Surviving the Seder – Guide to the [Very] Perplexed

Years ago, Maxwell House Coffees used to give out free Haggadahs at all the grocery stores, a nice way of reminding people that Maxwell House Coffees are Kosher for Passover. Those Haggadahs were actually quite nice (with charming illustrations) and were really helpful, with clear translations, a picture of the Seder plate layout, and easy instructions in English. In addition, if you had a couple dozen of these free Haggadahs, everyone at the Seder table could literally be on the same page.

OK, you can survive preparing for, and undergoing, the Pesach Seder even without the help of those good folks at Maxwell House. Bring some common sense, sanity and a lot of organization and you too can Do It Right on the Seder Night.

Kaarah shel Pesach (Seder Plate): Most seder plates have labeled spots where each item goes. Beytzah, Maror, Zroa, Karpas, Chazeres, Charoses. Beytzah (Roasted Eggs): Hardboil a lot of eggs in your Pesach pot (you’ll eat most of them later in salt water as a first course of the festive meal). Take one hard boiled egg, hold an end of it gently into the flame of the gas stove to get a dark spot. Use this slightly browned egg for the seder plate (keep it in the fridge to use again on the second night). If you prepare the egg on Yom Tov itself, eat the egg the next morning and then the second night prepare a new roasted egg (refer to the halachos of not preparing food on one day of Yom Tov for the next day, which starts evening before).

Zroa: I like to use a turkey wing just for this purpose, but really a chicken wing or any meat bone will do. I wrap the turkey wing in foil and place it right on top of the stove top gas burner flame. This could get a little messy, as the turkey fat melts and sputters. I have an old metal Pesach flat grater that I don’t use anymore for grating, so I put the foil wrapped packet containing the turkey wing on it, that holds some of the grease. I leave the turkey wing on the flame until it’s actually roasted and edible and browned (if anyone wants to eat it later following the Seder night they could if they wished). Again, as with the roasted egg, follow the halachos of cooking on Yom Tov if preparing the Zroa after Yom Tov begins (might need to eat it the next morning and prepare a new Zroa the next night for the second seder).

Charoses: There are a zillion Charoses recipes out there. If you want to make it easy on yourself, buy a package of ground walnuts. Peel and core an apple, cut into very tiny pieces (some people use a chopper or food processor). Mix the chopped bits of apple with the ground walnuts and some red wine. Add cinnamon and a speck of ginger if on hand. The exact proportions are disputed, make it as thick or as runny as you want. You don’t really need quarts of this stuff, we use just a large dollop on the seder plate and that’s good enough. People aren’t generally eating the stuff, it’s only a dip for the maror (and you shake it off, too). We used to be even lazier and use the dried Charoses mix that one yeshiva used to send us every year (they stopped doing that a few years ago). Those who want to keep kids busy might prefer buying whole walnuts, distributing nutcrackers and ordering kids to crack the nuts. Without kids to do it, don’t bother, use the packaged ground walnuts.

Maror and Chazeres: If you plan on using the eye-watering, throat-clearing stuff, be aware of the halachos about grating the horseradish root less than 24 hours before you use it (meaning grate it on Erev Pesach to be used the first Seder night) but then leaving it uncovered so that some of its strength lessens (the Pesach guidebooks by Rabbi Blumenkrantz zatzal and Rabbi Eider zatzal discuss proper preparation if you are using horseradish root). Also buy a clean new jigger glass (one fluid ounce) since the shiur or required measurement for fresh grated horseradish root is quite small (check with your own Posaik or local Orthodox rabbi).

My family gave up on fresh grated horseradish years ago (my husband used to turn purple after ingesting) and now we use romaine lettuce for maror. The shiur (minimum size) differs if you are using the leaves, the stalks or the solid centers of the romaine lettuce. Also romaine lettuce is extremely bug-infested and difficult to clean properly. We use the more expensive pre-checked pre-washed romaine lettuce (that used to be a specialty of Gush Katif before the expulsion, the Aleh Katif romaine lettuce). Again, the Pesach books have charts to measure the correct sizes when distributing the romaine lettuce for achilas maror and again for the Korech (combination).
On the Seder plate itself, some people use a little bit of the ground horseradish as Maror and a little bit of romaine lettuce for the Chazeres. We like to use a solid center from the romaine lettuce on the Kaarah as Maror, and a little piece of leaf for Chazeret.

Karpas: Everyone’s going to get a tiny bit, less than a Kazayis, so I simply boil a potato (we have tons) and use that for Karpas. Celery is OK too. This will be dipped into a small bowl of salt water (simply add some salt to water) and distributed to all participants in the Seder.

Matzah: If you use the hand baked shmurah matzohs for the Seder, follow what the R. Blumenkrantz and R. Eider guidebooks say and use approx 1/3 of a hand matzoh for a Kazayis (volume of an olive) and twice that or 2/3 of a hand matzoh for a K’beitzah (twice that or the volume of an egg). So everyone should get 2/3 of a matzoh for Motzi Matzoh, 1/3 of a matzoh for Korech, and 2/3 of a matzoh for the Afikoman. That works out to 5/3 of a hand matzoh for each person. Eleven hand shmurah matzohs are in a two-pound box, which is enough matzohs for six people at one seder. Obviously the three shmurah matzohs on the table for display won’t be enough to feed the crowd, so you give out little bits of those matzohs along with all of the extra matzohs you need to make up the minimum shiur. If somebody really can’t eat all of that matzoh I believe that in those cases just managing a total of one Kazayis or 1/3 of a hand matzo is enough, but ask your Poseik or Rav.

There is a nine-minute time period for eating the matzoh, this seems to include chewing but not swallowing, so your Seder participants sit with bulging cheeks chewing away at the round hand matzohs.

Wine or Grape Juice: Don’t be daunted by the requirement for four cups. We use small size cups, actually five ounce juice glasses, much easier than using regular size wine bechers which can be six or eight ounces. We also use very light wines for those who have trouble with heavy or high alcohol wines. Kedem has some very drinkable light wines such as Matuk Rouge Soft and Matuk Rouge Kal. The Pesach guides have a discussion here also about the minimum shiur. The first Kos has to be at least 4.42 ounces for Kadesh if the first Seder falls on Friday night and it is also Kiddush for Layl Shabbos, otherwise the shiur is even smaller for each of the arba kosos. Since for two of the kosos you must drink the whole kos and for two of the kosos at least half of the kos, it is easiest to use small glasses or cups for the kosos (measure in advance).

Maggid – With daylight savings time, the Seder doesn’t start until after the guys get back from davening Maariv, which means not even beginning until 9 PM. Pretty late. Our family takes about 2-1/2 hours on Maggid, we don’t get to the Matzah and Marror eating until about 11:30 PM and the dinner itself until close to 11:50 PM. Since chatzos is at 1 AM that gives us just one hour for the meal itself (we do it quickly by leaving out the fish and salad courses, just hardboiled egg in salt water, soup, main course, dessert), getting to the Afikoman at about 12:58. We try to allow everyone to say something during Maggid even though we want to move the Seder along. I think we strike a good balance. Benching then Nirtzah, we finish by 2 AM, hopefully the adults are awake enough to drink the last two Kosos and sing Hallel plus the famous Seder songs Chad Gadya and Echod Mi Yodaya.

You too can survive the Seder. Try to take a nap Erev Pesach, easiest when Erev Pesach is Shabbos, more difficult on a weekday. Help to get the table and the Seder Plate ready so that the Seder can begin right away after the men get back from Maariv. Everyone should start off with a Haggadah and a Kos on a small plate or saucer. The dish of three matzohs with a cover should be near the person leading the Seder, also the bowl of salt water and some utensil for dipping the bits of Karpas. Plenty of different strengths of wine and grape juice should be ready for pouring on the table. There should be a washing cup and towel near the sink for Urechatz and Rachtzah. People should have cushions or pillows ready on their chairs so they can lean (“recline”) when they drink the Arba Kosos. As mentioned above, it helps for everyone to use the same Haggadahs, however some people have their favorite Haggadahs and there are kid-friendly Haggadahs (aside from kid-made Haggadahs from school). Dig in the closet to get out the white Kittel that was cleaned and put away after Yom Kippur.

As long as you fulfill the halachic requirements of the Seder, there is room for some creativity and even humor. There are families who toss around stuffed frogs at the Esser Makkos – Ten Plagues point of the seder. My kids still sing songs from an old Pesach tape they heard about twenty years ago. I know that there are people who conduct a very serious Seder; we are a little more lighthearted. It’s very important for the children at the Seder table to be involved in the telling of the Haggadah; after all, that’s one of the mitzvos of the night, teaching your children about yetzias Mitzrayim. It’s interesting to think about how the sages of two thousand years ago designed the Haggadah and the Seder in a way to keep children interested and awake, millennia before anyone dreamed up the phrase, “multi media presentation.”

Chag Kasher v’Sameach to all!

First published in Mishpacha Family First, Pesach, 2010

I remember my surprise, the first time, 17 years ago, that I learned that there were TWO Sederim for Pesach. And the seder isn’t twenty minutes long? And what’s this about eating no chometz for 8 days, and separate dishes, pots, and pans, and you can’t start the seder until 9 P.M.? This was not the Passover of my upbringing!

My secular family held on to two Jewish rituals – my brothers were circumcised with a mohel, and we always gathered for the Passover seder. I had no idea, growing up, that the twenty minute – dunk the parsley, break open the one box of Manischewitz Matzoh bought for the occasion, and then sing “dayeinu” – seder of my youth was a poor substitute for the real deal. In my family, Passover lasted as long as the seder, and we came from the “is it over yet, when can we eat the meal?” perspective. I will never forget my first frum seder, and oh, why didn’t anyone warn me? I arrived hungry, had no clue that we wouldn’t be starting the matzoh ball soup until way past 10 P.M. and couldn’t fathom that this was the same Passover seder I had supposedly participated in all of my life.

The Passovers of my youth are now long gone. My husband and I became frum, are raising our children frum from birth, and it’s been 16 years since we’ve spent Pesach with our families of origin. We went through the painful and necessary separation from our families, and came to peace with the reality that it is entirely impossible for us to spend Pesach in their homes, or to join them for their version of the Passover seder. We invite them to our seder every year, and every year they politely decline. Some BT families manage to find some form of compromise to allow for family togetherness on Passover. In our family, we stick to Thanksgiving and the summer time share vacation as those opportunities, and when it comes to Pesach, the secular families stay far away, and we can’t convince them otherwise.

When you’ve been ba’al teshuvah for as long as we have, there are certain realities you get used to – certain holidays come around every year, with the same result. Every year my children feel sad when they hear of their friends who are looking forward to Pesach at Bubbe’s, or hanging out with the cousins at the Pesach hotel, or Zayde leading the seder. It is the annual reminder for our children that as frum as they are, their seder table will be absent, once again, any grandparents, cousins, aunts, or uncles. It will be a stark reminder to them that we are the only religious family in our entire extended clan.

I say the words out loud to them every year, and I mean them, even more so, now that my children are now teenagers: “Very soon, Tatty and Mommy will be Bubbe and Zayde and you’ll be here with your children, who will have frum cousins to play with, and grandparents at their seder, you’ll see. . .. “

B’ezras Hashem, it will be. It is this vision that my husband and I cling to when the BT journey is arduous. And still, although I try to be upbeat in front of my children, I also feel sad. I, too, miss a generational seder, with my parents, their grandparents, present, and with frum cousins making a ruckus. As I am starting to feel a bit melancholy, I make myself think about it in a whole new light:

I am writing family-commissioned holocaust memoirs; my mind travels to the five survivors whose life stories I’ve written thus far. I think about their first Pesach after liberation. Parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, gone. Ripped away from the annual Pesach seder, murdered, with no warning that the last seder enjoyed together before Nazi terror would be the last.

Empty chairs at the seder.

The pain, unimaginable, impossible to accept.

Every one of the five survivors I’ve come to know are now, Baruch Hashem, leading Sederim with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren squeezing into the seder table, and Bubbe and Zayde, survivors, brimming with Yiddish nachas.

There are no more empty chairs at their seder tables. Their beloved, lost relatives live on in their namesakes. Sweet revenge.

My children escaped from the holocaust of our generation – assimilation. The empty chairs at our seder table will be filled in one more generation, B’ezras Hashem!

What are the basic priorities at the Seder?

1) Strengthing Emunah in Hashem.

2) Expressing thanks to Hashem for giving us freedom, nationhood and the Torah.

3) Carefully performing the mitzvos of the night.

4) Passing on the story of the Jewish People to children and others not familiar with our heritage.

5) An opportunity to spend spiritual quality time with the family and extended family.

This will be my 35th Pesach, having been married 34 years and making my first Pesach one month later. Yet every March I feel like a new bride who never made Pesach before. The thought of scrubbing down my refrigerator and moving the beds upstairs makes me queasy. At 53 I simply don’t have the kochos, the strength, that I had twenty-five years ago to do the job by myself. Pesach programs at hotels are simply out of my financial range, plus family members look forward all year to coming to Bubby & Zayde’s house (that’s me and my husband) for the chag. And what would the Seder be like without cute grandchildren to say the Mah Nishtanah? Luckily nowadays I have adult children who can volunteer their own elbow grease to the project, plus enough funds this year to hire a cleaning service to help.

Still Pesach can be daunting, especially for Baalei Teshuvah and Geirim who have never seen a house get ready for Pesach before. There may be some comfort knowing that there are FFB’s who have never made Pesach either, having gone every year to their parents or their inlaws for the entire eight days. These FFB’s now facing a first Pesach at home are as clueless about where to start with the whole Pesach process as the newest BT or Geir.

I have learned the hard wary to prioritize the time before Pesach. Don’t go crazy and spend three days scrubbing toys. What’s most important is of course thoroughly cleaning and kashering the kitchen for Pesach. Rabbi Shimon Eider zatzal had a series of books on getting ready for Pesach, which have been collected into one or two hardcover volumes. Basically the best timesaver is to buy new for Pesach, which most people do rather than spend time before Pesach kashering silverware in a large vat of bubbling hot water (some communities such as Baltimore make this available as a service for the entire community).

My dream is to one day have a Pesach kitchen in my home. No it does not have to be a designer kitchen 50K Architectural Digest spectacular, it could just be one corner of my living/dining area set aside for a separate fridge, dedicated Pesach freestanding cabinet and an electric stove (I’m not sure what I would do about a sink, though, needing water pipes). Not having a separate Pesach kitchen, the turnover of the chometzdike kitchen is difficult. I (and whatever sons and their teenage muscled friends I can round up) generally accomplish this by taking all chometzdike pots and implements out of the shelves and cabinets, boxing them and storing them in the attic, until the kitchen is completely empty. Then we scrub down completely the entire kitchen, every inch of the counters and the shelves. We move the stove and the fridge and wash the floors. Hopefully this year the cleaning service will do that for us, but we still will have to empty out, put into boxes and store away in the attic all of the chometzdike dishes and pots. Of course, other people who are more sane don’t empty out the entire kitchen: they store the chometzdike dishes and pots into cabinets that are roped off or taped shut with “CHOMETZ” labels during Pesach. Last year, my sons loaded up the dishwasher (not used at all by us during Pesach) with the chometzdike pots and pans, plus they taped shut the lower cabinets under the sink, so that I did not have to schlep everything into the attic (this made the after-Pesach recovery period a little easier also, less stuff to bring back down from the attic).

Once all of the chometzdike utensils are put away, we then have to cut and tape down shelving paper on all of the clean shelves (I detest this part but sons and I have to do it). We scrub the stove top completely with St Moritz or soft scrub or whatever does the job of cleaning without removing the enamel. Then we load up the oven with the top of stove burners and grates, plus all wire racks, and turn the oven to two cycles of three-hour self clean. Not all rabbonim approve of self-cleaning an oven to use it for Pesach, check with your own Poseik. This works for a gas oven, I do not know if it works for an electric oven or a continuous cleaning oven, again check with your own Poseik or local Orthodox rabbi. I would also suggest disabling your smoke or heat alarm before “gleein der kecht,” as burning out the oven is known in Yiddish. We once got some very unhappy firefighters at our door, complete with the firetruck and all firefighting gear, since our alarm sensed the heat of the self cleaning oven and automatically phoned the fire department. Once the stove has been kashered through self-cleaning we cover everything with extra heavy duty foil, allowing room for ventilation and for the dials (which we replace with Pesachdike dials but you could just cover with foil) and for seeing and pressing the oven controls on the hood (using a piece of clear plastic as sort of an insert in the foil for where we have to see and press buttons). The oven door is also carefully and completely covered with extra heavy duty foil.

When the stove is clean I boil a full Pesach kettle of water. This leads to some interesting discussion about “what goes first.” (The sink must be kashered by using boiling water, but the water being put into the Pesach kettle is from the chometzdike sink. I generally resolve this by filling the Pesach kettle from the bathroom or laundry room sink). The kettle of boiling water is for kashering the metal sink and around the base of the faucet. The kettle is wielded like a paintbrush, I or an adult son move the kettle of boiling water across the sink, hitting every spot of the metal sink with the pour of the poured stream of boiling water. The arm of the faucet being plastic rather than metal can’t be kashered for Pesach this way so I wrap it with heavy aluminum foil. An enamel or porcelain (white) sink cannot be kashered like a metal sink, most rabbonim recommend using a special sink insert. I hate sink inserts like a passion, because all of the junk and food scraps and grease yecch collects in the dirty water under the insert and floods the sink then you have to pick up the insert and clean underneath it, once again yecch. Also with a kashered sink I do not have to worry if the Pesach forks clatter into the sink, no problem.

The counters are thoroughly cleaned and then covered. Variety stores in Jewish neighborhoods sell cuttable plastic sheets and washable Contact paper for countertops, or there is the old fallback, heavy duty aluminum foil. The dining table is scrubbed and then covered. I generally cover it with a large rectangle of cardboard, then I tape down a large size rectangle of heavy plastic over the cardboard, covering the table surface completely. Over that I throw another plastic tablecloth, then goes the cloth Pesach tablecloth, with another plastic tablecloth on top (the last is actually more to protect the cloth tablecloth from grape juice stains than for Pesach kashrus). The chairs are scrubbed (we have plastic not wooden chairs; wooden chairs should be cleaned with wood cleaner and checked for any obvious places where crumbs might have gotten caught).

The fridge is not kashered but simply scrubbed out. I use pieces of cardboard to line the bottom of the fridge because sometimes I store Pesach pots of cooked food when cooled down right into the refrigerator. I don’t like covering the wire racks because then air cannot circulate throughout the fridge. If you do cover the refrigerator racks for Pesach, be sure to punch enough ventilation holes in the foil or plastic rack covers or your fridge will not keep cold properly.

I do not use my microwave for Pesach, as it cannot be kashered. It is too large to pack away, so I wrap it into a black plastic garbage bag and tape it up securely, it continues to sit on top of my refrigerator but is neither seen nor accessed during the eight days. It is not sold to the non-Jew with the chometz. I also do not use my dishwasher, which is taped up securely so it will not turn on accidentally, and sealed with chometzdike dishes inside. I do use my china cabinet for the Pesach china and the gleaming Seder plate and the Kos Eliyahu, so I have to clean it thoroughly and line the shelves with taped down shelving paper. Because I plop boxes of matzos on top of the china cabinet, I even have to clean the top (I don’t scrub it, though). I move the china cabinet to sweep underneath just in case a stray slice of challah is sitting there.

While the kitchen is being turned over, the house is an absolute mess. I have always envied those fantastic housewives who can get ready for Pesach without a fork out of place. During the two or three days we are in-between still Chometzdike and wholly Pesachdike, we rely on that old standby, eating out at the pizza place or the shwarma place. Sometimes we rely on the outdoor picnic table. The takeout pizzas and chometz occupy the picnic table outside, so we dine alfresco until the kitchen is ready.

This year presents a challenge of making Shabbos two days before Sunday night’s Bedikas Chometz and three days before the Seder night on Monday night. We plan on turning over the kitchen to Pesachdike before Shabbos and making a “neutral” Shabbos (food cooked in Pesachdike pots, the kitchen and dining area all ready for Pesach, throwaway foam plates with plastic forks and knives, a Pesach stew rather than ordinary Chometzdike barley and bean cholent for Shabbos lunch, challah or some other less crumbly lechem served at the outside picnic table rather than in the cleaned dining area). This way I can cook and bake for Pesach on Motzaei Shabbos, all day Sunday and Monday if the kitchen is all ready before Erev Shabbos.

For my Pesach shopping, I work from a “master list” that I put away from year to year (not in an inaccessible spot, but rather where I can access it before Pesach when I do the shopping). The list is flexible to accommodate more or fewer people spending the chag with us. It’s sort of funny to compare with an ordinary shopping list, you might ask if the Israeli Army is joining us: fifteen dozen eggs, fifty pounds of potatoes, twenty pounds of onions, twenty pounds of apples….The expense is no joke, however. I find it more helpful and affordable to split the Pesach shopping into three sections: the nonperishable canned and boxed goods, such as tomato sauce, potato starch and bags of sugar, to buy two weeks ahead; then the meats, fish, frozen food, vegetables, fruit and eggs, to purchase one week ahead (when the refrigerator and freezer are cleaned and ready); finally, right before Erev Pesach, the most perishable items, such as fresh milk, bags of green salad, yogurts, cottage cheese and sour cream. Pesach shopping really “breaks the bank.” You can keep expenses down if you forego those exotic processed items like Pesach pizza in favor of fresh vegetables and fruits (or potatoes and eggs, more potatoes and eggs). Sometimes it is possible to order matzos and wine and grape juice from an Orthodox shul, it helps raise money for the shul and can be cheaper than retail at your local supermarket or kosher grocery. Those Pesach booklets that come out every year are good for references to medicine and other products for Pesach (it may not be necessary to buy that inferior and overpriced Pesach toothpaste if a cheaper national brand is acceptable for Pesach).

Good luck to everyone, a Chag Kasher v’Sameyach to all at Beyond BT (and to all two good and fulfilling and meaningful Seder Nights).