The First Passover Seder

Last night marked the beginning of Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the Israelites' escape from Egypt and Pharaoh, and their subsequent freedom from slavery. We had the first seder with Dave's family and, despite having two young children, it went quite well. (Observes the non-Jew!).

Note: I am not going to go into all the details of what a seder involves since I prefer to let Dave address the Jewish faith and its practices on the blog. He has a major work conference for the next two days so doesn't have time right now. Until he can speak up (which might not be until next year) you can check out more about a somewhat typical seder here. Ours was fairly short due to the attention spans of Sam and Rachel not being longer than a gnat's!

Rachel wore the bib which Dave's grandpa sent for Sam when he was a baby. This was Rachel's first ever seder and so we thought it would be appropriate for her to wear it. Rachel also insisted on wearing a kippah and kept it on for about two of the three hours we were there.

Rachel particularly enjoyed dipping the karpas (parsley) into the salt water and Sam did surprisingly well with the gefilte fish. As did Rachel.

After a bit, Rachel decided to try and "clear the table" so we moved her to a corner instead of having her in the middle of the table. Dave's mom had the primary task of feeding Rachel and Dave commented, "As we get closer to the Israelites' freedom, Rachel is becoming progressively more confined!"

Lily and Sam with the Passover candles burning in the foreground.

 

My favourite seder food is the matzoh ball soup and Sam and Rachel gobbled up theirs too, especially Rachel.

Dave always plays guitar for the seder when he is around. I think he was glad to be able to participate in this way again. It was a quiet seder last night with just us and Dave's family, but it was really nice and I think Rachel and Sam really got some of what was going on. I am looking forward to seeing their awareness of Passover and the seder grow as they get older.

Happy Passover to any of my blog readers who celebrate. And if you need an awesome recipe for a Passover dessert you totally have to check out this one, which I made this afternoon. (Just be sure to use the parchment paper to bake them since I didn't think it was necessary and ended up with the cookies sticking to the pans.) You might want to make these cookies even if you don't need a Passover dessert because they are really yummy!

Source: chocolateandcarrots.com viaNatasha on Pinterest

Here's what my cookies looked like. (I also didn't use the super-awesome Hershey's cocoa the recipe recommends, as you might be able to tell.)