Pre-Passover seders bring alive the stories and wonders of the Jews' emancipation from Egypt. Those who join in learn from each other.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published April 4, 2004
It's a tradition centuries old. Each Passover, gathered around tables, Jews retell the ancient story of how God delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt.
The story will be retold again Monday at sundown, when Passover starts.
But for what purpose?
"Is it all symbolism? Are we living in the past?" Rabbi Alter Korf asked almost two dozen adults meeting in a Madeira Beach home.
"What is the meaning to the holiday we celebrate?"
Then Korf told a story. A king and his son were traveling with their entourage through a deserted area. The son became thirsty, but there was no water. The servants suggested two options. Someone could go to the nearest city to bring back water. Or, they could dig a well. Much to the puzzlement of his son, the king said a well should be dug. His rationale was, the king told his son, that if the boy had to travel the same way again and was alone, the well would be there. For the rest of the journey, more wells were dug.
"As a people," Korf concluded, "we need spiritual wells to sustain our souls."
The eight-day festival of Passover, and other Jewish holidays sprinkled throughout the year, the rabbi said, are spiritual wells prepared by God.
With Passover fast approaching, Korf and his adult students weren't the only ones striving to put deeper meaning into one of the most widely observed Jewish holidays. Late Thursday morning, seventh- and eighth-grade students from the Pinellas County Jewish Day School shared a seder - the ritual Passover meal - with senior citizens at the Philip Benjamin Tower in St. Petersburg.
The occasion was a treat for Tess Morris, 79, who emigrated from England with her late husband, John, more than a half-century ago.
"It's marvelous. It's like having a family," she said of the pre-Passover celebration.
"It just takes me back to when I was a kid. It's nothing like when you have it at home, but it's the kids that make it."
Since her husband's death last year, Mrs. Morris said she has no family in the United States. When Passover begins Monday at sundown, she will go through the seder service by herself, she said.
Mrs. Morris sat at a table with eighth-grade students Samantha Krop, Lauren Laguna, Ezra Sembler and Lauren Heyman.
"It's nice to experience the seder with people other than your family," Lauren Laguna said. "It's nice to share it."
Samantha, who said her Miami grandparents probably will visit for Passover, agreed.
"I think it's cool, because we're sharing our religion with other people."
The children were particularly solicitous to Irene Chlapowski, 84, a Catholic, whom they had met when their school visited the senior citizens' community for last year's seder.
Lauren Heyman, 13, who lives with her grandparents, helped guide Florence Green, who also is Catholic, through the unfamiliar rituals.
It was her "absolute first" seder, Mrs. Green said, "but it's very interesting."
"We're all the same under our Lord, who was Jewish," she added.
There was plenty of fun during the lunchtime event, which included traditional songs and a conga line that curled around the tables. Objects representing one of the 10 plagues God sent to Egypt were placed at each table. A student happily pasted red dots on his face to represent boils and members of another table waved colorful plastic creatures meant to be locusts.
While enjoyable, the program was following the biblical injunction - "And thou shalt tell thy child" - to pass down the Passover story from generation to generation. Part of the Passover observation also is to experience the centuries-old story, with its themes of freedom, redemption and hope, in a personal way.
For the Pinellas County Jewish Day School children, who are probably too young to have experienced their own personal Egypt, sharing a seder with the Philip Benjamin Tower residents has an important function, Rabbi Danielle Upbin said.
"It's crucial to have an intergenerational seder so these kids could interact with the older generation ... so these kids could hear some of the personal stories of coming out of Egypt," she said.
"It's also a mitzvah, a commandment, to bring joy to other people's lives, to respect the elderly."
Ezra, 13, who was participating in his second seder at the senior citizens' complex, said, "It kind of makes you feel special to be a part of these people's lives."
The Jewish Day School's pre-Passover gathering naturally differed from the "mock seder" Korf led days earlier at Boca Ciega Point, a sprawling Madeira Beach waterfront community. A Hasidic rabbi and leader of Chabad of St. Petersburg, Korf based his program on the teachings of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Kabbalah, which in Hebrew means "received," he explained, is knowledge God gave to Moses along with the Torah, but it wasn't revealed to the masses until the 1500s. The tradition, he added, imbues the Torah with its deepest, most esoteric meaning.
It is that deeper spiritual significance that he sought to bring to the seder tables of those gathered in the home of Yollette and Louis Frey one week before Passover.
Discussing the festival's theme, Korf told them that freedom gives them an opportunity to express their godly souls and to reach "the spark of God" within.
As each person followed along in individual haggadahs - seder service books - the rabbi pointed out some new insights to the interested crowd.
The seder service mentions four kinds of children - one wise, one simple, one wicked and one who doesn't know what to ask - each with a different question. Korf, though, surprised some around him by speaking of a fifth child.
Mrs. Frey said it wasn't a completely new concept to her.
"We incorporated many years ago a fifth child, the Holocaust child. The child who is no longer here," she said.
"I found it most interesting that the fifth child he introduced was the child who doesn't come to the seder. In our day, that is very prevalent and his challenge is how do we get them to sit at the table to be receptive, to receive."
Ruth Solo, who lives in Largo and works for Pinellas County, said Korf's seder insights will add meaning to her Passover.
"It's not a dead ritual or tradition to me," she said.
"Like Rabbi Korf said, on this April 5, there is a divine energy of freedom and that's something we can tap into. Everything we do in the natural has a spiritual element to it. If people would realize that it's not just a ritual or tradition ... when they understand the spiritual significance, they can tap into this divine energy and it will transform their lives."
