Passover home hospitality
The first night of Passover is Monday, March 29
The mitzvah of hospitality and opening your home to strangers is a mitzvah we practice at Rodef Sholom. Our hope is that everyone has a place at a Seder and is not alone for this holiday. We ask you to open your home to others on the first night of Passover this year. If you would like to host other congregants at your Seder or need to be hosted, please contact Moji before March 15 at moji@rodefsholom.org or 479.3441.
Jan's story: I remember fondly our huge family seders. Our extra large dining room table wasn’t big enough to accommodate all the relatives, so grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles sat at tables that awkwardly spilled from the dining room into the living room. Grandpa Eddie led the seder, and we took turns reading from the well worn Maxwell House hagaddahs (the little blue ones!). There was always a ton of food, from gefilte fish to my sister’s famous charoset, to Mom’s brisket, and even though there wasn’t a spare chair in the house we still delighted in opening the door to let Elijah in to join the fun.
In recent years, it’s been my pleasure to host our family seder. I cherish that feeling of having lots of family crowded around a patchwork of tables, taking turns reading from the hagaddahs and, of course, eating all the wonderful Passover food. So now I fill our dining room table, and every other table in the house, with Luxenberg family and Rodef Sholom family members. Inviting congregants who might not otherwise be able to participate in a seder to our home has become a tradition for us. And many of our guests who were brave enough to take on a Luxenberg seder (we are surprisingly low key, sometimes silly, and yet still very meaningful) are now “regulars”, and feel just like family!
Wendy Lawrence: I should start by saying that Nicholas’ and my very first Pesach seder was at the JCC in San Francisco surrounded by several hundred complete strangers, two years before we went to the mikvah. We sat at a large round table of about ten Jews, consisting of single parents and children mostly, and an elderly couple or two. Aside from being Jewish and celebrating Pesach, the one thing we all had in common was that we had nowhere else to spend first night seder and it was important to all of us that we did. The tables were lovely and the rabbis on the stage were heroic in keeping the haggadah funny and relevant and the hungry children mostly quiet.
It was lovely and we left happy and observant, but it was not the same as what has become our very special yearly tradition of going to Jan and Jay Luxenberg's home, complete with squabbling siblings, overflowing dishes in the kitchen, spilled wine on the white table cloth and searching for the afikomen, which, to Nicholas' chagrin, falls to him every year as still being the youngest, even as he approaches being six feet two inches tall!
Although I remember being nervous our first time at the Luxenberg's, I knew who Jan was because I used to see her at temple all the time and when we walked in the door, even Nicholas knew who she was and immediately felt at home. Then we met Jay and the cat and the grandparents and sisters and cousins in-laws and knew we had found a second home. By the time we left that first night, we knew it was just the beginning of a lasting tradition and a lifelong friendship.
Every year at this time, I still think about our first seder at the SFJCC and about the Jewish "orphans" who have no place else to go and I'm happy that the SFJCC can provide a sanctuary. As a matter of fact, before we were invited to our first year at Jan's, I had already bought two tickets for the JCC seder, which I returned to the JCC who promised to give them to those who couldn't afford to go. And even as tight as things are right now, I am going to donate two tickets to the JCC first night seder this year, too, because really, that's what it's all about.
Chag Purim Sameach!