Our Family Traditions
Picard- Passover Cleaning
In my family, and I suspect in almost all Jewish families, Pessah is the holiday most dreaded by women.
First, we need to clean the whole house, and I mean thoroughly clean it, to get rid of any Chametz before Pessah. When I grew up, I remember my Mom cleaning room by room, closet by closet, for weeks before Pessah. The worst room to clean was the kitchen : we used to take out everything of every cabinet, clean it, and then put everything back. We would clean appliances, silverware, curtains, walls, everything. And the tricky part is, you can’t clean your kitchen too early before Passover, because you want to make sure that the kitchen is still without chametz right before the Holiday. I remember helping my Mom cleaning the kitchen during the last days before the beginning of Passover, and the kitchen looked like a disaster. Everything was out, dishes everywhere, and us exhausted. My Dad would come back home for during his lunch break (lunch break in France lasts for at least an hour..), and he would joke : “ I thought you were supposed to clean the kitchen, not mess it up" , which would irritate the hell out of us . Because not only were we exhausted, but we knew that our work had just only begun : we still had to put our regular dishes out, take out and clean our for Passover dishes (my Mom, like almost all French Jews, would never use paper or plastic dinnerware for a holiday), put away in the now Kosher for Passover cabinets the Kosher for Passover products (coffee, sugar, salt, oil..) that we had previously bought in the kosher supermarket, go to the farmers market and buy the fresh fruits and vegetables that we would need for our Passover week, peel the equivalent of 20 lb of fresh fava beans and peas, prepare the meals not only for the 2 nights of the Seder, but for the two lunches as well (and that’s if we are lucky enough that the 2 nights of the Seder are not immediately followed by a Shabbat, in which case we have another meal to prepare), clean the kitchen again, set a very nice table, get dressed with whatever new dresses we had specially bought for the occasion, and finally, finally rest until the men come back from the synagogue.
No wonder every Jewish woman dreams on going on a kosher cruise for Passover..
The Seder
Although the haggadah, the book from which the story of Passover is read in every Jewish household is the same for Jews all over the world, we use the Haggadah of Algeria, which holds a few differences in rituals.
For example, according to this particular Haggadah, one man should carry the Seder plate and pass it around over the guests’ heads while reciting the passage known as Etmol.
The head of the family reads a part from the Haggadah in Hebrew, then one child would read it in French. By the time it’s time for dinner, we are all famished (although we did take a big piece of Haroshet, which is delicious).
For example, according to this particular Haggadah, one man should carry the Seder plate and pass it around over the guests’ heads while reciting the passage known as Etmol.
The head of the family reads a part from the Haggadah in Hebrew, then one child would read it in French. By the time it’s time for dinner, we are all famished (although we did take a big piece of Haroshet, which is delicious).
The Seder dinners
Click here to edit.
