St. Peter Line Ferry

You never know what you’re going to get on an April Ferry in the Bering Sea:

Passover in Petersburg

My dad leads the best passover seders. You make think your Zayde or mother’s or cousin’s is better, but you’re wrong. While I loved my Zayde’s (z”l) seders, with the Maxwell House Haggadah’s, the canned macaroons, and the doctored up, gefilte fish, my dad’s win.

So this year, the first Pesach in my life that I didn’t spend even one night at the seder table with him was a little tough.

Passover in my family is amazing.

First, we don’t just stick to family. Ever year, whether in Chicago or Rochester, or wherever, we have an open door policy. You’re Jewish and don’t have anywhere to go? Please come. You’re not Jewish and always wondered what a seder is like? Please join us. An eclectic mix of those who come every year and those that are at the first seder, means that the seder is what it’s meant to be — an evening of teaching and learning.

Also, we don’t just stick to the text of the Haggadah. This is where my dad excels. Every year, he finds additional readings, special pieces to incorporate into the seder. Whether it’s an account of a seder on Army base in WWII or a contemporary piece on how the four Jewish charters in Glee represent the four children, he relates the seder to the participants. Though every year is the same — as commanded we recite all the key elements of the seder in the key order, every year is new, every year we learn and discuss, laugh and cry, and make the seder special.

During the late 80s, one of the elements my father incorporated into the seder was the Matzah of Hope. It was a fourth piece of matzah on the Passover table. Like everything else on the table it had a special meaning. At some point during the seder, my dad would take the fourth piece of matzah, hold it up, and remind us that this piece of matzah was in honor of the more than 3 million Jews in the Soviet Union who could not celebrate a seder. Maybe, if they were really lucky, they had somehow found a matzah smuggled into the country and celebrate in secret, but by the late 80s, most of them had never been to a seder. So, with the matzah of hope, we remembered then, and hoped that some day, they would be able to join Jews all in a seder.

Well, this year, instead of them joining us, I got to join them.

Passover at Esod Jewish Community Center in St. Petersburg.

More than 20 years after my dad raised that Matzah of Hope, I was in St. Petersburg, in a beautiful Jewish Community Center, making a seder with more than 100 FORMER Soviet Jews.

It’s taken me a while to write, because I’m not exactly sure how to put this experience in words. And I haven’t figured out a way to share what it meant to be sitting in a community center in a community that during my own lifetime had not always been free to celebrate.

20 years have gone by since the doors have opened up.

But we have to remember that for 70 years before the seders, there were none. Grandparents didn’t teach parents who didn’t teach children.

So who were the leaders at the seder? Not the parents, who never had the opportunity to learn the words, but young adults in their 20s. They’ve learned from the community.

Not everyone knew all four of the four questions or all the verses to dayenu, but everyone made a Hillel sandwich and drank four cups of wine (it is Russia after all). And even Russians have their own customs — instead of dipping a finger in the wine to remove a drop for the each of the ten plagues, they dipped a knife. (devushka — you could get sick if you eat your food with your hands — never mind that we eat bread with our hands on a regular basis).

So, I want to thank Katya and Zina, new friends in Russia, for allowing me to share Passover with their family and their communities. Though I might be thousands of miles away from my family, for one night, I was part of the global Jewish community.