Pesach! What a time to be in Israel. In the United States you have a limited number of options for students and travelers away from home: there's the Chabad religious seder, the Hillel reform/borderline non-religious seder, some random family (awk-ward!) or, my personal favorite, the guilty Jewish college student seder where you and a friend get together the essentials, put on the 60-second Haggadah from YouTube and then you can tell Mom you celebrated Pesach.Last year I did a mix: first night college style, second night with a friend's family, then some random night with a reform family who celebrated in the Reform method, and a new-age Catholic/Jewish outreach Seder with the local Parish.
One thing I can say about Pesach in the US: the dessert is always the same-- Manishevitz macaroons, plain and chocolate.
Let me intro my Pesach experience by saying that I just finished eating a chocolate macaroon with white chocolate fudge inside, dipped in chocolate. Yum.
Pesach isn't just one or two seders, it's not even eight days. It's a whole holiday experience that starts shortly after Purim when the signs appear on bus stops for knowledgeable Yeshiva boys available for Pesach cleaning. The days wear on, and more and more trash starts to appear in the garbage bins. Special kosher-for-Pesach nosh-noshin are produced by the classic companies like Bamba and Cocacola. The big grocery store across the street from my work started cleaning its shelves of hametz in order to make the entire operation certified leavened-food free, while the smaller operations simply sectioned off their hametz to receive a lesser certification, but one nonetheless.
This year the Hag landed on a Monday evening. The Sabbath finished on Saturday evening, leaving Sunday with a big trashy burden. Some scrambled while others sailed, having finished with all the cleaning and shopping even before Shabbat. Sunday night on Emek Rafaim was full to the brim with people cruisin' for a last minute hot dog in a normal bread bun, or falafel. The more serious restaurants already had special Pesach menus, and people seemed not to mind that they wouldn't get a last-minute fix afterall.
Monday was an eerie still as the Hag haze was on the horizon. My friend came over to my apartment and we had a bite to eat, realizing that the religious-style Old City Seder we were attending probably wouldn't start until midnight.
I walked in the late afternoon to the Old City and headed to a packed Kotel plaza, where I prayed at the Wall.
The Seder: I can't say I've ever heard the entire Haggadah read before, and I still can't exactly say it. Under the auspices of 'feeling sick' I reclined on the couch and slept through most of the Seder. (A credit to my gracious hostess and enthusiastic host: I'd rather be sleeping through a lengthy and heartfelt Seder than sit through a secular "where's the meal" deal.)
Waking only to take part in the mitzvot of drinking wine (and by wine I mean grape juice) and eating special EREV PESACH matza, I was content with my level of participation in the whole thing. When the guys finally stopped pounding on the table and bellowing out "Echad: Mi yodea?" it was five in the morning and they went off to pray morning prayers.
