Relearning Passover Traditions

Immigrants Set Seder Tables

April 10, 1995|By Larry Hartstein, Tribune Staff Writer.

On Passover, many Jews strive to feel as if they themselves, not just their ancestors, escaped slavery in ancient Egypt.

And so they spend hours at the seder table telling the story of the Exodus, eating the flat, crunchy matzo the Israelites ate as they fled Pharaoh's armies, and drinking red wine to celebrate freedom.

A group of immigrant children from the former Soviet Union went one step further Sunday.

The children, who knew little or nothing about the holiday before coming to the United States in the last few years, acted out the story of Passover in vivid detail during a model seder held by their Sunday-school teachers at the Kaplan Jewish Community Center in Skokie.

Another dramatic seder was held Sunday at the Horwich Jewish Community Center in Chicago. They were part of a series of seders celebrated by Russian Jewish children in the weeks leading up to the holiday this Friday.

With their parents looking on, the children ages 8 to 10 hammered away at an imaginary rock pile as a slave master played by a teaching assistant shouted "Work harder! Harder!"

They slapped small red stickers on their faces to symbolize boils, one of 10 plagues God inflicted on the Egyptians.

They scampered out the door to mimic the Jews' frantic dash to the Red Sea.

"We do it because the Jewish people did it," said 9-year-old Irina Kogan, whose family immigrated 2 1/2 years ago. "In this school we learn about Jewish tradition."

Irina and her older sister, Marina, are students in the community center's Shalom Sunday program. But at home they are teachers.

"In Russia I didn't know Jewish tradition," said their father, Viktor, sitting at a table filled with matzo and other Passover foods like hard-boiled eggs, parsley, and horseradish. "Every Sunday when I pick up my kids, they bring a lot of different things home. They explain the Jewish traditions, they sing the Jewish songs."

Irina Tseger, whose son, Alex, played a slave in the drama, recalled that in the Ukraine "We were afraid to even tell we were Jewish.

"We never followed tradition, just the grandparents" did, Tseger said. "And now Alex is so happy here and I'm so glad."

Alex, 9, explained that the slaves got stronger as the Egyptians worked them harder. He said, correctly, that the Jews painted animal blood on their doorposts so that the Angel of Death would "pass over" their homes and seek out the Egyptians' instead.

The eight-day holiday of Passover kicks off with seders on Friday and Saturday nights. Seder is a Hebrew word for order, and refers to the progression of blessings, narrative, songs, foods and wine that together help Jews re-create the Exodus.

Teachers and students Sunday explained the meaning of each item on the seder table, including matzo, an unleavened bread the fleeing Jews ate because they had no time to let their dough rise; bitter herbs, symbolizing the painful experience in Egypt; and haroset, a soft mixture of apples and nuts representing the mortar the slaves used to build pyramids, according to Jewish tradition.

Around seder tables throughout the world, the struggles of Jews in the former Soviet Union have been compared to those of the Israelites in ancient Egypt.

"We are to feel as if we came out of Egypt," said Barbara Glimer, coordinator of the Shalom Sunday program at the Kaplan JCC. "For our days now, it's the Russians who have left because they were not able to practice their Jewishness."