Questions of tradition

Buckingham Place hosts model Seder.

By: Marisa Maldonado
   The youngest person at each Passover Seder has the responsibility of asking four questions about the holiday.
   But when Rabbi Mendy Carlebach asked 8-year-old Jeremy Orlando to do the honor during a Seder held Tuesday evening at Buckingham Place, an assisted-living community on Raymond Road, the youngster replied quietly:
   "Next year?"
   "I shouldn’t have given him the choice," Rabbi Carlebach said with a hearty laugh before leading the gathering in singing the four questions, asking "Wherefore is this night different from other nights?" in Hebrew and English.
   The purpose of the model Seder — held the evening before Passover’s beginning, Wednesday at sundown — was to educate the residents about the meaning behind traditions such as those asked in the four questions: dipping parsley into saltwater, chewing bitter herbs, reclining while eating and drinking and eating matzo.
   "We are all children of God, and we’re supposed to ask the questions," Rabbi Carlebach said. "Even though we know the questions, and some of us know the answers."
   The community held the Seder on Tuesday so residents could celebrate the actual start of Passover with their families, Rabbi Carlebach said. The rabbi encouraged the 30 residents and family members in attendance to unite to celebrate the holiday, which commemorates the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt.
   "Tonight and every night of Passover, none of us have labels," the rabbi said. "We are all Jewish people."
   The rabbi read from the Haggadah — a book that tells the story of how God saved the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt — and led the attendants in singing songs. Afterward, the families ate and discussed their own traditions.
   Richard Stoller, who was visiting his mother, Esther, at the retirement community, recalled how his uncle used to serve the hard-boiled egg, a symbol of life, springtime and the infinity of God.
   "My uncle used to pitch them to us," Mr. Stoller said. "Across the whole house, like a baseball."
   The Seder at Buckingham Place lasted about an hour and a half. Monroe resident Anne Chances remembered her family’s tradition of Seders that could last longer than three hours.
   "Eleven o’clock at night, we had the soup," she said.
   For Helen Harris, who moved into Buckingham Place on Monday, the Seder was a welcome to her new home. Her son, Sheldon, had seen Rabbi Carlebach in the lobby while moving his mother in, and learned about the Seder that way.
   Ms. Harris and her son planned to celebrate in their house Wednesday night with Sheldon’s wife, 20-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son. Mr. Harris said the family tries to keep the attention of their children with traditions such as finding the afikomen, a piece of matzo hidden at the start of the Seder and hunted for by the children at the end of the evening.
   "My daughter and son, they still fight over (the afikomen)," Mr. Harris said. "When you get older, there’s still sibling rivalry."
   But 8-year-old Jeremy didn’t have to share the afikomen with anyone else Tuesday night. He found the piece of matzo behind a flowerpot — the same place the rabbi had asked him to hide it earlier — and received a prize of candy as a reward.
   Rabbi Carlebach then broke the afikomen into pieces and handed it out to the group members, who ate it as the traditional Passover dessert.
   Rabbi Carlebach recognized that different Jewish families have traditions when it comes to matzo. Some families, he said, will not eat wet matzo the first seven nights of Passover because they do not want the matzo to become fermented.
   Jeremy was listening to the rabbi, apparently. As he crumbled a piece of matzo into his soup, he paused, remembering Rabbi Carlebach’s words.
   "Oops," he said.
   "That’s all right," his mother Meryl Orlando said. "Everybody does it differently. Remember what the rabbi said? Different craziness."