Adventures in Guangzhou!

One of the tricky things about this particular holiday is that there are about a million different rules and traditions regarding what you can and cannot do/eat/say/drink. I mean, I guess all of organized religion centers around those sorts of things, but Passover is ripe with symbolism and ritual minutiae. In order to help me in the gargantuan task of putting together a respectable seder, my parents went out and bought a boxful of essentials including matzah, soup mix, pickles, passover cakes, muffin mix, and a whole bunch of other goodies for the holiday. I was so excited to get the package... but it never came.

The Chinese mail system is generally reliable if not timely, but this time it really let me down. However, the show must go on! With the help of Kelly's cooking expertise, my mother's recipes, and some inventive ingredient-substitutes, I began to put it all together. Much like last year, I gained that much more respect for the Jewish moms who manage to throw together massive meals for hordes of people at the drop of a hat. I was cooking for two straight days and barely had time to make it all work. Though in my defense, I think this task would have been exponentially easier with access to a regular-sized oven and/or four burners on a stove.

On Monday night my six closest friends came over and I acted as head of the house to run the ceremonial meal. A few things stand out to me as highlights every year at the seder: number one--the afikoman. According to tradition, the master of the house breaks off a piece of matzah (called the afikoman)and hides it somewhere in the house. After the main food section of the night, the service cannot continue until someone has found the afikoman and it is consumed by all as a dessert, of sorts (yum! matzah!). As a child, this is always one of the most exciting events of the year because the winner gets a prize and you have free reign to run around the house searching high and low for something your parents intentionally hid from you. It's genius.

This year the search was a frenzied effort by everybody that went through every room in my (not-so-large) apartment. People were throwing drawers open, knocking books on to the ground, tossing blankets over shoulders, and generally causing mass hysteria. My roommate might never forgive me, either, since I hid it in his room in between a couple of sweaters (that subsequently got thrown to the floor). I'm not sure what it says about me or my friends that for about ten minutes we all acted like a bunch of eight year-olds, but it was pretty fun.

Number two--the wine. I'd like to shake the hand of whoever put together the haggadah, the book that leads all participants through the correct order of events for the seder. Before anyone has had any significant amount of food, they are required to drink two full glasses of wine. I don't mean little sips, either. I'm talking about chugging a full cup of wine in one go. This serves to loosen everyone up and make them less antsy about having to wait through several readings and rituals before getting to the main course. It also gets everyone of age really psyched about the night and makes the singing that much more inspired.

Number three--the food. I guess I'm pretty transparent by now but I'm all about the food. In almost every situation. And Passover seder food is amazing. While I can't say I'm a huge fan of matzah (can anyone be excited about floor and water baking for no more than eighteen minutes?), you crush the stuff up and add a couple of eggs and some oil and you've got the makings of matzah balls--one of the greatest additions to chicken soup. For my seder we also cooked up (from scratch) some herbed potatoes, broccoli tossed with a red wine vinaigrette, tsimmes, charoset, soy-honey chicken, coconut macaroons, and even a flourless cake. It was glorious.

By the end of the night we had each gone through at least four full cups of wine, done some rowdy singing, and each read about why that night is different than all other nights--the fundamental question of Passover. Out of money and energy, I couldn't possibly prepare another seder for the second night. Instead, I headed over to the Chabad synagogue here in Guangzhou, a branch of Hasidism (a form of orthodox Judaism) that is known to Jews worldwide for providing services and venues for anybody in need.

I have always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Chabad. To sum it up, I love the fact that they are so hospitable, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable. It's great to know that almost wherever I am in the world I will always be welcome among strangers for a meal and religious worship. I also very much respect the fact that they don't try to convert non-Jews. On the other hand, they have a habit of always making me feel like a bad person for not participating more and being a "bad Jew."

Regardless, I headed over and sat down at a table with a bunch of guys roughly my age studying Talmud, commentary on the Jewish bible. Chabad in Guangzhou is a small community made up mostly of businessmen from around the globe. At the dinner last night I heard a only couple people speaking English, but handfuls speaking Russian, Spanish, French, and possibly German. Overall though, the common language was Hebrew. As I've said before, my Hebrew used to be not half bad, but since learning Chinese, it's taken a serious back seat. My brain was in serious pain last night trying to construct even the most basic sentences. This, in turn, made me feel even more inferior as a Jew there since everyone else (and I mean everyone) was fluent.

Having never been to a Hasidic seder before, I wasn't sure how different it would be from the ones I grew up with. Luckily they were using a haggadah with an English translation so I could follow along without a problem. Unlike my family seders, the entire thing was done in Hebrew. This isn't a big problem but as is traditional, people around the table go around reading a paragraph at a time, especially in the section recounting the story of the exodus. I actually felt legitimately nervous when it came to my turn and I think I was sweating. I felt like the eyes of every Hebrew teacher I had ever had were staring at me as I tried to read at a regular pace. It all happened so fast that I'm not sure how I did, but I guess no response was the best I could have hoped for from my table-mates.

Also, as luck would have it, I somehow ended up in the alcoholic section of the table. There were about fifty people there in all and a good number of people were using non-alcoholic grape juice instead of wine. I'm not quite sure why, but I was wedged between two orthodox guys originally born in NYC who were quite intent on drinking wine. Apparently it is also orthodox tradition to not only fill the glass most of the way, but to actually fill it up past the brim so it spills a bit, thereby showing that you're drinking a full cup. And since I was certainly not one to argue with tradition, our corner of the table put back a serious amount of wine. We even had a little laugh after I noted that it must be the American way (the Russian guys next to us stuck with the grape juice).

Though I did feel a twinge of guilt at the end of the night when the Rabbi told me he hoped to see me again soon, I'm definitely glad I went. From a cultural standpoint, it was a heckuv an experience. It's also just nice to be in a foreign place with something that is magically familiar to all. I don't know how many countries were represented there last night but it seemed that everybody knew the same melodies and banged on the table in rhythm along with everyone else. Though I think I may always have some questions about a lot of the religious elements of Judaism, I know I will never shy away from the cultural aspects of the faith.