A global Passover
Book chronicles the customs of Sephardic Passover traditions across the world
When Rabbi Barbara Aiello was growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s, her Italian immigrant parents, Sephardic Jews who’d fled poverty, were trying to adjust to life in a new world. They worshipped in a synagogue in a renovated house on Mount Washington, along with about 30 other families, all refugees from World War II.
There was no rabbi or cantor at the temple, so her father, a musician, who had helped to liberate Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration camp, sometimes sang the prayers.
Being new in Pittsburgh, they had a lot to learn.
“I didn’t know where Squirrel Hill was,” she said. “When my father was asked which synagogue he attended, he responded, ‘What? There’s more than one?’ “
Rabbi Aiello’s story, and the stories of many Sephardic and Mizrahic Jews — of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Central Asian heritage — appear in “Too Good to Passover,” a new book by Jennifer Felicia Abadi. It’s out just in time for the holiday. Passover begins at sundown on Friday.
For observant Jews, Passover is busy. In Rabbi Aiello’s family, preparations began right after Purim, which this year ended on March 1. In her book, Ms. Abadi. who lives in New York City, retells a story the rabbi shared about her mother. Nearing Passover, the mother put a newly purchased lidded pot and kettle into a string bag and “took me down with her to the Monongahela River to give them a mikvah — this is howshe kashered them.”
To explain: A mikvah is a ritual bath and kashering is to make something fit or clean, inaccordance with Jewish law.
Using detailed oral histories, Ms. Abadi chronicles the customs of Sephardic Passover traditions. Each chapter of the book covers a country or territory that has or once had a Jewish community. She includes changing, war-torn regions, such as Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya.