There are those of us who have expressed dismay at the amount of work entailed in making Pesach and the total exhaustion caused by just thinking about what must be done. We on the other hand always loved getting ready for Pesach. The anticipation of our children visiting, the planning of activities that could be done during the days of Chol Hamoed, the beauty of seeing everyone come in with smiling faces in anticipation of what their week ahead had in store were always wondrous occasions for us. The food preparation was indeed mind boggling. As we have mentioned before, the 75 pounds of potatoes in our garage, the 40 dozen eggs, the 50 pound bags of carrots, a sack of cabbage were always set up in our garage in an orderly fashion so that weeks before Pesach Nina could begin her cooking preparations. Each meal for the week was made with loving plans and each menu was meant to enhance everyone’s palates.
Now we must fast forward to the conversation we have heard frequently as we meander in the community. People are actually commenting that they must go away for Pesach because it would not be fair to their children. “All of their friends are going away.” We don’t mean in most cases that they are going to visit grandparents, aunts and uncles or friends in a different community. No, as you can tell by the absolute abundance of Pesach programs in hotels we are talking about those who take their children away to exotic and less exotic destinations. For our children, had we taken them away, we think the Catskills would have been exotic, as we never went away. Today we hear of families going to Costa Rica, Aspen, Spain, France and for the not so adventurous, Florida, New England, New Jersey etc. The main idea is not to have to make Pesach at home.
We have previously mentioned the excitement of all of our children and grandchildren sitting on our back deck grating away at the horseradish as they make Zaidie’s father’s famous recipe. The tears and laughter still resonate in our heads as we recall the “fun” that everyone had. Proudly this tradition lives on in the families of our children and this year we were asked by one daughter if it would be terrible if at some point a food processor would be used!
At our home on Pesach all of the children arrived with new clothing to wear for the sederim. After that no one was concerned about what outfit they will be wearing during the week. Absolutely new bathing suits were not a concern during Pesach in Montreal. There was no day camp—there was no children’s dining room. Everything was done together with excitement and glee. The only concern about what was five star or four star during our Pesach (and we have heard children discussing what number of stars their hotel was rated as) was the quality of the chrein as opposed to previous years, the comraderie of all of us being sequestered in a house together and perhaps occasionally the discrepancy of the Montreal weather in a season when we were expecting it to be warm and it turned out to be quite unpleasant.
We always felt that we came out with a five-star Pesach. We miss it indeed.
By Rabbi Mordechai and Nina Glick
