Passover seders are usually communal affairs when we gather with family and friends to commemorate the liberation of the Jews from slavery in Egypt thousands of years ago. Not this year. Trying to stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us sat at table with one or two other people—or no one at all—while trying to connect with our loved ones via Skype or Zoom. There was even a new term I heard bandied about that I think may join the popular lexicon: “zeder”—a mashup of seder and Zoom.
I decided to call my friend and neighbor Ellen Kubo to find out how she and her husband Allen celebrated the first night of Passover. Ellen and I had been trading emails and texts about dishes we were making for the holiday. I knew that many of us were having small seders with our spouses and perhaps a child or two and might have a hard time sourcing ingredients since we’re rationing our trips to the grocery store and often can’t find what we need—especially specialty ingredients.
Having grown up in an immigrant family that delighted in putting on large, long and boisterous seders at my grandmother’s house in Berkeley, and continuing as adult to celebrate in a spirited way with friends and relatives in Southern California, the prospect of a minimal seder with only my spouse—albeit a lovely man—for company, was rather dismal. But, as it turned out, it was quite an intimate, enjoyable experience.
Ellen also embraced the challenge. Instead of attending a seder elsewhere, as she and Allen usually do and bringing a dish or two to share, Ellen said it was different this year because she made all the foods for the seder herself and celebrated at home with her husband.
The menu, as we discuss on the podcast, featured two types of gefilte fish (including her favorite, a halibut-salmon terrine), a scallion ginger matzo ball soup, a main dish of a spicy beef and matzo pie and a carrot-apple sponge cake for dessert. Then the two “zoomed” with her daughters, Emilia and Lizzie, and their respective partners on the East Coast. A good time was had by one and all!
Here’s a link to listen to the podcast.
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Thanks for listening! See you in the kitchen—and stay safe and well.