Tag Archives: Passover

Barack Obama: Next Year in Jerusalem

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President Obama and family marked the start of the Jewish Passover by hosting a traditional Seder ceremony at the White House, apparently in fulfillment of a campaign promise. Last year Obama participated in a similar dinner with Jewish campaign workers, and when reciting the Haggadah which ends with the wish “Next Year in Jerusalem,” Obama tacked on “Next Year in the White House.” If we assume he didn’t need to add that wish this time, did the White House prayer end: Next Year in Jerusalem?
Jewish Seder hosted at the White House

I find the official photograph released by the White House disturbing all in itself. The higher resolution image reveals that the Obamas and friends are reading from Haggadah pamphlets published by Maxwell House Coffee, a free hand-out at supermarkets. Wouldn’t you imagine the White House has its own printing wing for such occasions? Aren’t most presidential guests expecting to come away with something more than a promotional brochure for a White House dinner keepsake?

And there’s something a-kilter with the dining furniture. The observation has been confirmed in the blogosphere that everyone’s sitting on plastic catering chairs. The chairs are uncomfortable obviously, because everyone’s using cushions behind their backs. These plastic chairs are presumably what you’d use when you have to set extra places. In this case, an entire extra table. Nothing odd about an extra table, but not where you’d expect to have to bump the First Family. Which family is seated at the main table?

Was it deemed imprudent to depict the first Presidential Seder at the formal table, with all the dignified trappings of a White House occasion?

Assuming there’s an art director behind every detail, including the mixed-bag assortment of pillows used to cushion the chairs, the Obamas appear to be cast into a less-than-affluent kitchen table scene, perhaps out of sensitivity for our nation’s recent hard times. It’s a look that might mimic a Depression Era dinnertime, but I cannot conjure when austerity ever reflected a modern White House. Was even down-home Jimmy Carter ever directed to pretend he was more Good Times and less like the Huxtables?

Israel and the surplus Passover bread

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I thought the NPR human interest story about Passover was going to be a PR piece: What do Israeli Jews do with their leavened bread during Passover, when religious observance forbids not just the consumption of bread, but the possession of it? What do Jewish bakeries, grocers, eateries, distributors and warehouses do with their un-unleavened inventories? I’ll bet you were going to guess that they give it away!

Not to other observers of Passover obviously, but to non-Jewish needy maybe, who can eat it.

No doubt Israeli Jewish bread purveyors schedule inventory reductions to coincide with Passover. But according to the news segment, the mass of raised dough, for the brief Passover hours untouchable to Jewish adherents, regularly amounts to $150 million, every year. So what do they do with it?

Well according to NPR, here’s the deal.

On paper, the bread is entrusted to the governing rabbis, who make a collective deal with a single cooperative non-Jew. This Israeli Arab agrees to purchase the lot, by making a down-payment, with the proviso that he cannot take delivery until the balance is paid, and a further understanding that he will intentionally default on the transaction. He joked with the reporter that every year he falls short of the sum required. When the Passover restriction lifts, possession of the bread reverts to its Jewish owners, whose premises it never left, physically. The stock goes back on the books, and everyone is back in business.

No details about whether this is how Jewish communities have always overcome the Passover prohibition. Which we might assume has been a pressing challenge for centuries. And to be fair, the restriction was never about divesting of the bread, or being charitable, but more about commemoration through sacrifice, the flight from Egypt when Jews were compelled to take with them only unleavened bread.

So this news segment was not a heavy handed PR message about the piety of Israeli Jews, but a subtle glimpse into the pragmatic world of Judaism. Either message serves to familiarize the 98% of Americans who are not Jewish, with the daily life of Israelis. Though Israel may be a foreign nation, with the foreign concept of a state religion, the people of Israel are otherwise close kin of the white European Americans, as their blood-surrogate claimants to the Holy Land.

If you’re still wondering about the Arab Israelis who could have been in line for day old largess, don’t worry, this segment had that loose end tied up.

Night Porter Holocaust masochist themeBy the oddest of twists, the Israeli Arabs interviewed for this story declared their own preference for unleavened bread, for the Passover. This drew incredulous prompts from nearby Israeli Jews. Why would Arabs chose Matzo, the poor man’s bread, without being obligated?

But so says NPR. There it is. So no one’s missing the uneaten bread.

The lingering motif being, that while religious differences may remain, in terms of baked-goods gastronomy, Arab Israelis are wannabe Jewish Israelis.

God’s Chosen People, America’s chosen cousins, are even their captives’ chosen masters.