The Shiksa Seder

The River, celebrating Passover at age 3

I WROTE THE ESSAY that follows in 2006, and it appeared in 2007 on a (sadly, now defunct) website, culturecloud.com, where for a time I wrote and edited, mostly about food and books (is there any better combination?). I thought this was just about Passover when I wrote it, but as it turns out, it’s all about my sister-friends, too.

And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the L-RD, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes … you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree. – Exodus 12:14-17

Last year around this time, my 4-year-old son announced that we needed to have a seder, at our house. “Even though we’re not Jewish?” I asked. “Seders are not just for Jewish people. Christmas people can have them, too.” His tone suggested that no argument would be tolerated. A part of me was delighted, because this time of year, despite a bred-in-the-bone affection for Easter ham, scalloped potatoes and Cadbury eggs, the celebration I await most eagerly is the seder.

My first experience with Passover occurred the same year I ate my first bagel. Unless you grew up in Locust Valley, New York, summer along the coast of Maine, or work at the Bush White House, I may be the WASPiest person you know. That first bagel was a Lender’s, and I ate it in the dining hall of a New Hampshire prep school. I was 14.

One of my closest friends, Julie, was the daughter of a doctor and a teacher from Wellesley. I can’t quite remember the first time we met, but I do remember a fast and intense bond, fueled by giddy adolescent silliness and a guilty fondness for really bad music. (REO Speedwagon, anyone?) Julie’s roommate, Jen, was from the New Jersey suburbs. They argued constantly; they were emphatically different people. But they were united that wet, white New Hampshire spring by their shared determination to properly celebrate Passover.

The meal would take place in their dorm room, a footlocker draped with a block-printed Indian cotton tapestry standing in as the dining table. Their parents sent care packages of items wholly unfamiliar to me: matzohs, Hagadahs, Manischevitz macaroons in the cardboard can. I don’t remember where other sacred elements of the meal—the bitter herbs, the shank bone—came from; I’m pretty sure the hardboiled eggs were pilfered from the cafeteria. I do remember that Julie (who would go on to a brief career as a professional cook before diving headlong into academia) very seriously assumed the duty of making something called charoset. It could have been gefilte fish, for all I knew.

I’m not sure how I finagled an invitation to their seder. It’s possible that Julie wanted someone else there to cut the tension with Jen. And I don’t remember why I wanted to attend, particularly; maybe just inherent curiosity. Culinary adventurousness is hereditary for me: my parents, solid Mayflower and pioneer stock, WASPs to the core, defied stereotype by teetotalling, and whenever possible, seeking out cheap and exotic food in every city they ever called home.

Whatever made me so determined to join my friends that afternoon, I have nearly visceral memories of being seated together with these two girls (we were, emphatically, girls then) and gingerly following their lead through the rituals of the meal. I remember the first taste of the charoset, with its perfect blend of sweet-tart apple, crunchy walnuts, warm cinnamon—it was divine.

Only many years later did it occur to me that Jen and Julie might well have been placed together as roommates because they were both Jewish. At the time, to my naïve and wholly non-religious eyes, their faith seemed incidental, a characteristic as innate and inconsequential as hair color, or height. But at that meal, I saw them in a deeper light, as I caught my first glimpse of the exquisite sensorial beauty of a tradition that combined food, music, narrative and sincere introspection in one event.

In college, amidst a parade of bad-choice boyfriends, one stands out. Daniel was brilliant, handsome, tall, blue-eyed, blond, and an Orthodox Jew. Suffice to say his parents were not delighted with him dating me, a shiksa and three years older. I remember the week leading up to his return to Long Island for Passover; he told me of the ritual cleaning that would be taking place in his parents’ home, to rid it of chametz. “What’s that?” I asked. He grinned as he answered, “Anything not Kosher. Like you.” He gave me the boot not long after I graduated and moved to New York, but not before I bought a cookbook of traditional Jewish foods to contemplate what our future together might be like, at least culinarily.

Now I live in Los Angeles, with my husband and our two children. Our son’s preschool is nominally Jewish but we chose it for its Montessori methods. Most people mistake my husband for Jewish. They’re not wholly wrong; his maternal grandfather was a Jew, but his grandmother was the child of Norwegian immigrants, and like his mother and her sisters, he was baptized a Catholic. His atheism doesn’t stand in the way of our decorating a Christmas tree or hiding eggs for our children to find on Easter morning. For both of us, these traditions that have everything to do with joyous celebration of memory and the passing of time, and nearly nothing to do with faith. Just this week, though, my husband looked up from his coffee and over his New York Times at me and asked, “Are we going to Chris and David’s for Passover?”

Chris and David are some of our closest, dearest friends; we’ve known them together and apart, lived through births and deaths together. They are an interfaith couple, and for most of the last 10 years, we’ve celebrated Passover with them. First seder, second seder, we’re not picky, as long as we can gather with them, their children and ours, for brisket, tzimmes and matzoh ball soup. Chris is not allowed, by any of us, to change the menu. For the last five years, I’ve been haranguing her about finding the late, lamented recipe for tzimmes with orange juice that she made once, and then lost. I can still taste it, but apparently, I won’t ever eat it again. Still, the replacement tzimmes is pretty darn good, her matzoh balls are impossibly light, and John swoons over her brisket, every year.

Over time, as we’ve become fixtures at the meal, I’ve taken responsibility for dessert, embracing the challenge of keeping to the holiday strictures and still making something both adults and children will eat without grimacing. After some trial and few errors, we’ve settled on a (truly) delicious flourless chocolate cake, made with ground, blanched almonds; the recipe is sourced, improbably, from that great WASP-booster, Martha Stewart. Sometimes I make macaroons, too: Chris and I love coconut, and I brighten them with a little lemon oil and chunks of dark chocolate. The husbands don’t appreciate them, and so she and I ration them to each other, sneaking them all as we put the finishing touches on the other dishes.

Four years ago, our family was felled by the flu, and Chris brought the seder to us, dropping covered dishes at the front door and hurrying away so as to not come near our germs. Two years ago, when her mother- and sister-in-law came from New York for the holiday, we were gently told that our presence might feel intrusive…so she made a third seder, just for our families, after her relatives flew home. But this year, Chris and David and their children will be away, and she’s got too much work and too little time to celebrate an extra day of Passover just for us.

So we’ll miss seeing David grating fresh horseradish while wearing a mask and snorkel to protect his eyes and nose. We’ll miss Chris picking parsley from the herb garden my mother helped her plant outside her sunroom. We’ll miss sitting down at the candlelit table, set with David’s grandmother’s crystal, their wedding china, the Tiffany tablesettings and silver candelabra Chris triumphantly scored on eBay. We’ll miss David reading (quickly—the children are all under 5, after all) through the Hagadah, our boys diving under the table to hunt for the afikomen, their daughter singing on key, and at the top of her voice, the Dahyenu. Our daughter, just 1, will have to wait to share in the warmth and joy our friends offer us nearly every year.

But I think what we’ll miss most is a sense of expansive inclusion in a tradition that is not ours, but which still, generously, makes room for us. The melding of faith and culture evident in our friends’ seder celebration is almost entirely absent for our family; our rituals have meaning, but it’s derived from repetition and tradition, instead of the other way around. This is our choice: we live a non-religious, secular life, and we do so gladly. But I feel, and always have, that something is lost, not so much in an absence of faith, but in a lack of connection backwards through generations and history. But by joining our friends’ celebration of their blessings, and the connection of those blessings to a history so ancient we almost cannot imagine it, our lives are also deepened, our sense of the infinite awakened.

And so, what of my son’s request for our own seder? This year, I am off to the market, for parsley and horseradish, eggs and brisket, sweet potatoes and matzoh. I will do my best to help him understand that though this tradition is not ours, it holds lessons for us nonetheless.

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On a lighter note, me being me, I can’t leave you without sharing the recipe for that cake, which is so good, it merits baking even when flour isn’t forbidden. (And if you’re eating gluten-free–here’s your solution for a dense, divine chocolate dessert.)

Martha Stewart’s Perfect Passover Chocolate Cake
Serves 10-12

I am having a bit of fun at Martha’s expense, but to be fair to both Martha and this recipe’s original author: Martha is careful to acknowledge that this recipe is by Helen Nash, from her book Helen Nash’s Kosher Kitchen (Jason Aronson, 2000)

1 cup unsalted margarine, plus 1/2 tablespoon for cake pan
1 tablespoon potato starch, for dusting pan, plus 1 1/2 teaspoons
9 ounces semisweet chocolate, broken into small pieces
1 1/4 scant cups sugar
6 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1/4 cup strained freshly squeezed orange juice
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons cognac
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
9 ounces blanched almonds, finely ground
Passover Powdered Sugar (recipe follows)
1 tablespoon sliced almonds, for garnish

Heat oven to 300 degrees. Grease the bottom and sides of a 10-inch springform pan with margarine. Line the pan with parchment paper, and grease the parchment. Dust pan with 1 tablespoon potato starch; shake out excess.

Fill a small saucepan with water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and allow water to simmer. Place chocolate in a small heatproof bowl, and set over saucepan. Stir chocolate until melted, and set aside to cool.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream 1 cup margarine on medium speed, and add sugar gradually until the mixture is pale and bubbles appear, about 10 minutes. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition. Lower the speed, and beat in cooled chocolate and orange juice. With a large rubber spatula, mix in cocoa powder, cognac, 1 1/2 teaspoons potato starch, lemon zest, orange zest, vanilla, and ground almonds.

In a clean dry bowl, beat egg whites on high speed until stiff. Fold half of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture with a rubber spatula. Repeat with another quarter of the egg whites, then reverse the process, pouring the batter over remaining whites. Gradually fold together until egg whites are completely incorporated.

Pour batter into prepared pan, and smooth the top. Bake until a cake tester or toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out slightly sticky, about 1 hour. Cool completely, and refrigerate overnight.

To serve, run a small, sharp knife around sides to loosen, and carefully remove springform ring. Transfer to a serving plate, dust with Passover powdered sugar, and garnish with sliced almonds.

Note: This recipe has been adapted from Helen Nash’s original to make one cake. To make two smaller cakes, prepare two 9-by-1 1/2-inch round cake pans, and divide the batter between them.

Passover Powdered Sugar
Makes a scant cup

1 tablespoon potato starch
1 cup granulated sugar

In a food processor, combine potato starch and sugar. Process until mixture is very powdery and resembles confectioners’ sugar, about 2 minutes. Allow to settle for about 1 minute before removing processor cover.

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2. Cross-Country Cooking With Chris, My Sister-in-the-Kitchen
3. Sisters in the Kitchen: ‘Tis the Season to Swap Cookies
4. The Rules of Kitchen Sisterhood
5. Celebrate with Sister’s Cake!