Passover 2024: The different Jewish traditions for the Seder night

Mary Shaked has taken her love of her Iraqi culinary heritage and shares it in the cooking and baking workshops she leads from her Ramat Gan home. As a food lover, her memories of her childhood Passover revolve around the holiday food and meals. Her first memories of Passover preparation at her parents’ home are the broad beans her mother would set for her father to peel for the Seder meal.

“My parents died 30 years ago and what I remember is the preparation for the Seder meal of the fresh broad beans just in time for spring. I remember my father would sit down and my mother would give him the bowl of broad beans to peel, and in the end, his hands would be black and my mother would give him lemon juice to clean them. We loved to cook them simply with water, lemon, and salt and that was always on the holiday table along with roasted lamb with potatoes and tomatoes, which took hours to cook in its own juices. It was a very heavy meal with that lamb and chicken and all kinds of pickles made especially for Passover.

“My aunt would make [Iraqi haroset] and she would buy buckets of dates and slow cook them in water and then she would take all those cooked and softened dates and strain the liquid through a cheesecloth and then mix the remaining syrup with walnuts. That would be homemade silan. Everyone would get a small jar by their plate and when my father would do the blessing we would dip into that syrup. It was very thick, and nothing like what is sold in stores today.

“My father would read from a Haggadah which was written in both Hebrew and Iraqi, which would make for a longer Seder. My father would read also in Iraqi and also in Hebrew. We filmed him reading it once and when I watch him on film now I cry when I see that. We don’t do that anymore. Now the grandchildren just say “Yallah, yallah” and we need to get on with it.”

What are some other Passover Seder traditions?

ORA HATAN and her two sons are the only residents who have remained in the northern moshav of Shtula, which her parents, who immigrated from Koya, Kurdistan, helped establish along the border with Lebanon. Every day, not only does she prepare meals paid out of her own pocket for some 100 soldiers who are stationed in the area, but she also feeds the pet dogs and cats that residents abandoned on the moshav when they were evacuated. 

At the beginning of the war, some people donated money to help her cover the costs, but as the war has persisted, fewer and fewer donations have come in. Still, she continues to feed the soldiers hungry for a home-cooked meal and the animals hungry for human attention. She and her sons will most likely join her sister and her family and grandchildren in Tel Aviv for the Seder, but on Hol Hamoed they will return north to Shtula, she said.

“Something we did when we were young and my parents were still alive, and which we still do now with the younger children is that when we recite the ‘Ma Nishtanah,’ the Four Questions, the younger children go out and dress up in jalabiyas like the ancient Israelites and take a walking stick and they go outside and then knock on the door. We, who are inside, call out: ‘Who’s there at the door?’ and they reply: ‘We are the Children of Israel.’ And then we ask: ‘Where are you coming from?’ and they say: ‘We are coming from Egypt.’ And we ask: ‘Where are you going?’ and they say: ‘We want to go to Israel.’ And in this way, we emphasize the story of the exodus for the children. Then they come inside and they chant the Four Questions and we tell them the story of all the Haggadah. That is how we familiarize them with the story.”

Their haroset is made with ground walnuts and roasted peanuts mixed with dates that have been soaked in water and softened.

“Also during the reciting of the 10 plagues, the head of the Seder pours wine from the bottle into a glass and then takes the cup, which is now cursed, and throws it in the direction of Lebanon and Hezbollah so they should be cursed with these plagues. It has always been thrown to the side of our enemies in Lebanon. If we were on the border with Gaza it would be thrown in the direction of Gaza, if we were on the border with Syria it would be thrown in their direction. If I go to my sister’s house in Tel Aviv, I am not sure in which direction we should throw the cup. 

“But we can’t be happy now, we don’t feel the spirit of the holiday. If we, without family held hostage in Gaza, are feeling sad, imagine how a mother whose daughter is held captive, or a father whose son is captive are feeling.”

MA’AYAN TURNER, who is originally from New Zealand, was ordained a rabbi at the Hebrew Union College in 2000 after making aliyah in 1994. Her connection with the Reform movement opened her to using different symbols at the Seder table.

“Probably once I became involved in the Reform movement, I started hearing of some things, first about Miriam’s cup [which is filled with water], and also an orange on the Seder plate. Miriam’s cup mirrors Elijah’s cup and, in some ways, it is a better fit for the Seder table than Elijah’s cup because Miriam plays such an important part in the story of the exodus as the big sister of Moses, who, at least according to the midrash, foretold of his birth and was there when he was a baby in the Nile. [That’s]  Miriam’s connection with water; her cup is important to be there.

“Traditionally at Seders, we have attended and let Seder participants pour a little bit of water into Miriam’s cup, everyone participating physically in putting their little piece of living water into the cup, their own concepts and ideas.”

The urban myth about having an orange on the Seder plate is that a certain Orthodox rabbi on a panel said that a woman belongs on a bimah like an orange belongs on the Seder plate and, ever since, egalitarian Jews have been putting an orange on the Seder plate. 

“That was the first example of being creative on the Seder, what other items can be put on to make it more meaningful for today – like olives or olive oil as a symbol of peace. Some people go all the way to bring a ‘freedom plate,’ where every participant is encouraged to bring something that represents freedom to them and then put it on a plate or in the middle of the table.

“The Seder was always meant to be a creative event. Yes, we have text to follow and those who are Orthodox may want to follow every word but that should not be the beginning and the end of the Seder. The Seder is meant to be a conversation between different generations and different people, even if it is just two people together it should have a conversation. It is a good thing and we should tell more and more about the exodus. The exodus is hardly mentioned in the Haggadah. More midrashim tell the story and when you tell the story you should do it with meaning for you. 

“Some take the words and tell the historical story and also tell the story as it means something to us—for a lot of people that is telling the story of their own family being saved from bad places, like in the Shoah, someone fighting off cancer or depression and how they got out of that.

“So how do we celebrate the holiday of freedom now when we know there are 133 of our people still in ‘bondage’ to use the traditional word? The cynical level of me says that every single year there are people who are in a kind of bondage and slavery but we don’t feel a personal connection so we put it aside. This year we all are feeling this very, very intensely. With the unfortunate assumption that this may still be the case [on the Seder night], I am reminded in my head of the [psalm] of ‘By the Rivers of Babylon’ because we are singing about hope, singing about a story that worked out well and we want to believe that story can be relived in our days. We sing because we still have many things to be thankful for. Hopefully, this year will make us more aware of what we should be grateful for.”

YOSEF BAR NATAN, president of the Union of Bukharan Jews, is a committed philanthropist for a number of causes from providing scholarships for underprivileged youths to supporting medical centers and organizations for victims of trauma and sexual abuse, at-risk youth, and the IDF Disabled Veterans Organization. 

Awarded a distinguished citizen award from the Tel Aviv Municipality, every year he helps finance a community Seder for some 1,000 people in Tel Aviv. His parents made aliyah from the region known as “Bukhara,” which was part of Soviet Uzbekistan, in 1933, and his own childhood Seders, he recalls, were full of color.

“On the holiday eve, my mother cooked all day. When my father and us children returned from the synagogue she was already seated at the table, dressed in beautiful clothes – the queen of the table. The night before the holiday all the children received new clothes, new shoes. All the adults wore traditional Bukharan garments—the ‘jomah,’ a colorful Bukharan robe, or kaftan, with gold embroidery, and the traditional ‘halfok’ hat, which had all the colors of the rainbow. These represented being royal and free. 

“Everything was so colorful. The table was set immaculately, with a crisp white tablecloth, and flowers. After we all sat at the table – the aunts and the uncles and the cousins – we read the Haggadah in Hebrew, but also in Bukharan. After the youngest read the Four Questions, then the ‘arguments’ began when we got to the section about the Four Sons. All in good sport, of course, everyone would argue about who would read the part of the bad son. No one wanted to read it until finally, someone would volunteer. And for the simple son whoever read it, would read it stammering. 

“Before the afikoman is found, the father or grandfather would take off his belt and walk around the table asking who has the afikoman, “whipping” everyone a bit – lightly – so they could each feel a bit of the pain felt by the Israelites when they were slaves. After the afikoman was eaten, we would sing the Bukharan version of ‘Had gadya’ (‘Jon Buzghole’) to amuse the young people and we would all laugh at the words. 

“My father would give presents to all and the best present was for my mother. On Hol Hamoed, community-wide, families would go visit each other in what is called the ‘moed bini’ – which means to “see in holiday” – or also ‘kocha gardak,’ which means to ‘go around.’ 

“Now, we, the second generation, no longer wear the colorful coats, but many of the Bukharan immigrants who came to Israel in the ’70s and ’80s in Or Yehuda, Dimona, and Ramle still celebrate with the traditional clothes. Today I feel a lot of nostalgia about that.” 