Jews prepare for tomorrow's Passover seder

Passover couldn't happen until Suzanne Nahamo got her five-pound lamb.

So she waited with her two children at the butcher counter of the Narberth Acme, transformed into a Passover bazaar yesterday as Jewish customers stocked up for their seders - the first two feasts of the eight-day holiday that begins at sundown tomorrow.

A similarly jovial scene played out in dozens of local communities, as an estimated 200,000 Philadelphia-area Jewish residents readied themselves for the holiday that celebrates the exodus of Jews from slavery in Egypt.

Food is as much symbol as sustenance in the seder, a highly ritualized meal that is freighted with cultural and religious meaning, as well as family tradition.

So there was a lot riding on Nahamo's lamb, itself meant to represent animals sacrificed in ancient times.

"I'm feeding 15 people," said Nahamo, 43, of Merion, as the butcher finally delivered the meat. "For me, cooking for the seder is a point of pride."

But what you cook matters.

"Oh, I once got yelled at by the family for making chicken soup without matzo balls," remembered Nahamo, a middle-school teacher at Barrack Hebrew Academy in Merion Station. "Don't mess with tradition."

The seder can be highly structured: There is a book - the Haggadah - that is read aloud during the meal that guides the ritual.

With so much importance given to a single dining experience, people can become unnerved.

"For American Jews, one of the issues with Passover is that the bar is set very high," said Rabbi Leonard Gordon of the Germantown Jewish Centre, a synagogue in Mount Airy. "Everybody has the memories of amazing brisket and gefilte fish that Grandma made. It can be intimidating."

Adding to the worries is the preparation required before food is even purchased.

"We do a spring cleaning before making the meal," said Joan Denenberg, 47, a Wynnewood marketing executive who was placing sponge cake in her cart at the Acme.

Observant Jews remove bread from their homes before Passover and replace it with matzo (unleavened bread). This is done to commemorate the exodus, when the Jews fleeing Egypt were in such a rush, they didn't have time to wait for bread to rise.

Complicating things further this year for observant Jews is the timing of Passover. Because Saturday is the Sabbath - when many activities are prohibited - people making one of the biggest meals of the year may not, under Jewish law, turn on a stove in the hours leading up to the seder.

But there is a remedy. "Sometimes, people simply turn their ovens on during Friday and leave them on continuously so they can be used during the Sabbath," said Rabbi Geri Newburge of Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill.

As prescribed as the seder can be, however, there is much flexibility built into it.

Meal-time talk isn't always literally about liberation and slavery, but also about oppression of any kind, as well as about the roles of minority and majority culture in a society, said Paul Root Wolpe, a senior fellow at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, and a devout Jew whose father and two brothers are rabbis.

"You could say Passover is, in some ways, the most intellectual of Jewish holidays," he said.

In recent years, many Jews have added a few flourishes to the seder table.

For example, tradition dictates that people pour a cup of wine at the table for the prophet Elijah, expected to return on a Passover to herald the coming of the Messiah.

Nowadays, though, many people add a cup of water for the prophetess Miriam, for gender balance.

Similarly, the seder tables of more liberal Jews will include an orange on a plate. This is meant as a feminist rebuke to an orthodox rabbi who said years ago that Jewish women belong in a synagogue pulpit like an orange belongs on a seder plate.

And this year, some will augment the table with another politically inspired addition, according to Wolpe: an empty picture frame, to demonstrate Jewish solidarity with Tibetans in their struggle with China.

(For years, Tibetans hung pictures of the Dalai Lama on their walls. After the Chinese made it illegal, Tibetans hung empty frames, as a protest.)

"The seder is an elastic, living thing," Wolpe said.

It's also a teaching opportunity for children. The Haggadah specifically orders adults to teach children the Passover story.

Rich Gottlieb, 44, a Merion Station real estate developer and wine customer at Rosenberg Judaica shop in Bala Cynwyd yesterday, puts great emphasis on this.

"Children are a very important part of the seder," he said. "They ask the Four Questions" - a tradition that teaches children about Passover, and keeps them interested in participating.

Every Passover tradition is vital, said Neil Parish, owner of the Kibitz Room, a Cherry Hill deli that caters seders.

"Years go by and people get lazy, letting things fall by the wayside," Parish said. "It's easy to make excuses not to have a seder.

"So, you've got to keep what's important important."