Now That We've Pass(ed)over

Spring in Germany is in full spring. The temperatures have been in the 70's Fahrenheit, flowers are everywhere and there are birds chirping (literally) outside my window. Which makes it a great time to reflect on "chag ha'aviv" or the holiday of spring, another name for passover.

The last few weeks have been full of Passover preparation, activities and of course seders. Before Pessach we continued our jewish cooking tradition in Duisburg making something I never thought I'd cook, gefillte fish. Thank goodness for Marina who took the lead in handling all the fish and filling (get it geFILLte? German/ Yiddish is such fun!) all the fish heads with cod.

Luckily I was able to work on the matzah balls instead.

For the first night I decided to have my very own seder. I've never led a seder before and I had a few friends with nowhere to go for the holiday so I figured it would be fun to band together and celebrate.

I put together color-in hagadot and gleefully spent all of last Monday cooking and baking in preparation. I made the traditional charoset and matzah ball soup but I am especially proud of my flour-less chocolate cake accomplishment.

It was so nice spending the holiday with close friends, it really made the holiday intimate, but also let us delve into our own questions and passover ruminations.

I spent the second seder back in Duisburg, in a much more traditional setting. Alex led a wonderful quara-lingual seder! It was so specific to the mainly russian-jewish community here in Germany that I can't imagine a seder in German, English, Russian and Hebrew happening anywhere else but here.

I can't say though that I wasn't overjoyed to eat bread again though at the end. In a country like Germany where I already don't eat pork, cutting out all grains too was quite a challenge.

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