Chanie Zirkind knows her crowd. Before her Seder guests even arrive, the Chabad-Lubavitch of Fresno co-director is setting out a smorgasbord of goodies at the entryway to her central California location, arranging special handmade matzah on the table, and doing her best to be a navigator of sorts to participants who might be on diets.
“We’ve really learned to be sensitive to the crowd we cater to,” she said. “Each Jew is special in his or her own way.”
For 22 years, she and her husband, Rabbi Levy Zirkind, have been holding public Passover Seders not unlike thousands of others around the world: It draws locals, city folks, and tourists alike. Every year, the couple focuses on keeping it interesting. They write plays that get people involved in the retelling of the Passover story, have guests electively making frog noises at the table to remember the 10 Plagues, and offer those that speak other languages the chance to ask the Seder’s Four Questions in their native tongues.
“We have to make it really interactive because we have such a diverse crowd,” noted Zirkind. “We make sure everyone stays involved.”
From Hawaii to New Zealand on the other side of the International Date Line, Chabad-Lubavitch centers are putting the finishing touches on one of the Jewish calendar’s central holiday seasons. During Passover, Jews of all stripes, young and old, affiliated and unaffiliated, religious and secular, will reconnect with their spiritual identities by celebrating the Jewish people’s deliverance from Egypt.
(To locate a Passover Seder near you, and for more information about the eight-day holiday, click here.)
Zirkind aims for people to internalize the holiday; she wants them to get up from the Seder table and feel like they themselves went out of Egypt.
“It’s about Jewish pride, to be sure,” she explained. “But it’s also about connecting to what it means to be Jewish and what it means to be free of the spiritual enslavement that plagues many in today’s world.”
Seders have changed people’s lives, she noted, recalling by way of example a young man whose role in one Seder involved reading about one of the Four Sons, specifically the one who doesn’t even have the requisite knowledge to know what to ask about Passover. The experience sparked a deeper connection to Judaism, a string of holiday attendance, and even his own circumcision, “all because of a Passover Seder with a twist.”
Rabbi Yosef and Tamar Salamon of the Rohr Chabad Jewish Community Center in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia are similarly getting ready for a slew of Passover Seders around the country. Aided by Rabbi Yossi and Racheli Halprin, co-directors of the Chabad-Lubavitch of Varna, and with the help of Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, they’re dispatching teams of rabbinical students from Israel to run Seders for locals and tourists. Upward of 1,000 guests will attend, the Salamons estimated.
In Sofia, the couple will welcome a special guest, new Israeli Ambassador Shaul Kamisa-Raz.
“We’re getting phone calls every day from people who want to come and join us,” said Yosef Salamon.
One local highlight, he noted, is the singing, especially when older members of the community join together to sing Ladino Passover songs.
“People have been waiting for this all year,” remarked Salamon.
Calls are also coming in for Rabbi Yosef Lipsker of Reading, Pa., who hosts special Passover Seders without alcohol. As a chaplain to people struggling with addiction year round, his goal is to help them know they can observe Judaism without feeling uncomfortable, and to let them know they can share in a Seder in a safe space. Located near the Caron treatment center 55 miles northwest of Philadelphia, Lipsker’s facility becomes a home away from home for treatment participants, some of whom have never been away from their families for Passover. Their out of town Seder guests often include loved ones of those who have been seeking treatment.
“And it’s powerful,” he explained. “Families come together who have been estranged.”
One participant, he recalled, hadn’t been to a Seder in 40 years when he first invited him. But today, that same man has been involved and engaged in his Judaism “and been to Seders ever since.”
The rabbi and his wife, Chana Lipsker, serve 70 to 80 people each Passover, representing a mix of those in recovery and members of the local Jewish community.
“It’s a really nice mix of people,” stated the rabbi, adding that people undergoing treatment for alcoholism or other forms of substance abuse can identify strongly with Passover’s themes of bondage and freedom. “Their stories inspire me.”
Meanwhile, Rabbi Avraham Mintz of the Chabad Jewish Center of South Metro Denver, is getting ready for two community Seders that will bring 200 people to the table.
“Passover is always exciting,” he said. “There’s no better time for new faces to walk through the door than Passover, when we’re all celebrating our heritage.”
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