Pesach and Easter

Easter Sunday falls in the middle of Passover this year. They usually are close, because the Last Supper was a Passover seder. In a Christian church on Easter Sunday is not the best place for a Jewish person to be, but there I was this morning, playing Telemann duets on the recorder with Andrew Levy. We didn't sing the hymns, nor join in most of the prayers (I could get behind most of the prayers, but not with the Christ language); we just played music for the prelude, offertory, and postlude. The San Francisco chapter of the American Recorder Society meets there once a month, and provides service music once a month as rent.

In this day and age, we Jews thankfully have no fear of pogroms, although anti-Semitism is not dead, and synagogues still experience vandalism, even in San Francisco. But St. John's United Church of Christ, where we played this morning is a very progressive denomination, so it was fairly comfortable.

I spent most of yesterday at my synagogue, to get training in how to visit the sick (and supply other services to congregants in need thereof), and wound up on a new committee whose goals are to provide those services ourselves, in the near term, and to mobilize the entire congregation in support of each other. Later that day, we had a havdallah service (marking the end of Shabbat) preceeded by a presentation by the synagogue's participants in the San Francisco Organizing Project-led effort to bring about universal health care in San Francisco. I've gotten involved in this effort as homework for my Bat Mitzvah class.

Traditionally, Passover involves cleaning the heck out of one's home and not eating grains and starchy vegetables. The Biblical injunction is to avoid 'leaven,' in commemoration of the fact that the Israelites had no time for bread to rise as they fled Egypt. The only bread that the rabbis permitted was matzah - flour and water that were baked soon after they were mixed. Nowadays, though, Jews may eat cookies and cakes baked with flour substitutes or special kinds of flour. Which seems to me to be missing the point. We're to eat no leavening - flat foods made in haste. So I'm avoiding grain products that actually have leavening agents in them - regular bread, cookies, and pastries. I would be lost without my breakfast cereal, so I'm eating Grape Nuts, shredded wheat, and granola, but skipping Cheerios, which have baking soda. Another synagogian and I had crepes for dinner last night. That's flat food; and I'd feel OK about tortillas and rice. Not sure about pita; it rises some. So I had a lamb shwarma pita sandwich last week without the pita. It sure was tasty. And I look forward to Passover because that's when egg matzahs are available; and I just love to have matzahs scrambled with egg, with berry syrup on it. Hardly the bread of affliction.