PESACH MEMORIES

 

For me Pesach is not only the Festival of Freedom, a lot of cooking and hard work too, but a time for special memories. They begin to flood in as soon as Norman and I begin unpacking the Pesach dishes and utensils. Out comes the big box containing the tea service, twelve typically English, bone china, green and red flowered plates, cups and saucers, as well as two milk jugs, two sugar basins and two cake plates. In his retirement, my father, always a keen gardener, became passionately interested in growing cactii. One day he saw a meeting of a Cactus Society advertised in the local paper and went eagerly off to the meeting dragging my far less interested mother along with him. They both returned in great excitement, my father loaded with cactus cuttings and bearing between them a large box, containing said tea- service which had been the first prize in a raffle held during the meeting and for which they had got the winning ticket. It has been our Pesach tea-set ever since. Norman’s parents’ Seder plates are also very special, a blue and white matching Seder and matza plate with Matza written in gold in the centre. All we know about them is that they were made in London, over one hundred years ago and that two identical but slightly cracked ones used to be on display at the Hechel Shlomo museum, described as being both rare and valuable. There are, of course, other bowls and plates that belonged to parents and family members and all with their own memories and stories.

The Seder service too brings back vivid memories from my childhood when we always had a huge family Seder at the home of my maternal grandmother. As an only child, I loved these occasions which gave me the opportunity to be with my slightly older cousins whom I adored. We always used ancient, wine-spotted Haggadot which had been printed in Vienna and used by the family for many years (bought I was told, in Woolworths for sixpence each) and in which the English translation had terrible and, to us children, hysterically funny misprints. For example, “Jacob wrestled with the mangle,” note that those were the days before washing machines and spin-driers and every home had an unwieldy wringer for the washing known as a mangle. We would start giggling pages before arriving at the misprint, gradually getting more hysterical as the Egyptians were, “smitten with fitty plagues,” and later when it was written that the time had come, “to say the morning Shemong.” Probably aided by the fact that my older cousins were by that stage slightly drunk having, undetected by the adults, been drinking the real wine instead of the homemade raisin version made especially for us children by my grandmother, invariably at least one of us slid off our chairs and lay giggling helplessly under the table. At this stage my old nanny always predicted that there would be, “A crying match before the night was out,” and, having been reprimanded by one of the uncles for the noise we were making and our lack of attention to the Seder service, there invariably was.

In Israel our Seders are most enjoyable but quite different from our English ones, our son-in-law being Sephardi, we have become used to different customs, foods and tunes for the traditional songs although Norman always leads the Had Gad Yar with our families’ traditional melody. These evenings are wonderful occasions and the fact that we are fortunate enough to be celebrating in The Promised Land make them even more special but no Seder will ever match up to the slightly disorderly and riotous ones of my childhood.

For the last few years I have sworn that this will be the last year I “Make Pesach,” it’s all too exhausting at my age, but now, the last of the Pesach utensils packed away in their cupboard and happily contemplating a bread roll for supper, I can look back on a job well done and know that with the help of HaShem, I shall continue to “Make Pesach,” for as long as I have breath in my body.