Chaos Attraction

Passover With Hippies

2015-04-10, 10:06 p.m.

Okay, this is probably a pretty weird thing to confess if you know me, but I've always wanted to go to a Passover seder (or well, any Jewish holiday meal if I could ever get invited to one). Despite being of hippie ilk and non-Jewish heritage, I am fairly interested in the religion and have read up on it from time to time, etc.

A few days ago, a girl I know from EFT class invited everyone (though I'm the only one who showed) to a Passover seder at the Domes. I was so excited and sent my acceptance, even though I spent a few days trying to figure out how to bring kosher food and getting more and more confused at how "kosher for Passover" operates. Once I read something like "oh yeah, and you shouldn't even cut the fruit unless you have knives that have never cut meat" I kind of faceplanted into the computer, though.

I eventually resorted to asking my CC manager, who is keeping kosher for the week*, and she said her sorority was going to Trader Joe's a lot for kosher items. She was all, "Just get something from there or fruit or whatever." I ended up just getting grapes. No cutting issues with grapes.

* this turned out to be kinda awkward because she wasn't here last week and thus we had no idea on what nobody should have been bringing, and Merry was bringing dinner and brought vegetarian lasagna. And the other girl on shift was keeping kosher too. They brought their own dinners. My manager said she's realllllly sick of zucchini this week...

Anyway, when I got there and eventually found her dome, I found out that my classmate wasn't going to be making the dinner tonight that she wanted to host. Why, you ask? Because she had to go to San Jose to rescue some chickens.

OH, HIPPIES. It should probably be telling for life here that I was only somewhat fazed by this, mostly the "San Jose?!?" part of the chicken rescue.

Anyway, the party still went on, with her roommate (dome-mate) Josh hosting. And Josh was just adorable and hilarious in doing this. Domies have potluck dinners most nights of the week anyway and any random person can show up, so it was no big deal if I didn't know anyone anyway.

I have not been to a regular sort of Passover before, but I'm pretty sure they are not usually this amusing. Let me count the ways:

1. We had Passover Haggadah books: "This Haggadah Proudly Created in Israel Exclusively for Ralphs."

2. "Okay, someone keep track of the list on page 4 and help me keep track of the order of things." I'm pretty sure that didn't go so well... he seemed to jump the line a few times.

3. Instead of lambbone on the Seder plate, there were roses, because hippies be vegan.

4. There was a giant race to do the handwashing. "First one back gets a kumquat. Last one back gets a kumquat!"

5. The afikomen was hidden, but dinner started at seven and by the time the eating was over it was full on fucking dark and we were eating outside, so nobody wanted to try to find it. Someone yanked some leftover out of a box and was all, "Here it is!" Laziness FTW!

6. He just kind of said the prayers...sorta...and was all, "Not sure if I'm doing this right...." and the other three Jews were all "eh, whatever."

7. Everyone enjoyed the part where we had to dip our fingers in the wine glass and fling out some wine and make sound effects about all the ten plagues. Except at the end he was all, "Oh, wait, the last one was the slaughtering of the first born. Maybe we shouldn't laugh at that." (Happened anyway!)

8. The part where the Passover story was explained went like this: "Hey, who here's seen The Prince of Egypt? Can someone tell me what happened in that?"

9. I think we were out of wine after round two of wine. Someone eventually got beer.

10. Probably about a third of the dinner guests wandered off and had to be called back with a giant dinner bell to finish the wine drinking (with beer).

11. The dayenu turned into everyone running around in a circle holding hands and yelling "Dayenu!"

It was awesome. I had to text and later call Merry to share the experience (all things considered, it's not all that different from our usual hippie holidays....), and e-mailed L since for all I know she's moved to England by now (no joke) and I am not calling at their 3 a.m. or whatever. Assuming her phone works internationally still, beats me there.

I got to have matzo ball soup, yay, and tried gefilte fish and actually liked it. GO FIGURE ON THAT ONE...or maybe I just mentally mixed it up with lutefisk, which Anna swears is nasty. Other foods were the charoset (delicious, even I'd try making it), egg and onion matzoh, sweet potatoes, beets, stuffed mushrooms, kale, hard boiled eggs, some kind of cookies and dates.

I am happy to announce that despite the mandatory four cups of wine and vegan dinner, I somehow didn't manage to get tanked off my ass in the way I normally do when drinking and eating veg. Then again, after I heard the "no, you have to FINISH ALL FOUR CUPS OF WINE" bit, I figured out to ah...pour smaller. I was even sober enough to get home, yay.

All in all it was an awesome time. Yay hippies, yay Passover!


previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry
hosted by DiaryLand.com