Passover Seder
Every year Robert and I put together a measly version of a very complicated ordeal known as Passover Seder. It's a Jewish Holiday where Jewish people come together to read from the Haggadah, perform ceremonial rituals, and eat a lot of food very slowly. This year I was asked to attend my Biochem professors Passover Seder and like a good pseudo-Jewish lady I showed up bearing desserts! I successfully made Coconut Macaroons and less successfully made Chocolate French Macarons with a chocolate ganache filling. I thought the French Macarons were yummy, though their presentation was slightly lacking.
For whatever reason I've always really enjoyed listening to people sing in Hebrew. From the moment you open the book backwards, see the Hebrew text backwards and start reading the transliteration and pretend singing it... a new world is opened up for you. I'm immediately taken back in time to find myself sitting among the families that were desperately seeking freedom from enslavement and praying for future safety. These stories and rituals having been performed for hundreds of years by Jewish people far and wide living in safety or scarcity, in poverty or fear, living for something.
As I drove home following this wonderful celebration, I found out that 3 people were shot and killed outside of a Jewish Cultural Center and a Jewish Assisted Living Facility by a former KKK anti-semitic 73 year old man in Kansas City today. Devastating. The irony of this terrible story is that the people that were killed were not Jewish. Sadly, hate crimes still exist and there are people that we share this world with that will hold rigidly to their supremacist notions.
Another good reminder that life is fragile, worth living, and sacred in its own way for each of us.
Happy Passover Seder. :)
For whatever reason I've always really enjoyed listening to people sing in Hebrew. From the moment you open the book backwards, see the Hebrew text backwards and start reading the transliteration and pretend singing it... a new world is opened up for you. I'm immediately taken back in time to find myself sitting among the families that were desperately seeking freedom from enslavement and praying for future safety. These stories and rituals having been performed for hundreds of years by Jewish people far and wide living in safety or scarcity, in poverty or fear, living for something.
As I drove home following this wonderful celebration, I found out that 3 people were shot and killed outside of a Jewish Cultural Center and a Jewish Assisted Living Facility by a former KKK anti-semitic 73 year old man in Kansas City today. Devastating. The irony of this terrible story is that the people that were killed were not Jewish. Sadly, hate crimes still exist and there are people that we share this world with that will hold rigidly to their supremacist notions.
Another good reminder that life is fragile, worth living, and sacred in its own way for each of us.
Happy Passover Seder. :)
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