By Ilya Magid
2001

How We Celebrated Passover in theYear 5761

1. The Planning
2. First Seder
3. Second Seder
4. Basya's Story about the Time of Passover

Editors: Steven Siegel and Dan Smollens

How We Celebrated Passover in the Year 5761

1. The Planning

We have celebrated Passover 10 times. (We have lived in America also 10 years.) For several years we have celebrated the first Seder with our granddaughter. The preparation for Passover is very expensive and hard for her. This year they decided to go to celebrate Passover with their children in Canada in a hotel near Montreal with their friends. Because of this situation we have a new opportunity.

a.We could celebrate Passover Seder in our dining room in the Jewish Community Housing for Elderly (JCHE) Apr 4 at 5 p.m. It is not a real Seder, but a teaching Seder.

b.We could celebrate the first Seder at the Beis Menachem Mendel Jewish Russian synagogue at 9 p.m. Our granddaughter arranged for all the relatives to go to that synagogue where Dan Rodkin will lead the first Seder. We decided to go for the first Seder with our other relatives.

There is one problem because the first Seder will be after Shabbat. That means they can not prepare the food during Shabbat for the Seder. Shabbat will end at 7:30. The beginning of the Seder will be at 9:00 p.m. That will not be good for us, eating at that late time.

c.For the second Seder we could go with Sandy to the Golda Meir building or the same synagogue, where Dan Rodkin will lead. Samuel also invited us to his home on the Seder. (Many times Samuel invited us to Shabbos. He is orthodox and very nice person.)

The final decision will be belong to my wife.

An article about previous Seder on April 4 was written in the newspaper 'The Jewish Advocate' JCHE organized a Seder in the dining room. 175people attended.

The Haggadah was written in Hebrew, English, Russian and Chinese to reflect the multi-cultural community JCHE serves. (The Chinese community consists of about 150 people.)

2. First Seder

For the first Seder we went to the Russian synagogue. Rabbi Dan Rodkin led the Seder very well. A Chinese Kosher restaurant prepared the food for us and brought it to the Synagogue. The synagogue was overcrowded. Tickets were cheap and nobody checked for tickets at the entrance.
Additional tables and chairs were set up in the hall. Our relatives, 11 people, occupied one table.

There was one yeshiva student from Israel. He had a nice voice and sang traditional songs. (He had studied more than 4 years in the yeshiva. Then he went to study be a cantor.)

I remembered Dan Rodkin's explanation about the four sons: clever, wicked, simple, and the son who cannot give any answer about the Seder. Dan connected that son with Jews from Russia.

First, the clever son is the generation of tradition of the Jews from the traditional communities of Europe.

The second, the wicked son, is the wicked generation in which there were many Jews who were under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky and led the revolution in Russia. As a result they destroyed Jewish life, synagogues, and Jewish education.

The third innocent son is the third generation of Jews who if they would be present at the Seder they would know very little about Passover.

The fourth is the not knowing son. He represents the fourth generation of Jews in the Soviet Union. If he was present at the Seder, he would be surprised. He wound know nothing about Passover.

At the end of the Seder we went to the door to meet Eliahu with a wineglass.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union Jews and, especially, religious Jews, here in America, have to help Jews from Russia connect with their roots.

3. Second Seder
Sandy organized the second Seder. She drove us to the Golda Meir building for the celebration with their tenants. We arrived there at 5 o'clock. At that Seder there were maybe 100 people all of them from 70 to 100 years of age.

First Sandy sang the Passover Haggadah, Dayenu and other songs in Hebrew. We sang in unison. Then she read prayers. One person from each table took turns reading one sentence of the prayers. My wife read a special writing, "Thoughts about Passover for Jews from Russia."

We drank 4 cups of wine or grapefruit Juice and ate good chicken, gefilte fish and other traditional foods. I don't want to repeat the special order of the Seder.

I am glad that Hashem rescued the Jews from Pharaoh so I could celebrate that Seder with Sandy.

At 9:00 p.m. we went home. I was walking near our building. One religious Jew approached and invited me to a Seder in his house. I explained to him that I came from a Seder. He was surprised; he had only returned from the synagogue and was going to the Seder at home. I told him, "I am very full".


4. Basya's Story about the Time of Passover

(Basya, 6 years old, told this story about her Russian great grand father, Ilya,)

In that year mummy and daddy decided to celebrate Passover in Montreal, Canada. They made the arrangement with Bella and Vladik to celebrate together. Mummy bought many suitcases, gathered many things and put all into a wooden trunk and then into our van. Mummy took Shlomo, Levi and me with her. Daddy took a video camera along.

All our family set out in the van in the evening. In another car rode Bella and Vladik and their children, Mila and Shimon. They are younger than I. On the road, we saw many houses and many lights. Shlomo and Levi were sleep, but I was not asleep. At the border of Canada a policeman asked us, "Did you take any meat with you?" (At that time there was an epidemic among cattle.) Daddy told him, "We carried only Shlomo, Basya and Levi."

There was snow in Canada. Then we arrived at the hotel and entered the room, which we did not like. The walls were not flat there. They changed the room for us. That room was good, but very small. There were two beds for mummy and daddy, and they put two mattresses on the floor for Shlomo and me. Levi had a playpen where he slept also. There were three closets for clothes.

How did we celebrate the Seder? We had a separate table with Bella and her family. The rabbi sat with us also. (Other families sat at separate tables). Daddy led the Seder and read the Haggadah. We helped him. Daddy hid the afikomen. I as the older sister later had to look for it and I found it under the table. We, the children, ate chicken and ice cream, but the adults instead of ice cream had cake. There was salt water on the table. Shlomo tried to drink it. Mummy stopped him.

We stayed in the hotel 10 days. We ate in the dining room. We got up late and missed breakfast. Breakfast was cake and matzo, and dinner was chicken and matzo.

In the yard of the hotel there was a park. We often walked with Bella's family. Bella allowed me to lift her baby (Shimon, one year old) by my arms.

The hotel had swimming pools indoors. We swam two times there. The swimming pool was also outdoors. The boys got around the fence and wanted to go under the ice of the swimming pool. One boy fell through the ice and got his feet wet. We played in a playroom. I became acquainted with new friends: Milka, Vetty, Shiva and Moska. They live in Toronto.

In the middle of the vacation we had a trip to a museum in Montreal on a bus with a guide. On the road we saw many nice buildings. Daddy took photos. In the museum there were tropical trees and it was very warm. We saw monkeys, parrots, lizards, etc. In the museum there was an aquarium, where we saw big and small fish. When we returned to the hotel we were tired.

Before we had to return home we bought presents for our relatives. We packed our things and departed for home. At home we often view the cassettes about our trip to Canada on the computer."

When Masha and her husband with their three children returned from Canada after Passover, we had a conversation with Masha.

-How did you celebrate Passover in Canada?
-It was good.
-Next year will you drive to Canada also?
-No, no, I want to celebrate Passover only at home. It is better.

This means we won't have a problem with the first Seder, if we are alive.

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