Welcome To Our Passover Seder Table!

Wishing everyone a peaceful, restful and joyful Passover holiday! We are now on the 5th night of the 7 (8 outside of Israel) night holiday, so there isn’t much time left to really enjoy this special holiday despite everything going on in the world around us! While I do love Passover, as of today my teens are officially going a bit stir crazy, and once the holiday is over we’ll be able to do things that we don’t do during this time, like crafting and painting and gardening, which will help keep everyone busy and hopefully occupied. If not, I have a whole basement and an attic that needs organizing? The government law right now is that one is not allowed to go out of their homes or further than 100 meters except for shopping or great need, so that rules out hiking sadly, which would be great right now, as early Spring is here and the green fields are filled with wild mustard and other early bloomers.

Lest I digress, this year’s Passover seder was just the smallest version of our immediate family, 3 teens and husband and I, and it turned out to be really nice, just us, no guests to worry about and for me MUCH LESS clean up and food prep. Truthfully this has been the most restful and relaxing Passover ever, and that coupled with the absence of visitors and car traffic in our neighborhood means ahhhhhh, just quietness, and a beautiful view, for which we are very grateful. The weather has been rainy and uncharacteristically cold, which makes staying indoors much easier, though we are all itching to go on more than just a short walk in the neighborhood!

This year’s seder table was all about using things we had on hand as there was no shopping for the prettiest little this or that, and it turned out to be just as lovely as ever, let’s take a look!

You can’t see the table cloth in these photos due to the heavy protective plastic tablecloth that is a must due to having to drink 4 glasses of wine/grape juice while reclining and the potential mess that can cause. (These glasses are consumed throughout the seder.) That said, for the first time ever we used a lovely woven linen tablecloth from my paternal grandmother, that is likely 80 years or so old, if not older. This was the tablecloth my mother used when I was growing up for special family occassions, and now I have found a wonderful use for it, as our Passover Seder tablecloth, yippee! The seder table is supposed to be the fanciest table that one sets all year, so next year I’ve decided we’ll also use my maternal grandmother’s silver plate cutlery, that is from her wedding. I don’t use it generally because with all the guests I’m afraid of loosing pieces by accident into the garbage! (That and because when I was first married my husband started to open a beer bottle with one of the pieces and I shrieked……in Israel that is a standard thing to do, as no one would dream that the silverware is actually silver.)

The large brass Moroccan-made plate is a seder plate, on which one places the symbolic foods. This year my husband placed the foods on the plate, so it is less than perfect, but that is just fine, this year we were not going for perfection! The plate is truly lovely and a decorative piece in our dining room year round. At the beginning of the seder the Moroccan Jews have the tradition of walking around the table and making circles above the head of each person with the plate, a bit difficult for my husband as the plate is quite heavy, but it makes it that much more interesting!
No florist open to buy flowers for the table, so my daughter went out and picked some wild mustard and wild snap dragons. sweet as can be!

Our large slilver cos shel Eliyahu, Elijah’s cup, is always a beautiful addition to our Passover seder table, and a lovely decorative item during the week of Passover.