover plans were disrupted this year by the coronavirus pandemic. Schwarzstein, 35, stayed home with her roommate, Shelli Carol, for two nights of intimate seders with just the two of them.

Due to Carols religious practice, a virtual seder wasnt an option. But Schwarzstein tuned into her familys first-night seder, which started at 5:30 p.m. About two hours later, at candlelighting time, she logged off and started the full seder with her roommate.

One difference was that Shelli feels like she needs to say everything in Hebrew, which was a first for me, Schwarzstein said. It was kind of refreshing, a nice way to change it up.

She and Carol also discovered that they like the singing the same parts of the seder, which added to the camaraderie.

It didnt feel like I was expecting, Schwarzstein said. I was expecting it to be kind of depressing. It was kind of nice, actually. It helped that I was with my family for a little while before the seder. But the haggadah is the haggadah it varies from one edition to another, the translation varies, but its all the same, to an extent. The seder is the seder, so that helps a lot.

David A.M. Wilensky

Gary Yabrove has lived in the Bay Area ever since leaving Colorado 45 years ago to attend college at UC Santa Cruz. His parents, brother and sister remained behind. He has taken his wife and now-grown son back to Colorado only once to celebrate Passover with his birth family. That was when my parents were still alive, he said. Since moving to Oakland, wed always go to my next-door neighbors for the seder.

Last month, as isolation kicked in with shelter in place, he, his siblings and their three widely scattered first cousins starting calling each other. The phone calls quickly moved online, and the six families decided to hold a Zoom seder on April 8.

This group has never gotten together to celebrate Passover, said Yabrove, an Oakland resident for more than 25 years and recently retired from a teaching career at UC Berkeley. Participants hailed from D.C., Colorado, L.A., Sacramento and even Hong Kong. It was 7 a.m. there, they were just getting up for work.

While the actual seder was kind of chaotic, he found himself meeting albeit virtually grandnieces and grandnephews hed never met before. That would not have happened without the video conferencing app, or without the pandemic. It was less about the seder and more about reinforcing the family connections weve developed these past few weeks, he said.

Sue Fishkoff

Read the rest here:

How Bay Area Jews coped with seder-in-place - The Jewish News of Northern California

Category: Jewish Heritage Month
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