My mom grew up in a Jewish community, so we’re thinking maybe we should give some of her old neighbors a call — and it just so happens that my grandparents are still good friends with one of the couples, so it’s actually a reasonable thought. 🙂 So maybe my mom will do that, and we’ll get some truly experienced input on Seder meals. 🙂 But for this year, I managed to simply look through some stuff online (primarily the links I’d shared earlier), and put together a Seder meal for 5 (the 3 of us, plus my parents). Although Steven ended up having to work late, so we didn’t have time to do much of the liturgy before we needed to head out to our parish fellowship night, we did a little of it. My mom lit the candles and said the opening prayer. We did the four glasses of wine (who would skip those?!), and the toasts (if you call them that) with those, and I read some of the extra stuff, like the explanations of what things meant, etc. And Steven read Psalm 113 as part of it as well. So it was a much shortened version, but it was still fun — especially for a first try. When Gabriel is older, he will really like it, I think. He loves liturgical things (he is so our boy).
Here is our [roughly] Seder plate, with the symbolic foods on it: bitter herbs, salt water, a bone (umm, yeah, so our lamb roast was boneless & I had to improvise by using a dog toy….), charoset (a sweet mixture of apples, raisins, walnuts, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, sweet red wine, and honey), matzoh crackers (the matzoh balls were on a separate plate), and hard boiled egg.
Here are the child (Gabriel had brought home a communion cup a few weeks ago, so it was perfect for his wine glass) & adult place settings (don’t you love those small green wine glasses my mom has?).
The food, and the table. For the dinner feast part of the meal, we had grilled lamb (my mom did that part — I don’t really know how to grill!), a grain mixture I bought at Trader Joe’s last week (Israeli couscous, orzo, garbanzo beans, and quinoa), green beans from my garden last year, hard boiled eggs, matzoh bread, matzoh balls, and charoset.
Ready to eat!!
Loving the wine (are you noticing that he didn’t stay in his high chair, and didn’t want to use his tiny wine glass?) — it really tasted like [barely] spiked Welch’s, it was that sweet. I bought kosher wine, Manischewitz, and while not my favorite wine ever, it was great to have something authentic like that (it’s what the Jewish families in my mom’s childhood neighborhood used for Passover).
It was fun to do the Seder meal together, and I hope we can develop it more in future years.
Now I am looking forward to the Good Friday service tonight, where I am going to attempt to accompany the entire service on my harp. If I can muscle through the pain of my blisters, that’s my intent. And then I just won’t be able to play harp for a couple weeks, I think. 🙂 I also semi smashed my pointer finger in the car door two days ago (when delivering my harp to the church), so that is making it slightly difficult as well.
And then Resurrection Sunday!! I have to be at church at 8:30 to practice an anthem on organ with two trumpets, a trombone, and our little church choir. Then there’s brunch at church, but I think maybe I will just come home to get my boys, and not bother about staying for the brunch. I get to play organ for most of the service on Sunday, which Gabriel will love. And then after church we will head to the country for our Easter Feast! Tomorrow I will be making pineapple casserole (not using that linked recipe, but it’s similar: mine has cinnamon though!!) and challah for my part of the meal.
Lovely ideas, Melissa. I love that photo of your dad and Gabriel…his expression is priceless! Have a blessed weekend; I wish we lived closer to one another and I could hear your musical talents.
This looks great! We ended up not doing it this year, next year I’m going to have to plan ahead more. Bruce pointed out that it really is something to do with more than one family…But since I went grocery shopping before we decided not to do it – we still ate Roasted chicken (sorry, no lamb for us), potato latkes (with applesauce…which would have been our very vague placeholder for the charoset), salad with romaine (bitter herbs) and parsley (green herbs) and I made a kosher dessert from Smitten kitchen (almond macaroon torte with chocolate frosting). I had purchased some of the other components for the seder plate, but like I said, we’ll have to get around to it next year.
It looks like you had a great celebration! As part of a project for a class I had in college, I once went to a Messianic Jewish synagogue…I have been a lover of Jewish liturgy ever since. Have a blessed Resurrection Sunday. <3