Multicultural Seder in Berlin

Filed in archive Morsels of Info , Recipes , Traditions on April 9, 2006

This coming week are among the holiest days in Judaism and Christendom - Pesach or Passover and Holy Week leading to easter, respectively.

Both traditions remember and celebrate the roots of today's Jewish and Christian communities. In any celebration, of course there is food. The Jewish Passover meal is called Seder meaning order, which refers to the particular order the series of rituals that comprise the meal are carried out. It is amazing how this tradition has been kept alive even after centuries of wars, diaspora and well, the constant changes in a fast-shrinking world.

The New York Times Magazine has a wonderful article (with recipes) on how a Jewish-American lady moves to Berlin with her German husband and learns to improvise for the Seder. In Ghosts of Passovers Past, Anna Winger writes:

One year, as a symbolic gesture, I ordered a frozen kosher lamb bone for the Seder plate from Munich, but that was overdoing it. We use nonkosher meat from the local organic butcher. The tsimmes is made from sweet potatoes tracked down at a Thai market near our apartment. In the States, chopped liver is made with schmaltz, which poses a problem here: Jewish schmaltz is made from rendered chicken fat, German schmaltz from pork; I use olive oil.

I've never been to a Seder but I can imagine how beautiful it must be, so rich with history and culture.

Read some of the background behind this Passover tradition in the Kosher Blog.
Kosher Vegan Lasagna has lots of recipes.