Passover Report
[Editor's note: I swear this post will conclude my Passover musings for the year. I'm not going all Kabbalah or anything like that. I just love food, history, religion, and posting photos.]
I went to the book club/Passover Seder last night. Discussions of both Friday Night Lights and the Exodus were illuminating and interesting.
Seder plate with:
- Karpas (parsley);
- Beitza (egg for spring and renewal);
- Charoset (apple salad representing mortar used in slave labor);
- some Matzah bread;
- Maror (bitter herb representing bitterness of slavery -- Daniel, our "leader" couldn't find Passover horseradish, but he found a tube of wassabi, which is typically horseradish and coloring, at a Japanese market.);
- salt water (representative of tears shed by slaves and used for dipping the Karpas); and
- Z'roa (lamb shank bone to represent the lamb's blood used to mark the homes of people who were passed over for the death of their first born sons -- here, it's a chicken bone from Costco).
That's some Charles Shaw in the background. Clearly, the meal wasn't Kosher.
Dessert ...
Pecan Torte
I found a recipe for a Passover Pecan Torte in the April 2005 Martha Stewart Living magazine. It doesn't appear to be available on the on line edition. The cake has pecans, eggs, sugar, and few other things -- no flour, no leavening. I served the cake with a lemon curd (lemons from my neighbor's tree) and berries. It was yummy, but the sprinkled powdered sugar and the transportation was a little off (representative of the haste with which I fled my home to make it to the gathering on time).
I still don't get why God made the Israelites go through so much suffering in Egypt if he could have used his power to stop the suffering before anyone had to die or suffer from enslavement or one or more of the plagues.
I went to the book club/Passover Seder last night. Discussions of both Friday Night Lights and the Exodus were illuminating and interesting.
Seder plate with:
- Karpas (parsley);
- Beitza (egg for spring and renewal);
- Charoset (apple salad representing mortar used in slave labor);
- some Matzah bread;
- Maror (bitter herb representing bitterness of slavery -- Daniel, our "leader" couldn't find Passover horseradish, but he found a tube of wassabi, which is typically horseradish and coloring, at a Japanese market.);
- salt water (representative of tears shed by slaves and used for dipping the Karpas); and
- Z'roa (lamb shank bone to represent the lamb's blood used to mark the homes of people who were passed over for the death of their first born sons -- here, it's a chicken bone from Costco).
That's some Charles Shaw in the background. Clearly, the meal wasn't Kosher.
Dessert ...
Pecan Torte
I found a recipe for a Passover Pecan Torte in the April 2005 Martha Stewart Living magazine. It doesn't appear to be available on the on line edition. The cake has pecans, eggs, sugar, and few other things -- no flour, no leavening. I served the cake with a lemon curd (lemons from my neighbor's tree) and berries. It was yummy, but the sprinkled powdered sugar and the transportation was a little off (representative of the haste with which I fled my home to make it to the gathering on time).
I still don't get why God made the Israelites go through so much suffering in Egypt if he could have used his power to stop the suffering before anyone had to die or suffer from enslavement or one or more of the plagues.
posted by Kathy at 9:18 AM
6 Added Something:
K - I attended my first seder last night. It was held in my own house, as my roomie is down with the ZBT (Zion Brothers of the Torah). It was great. We went through a ritual that included all the articles you mentioned. Very enlightening and fun. I wondered, though, if it was improper that I found the bitter herbs (green onions) delicious.
As for God not using his power to liberate his people; well, then we'd have no history or religion. There'd be no point to our existence. We wouldn't be human. What is history, really, if not suffering and pain? Sure, its fun sometimes, but mostly its suffering and pain. That's what makes us humans: the ability for us to complain about how much our existence sucks.
Plus, God is like a 'Dad' who wants us to learn some lesson. He doesn't want to coddle us, spoil us. He wants us to learn the value of life and how, through our suffering, we come to appreciate how much better it would be not to exist. Sure, some people commit suicide, but that's cheating. Or they get killed by a deranged stranger or lover or are exterminated in a genocide or something, but I'm going to leave all these examples aside because they don't fit into my argument. What I am saying is that the ideal is to finally reach a point in one's life where one realizes how existence doesn't matter and then one becomes one God, at which point 'one' 'dies.'
Or something like that.
wow. I think chuy should be a theologian.
Theologically: free will - - or it was test of their will.
K -your a good Catholic u sohuld know why people have to suffer.
We brought it on ourselves when we tasted the forbidden fruit.
I think what really happened was that God told Adam and Eve they could live forever if they didn't reproduce and you can figure out the rest.
What if there was no suffering? Hhhm than we wouldn't make up stories about how cool it would be to be kickin' it in heaven with some Deity-- we'd be content here on Earth and since this Deity is a selfish Dude/ette -- s/he couldn't have that -- s/he had to make heaven more attractive than Earth.
Were all just lab rats trying to pretend we really exist in some free world.
SuperM
To anna (eng):
I once started a church with Kathy back in the day. Kathy and I had quite a following. We touched many people, which is always fun.
i would be careful about touching people in church. i know some folks who got into some trouble that way...
Our church was called the New Church of the Postmodern Christ. We performed a mass baptism on Red Square (the quad of our hippie college). We didn't literally touch people. We anointed them with Evian spray water. At least that's how I performed my baptisms, Xui.
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