Passing down Passover traditions
Families took part in a program bringing Jewish families and children together around Jewish storytelling and values.
Diane Barton-Lewis remembers when she was a young child embarking on the all-important search toward the end of the Passover Seder meal.
Young people participating in the meal are traditionally encouraged to look for the afikoman, a piece of matzoh taken from the Seder plate and hidden somewhere in the house. Once it’s found, it is eaten as a dessert and in commemoration of the paschal sacrifice.
In Barton-Lewis’ childhood home, children received a prize for finding the hidden matzah.
Those memories of yesteryear came flooding back as she watched her daughter Ally, 4, learn more about afikoman and its part in the Passover Seder ritual. “This is like the kids’ favorite part because they go
look for it,” she said. “I know in my family, there’s always money associated with it.”
Passover traditions were the topic of conversation at the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City’s PJ Library session, which Barton-Lewis and her daughter attended.
Roberta Clark, the federation’s executive director, said PJ Library is a national program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, and it is designed to bring Jewish families and children together around Jewish storytelling and Jewish values.
“It’s a great opportunity to bring the Jewish community together for wonderful Jewish moments,” Clark said.
She said the federation offers four to six sessions a year, typically tied to a holiday like Passover. The Jewish holiday begins at sundown Friday and ends at sundown April 7. It commemorates the Hebrews’ exodus from slavery in Egypt as told in the Book of Exodus.
‘Part of it’
During a recent PJ Library session, families gathered at the Jewish federation’s office where Clark started things off with a colorful reading of “Company’s Coming,” a children’s book about Passover.
After the story, Clark showed children and their parents how to make a matzoh tray for Passover and a bag to store the afikoman. By tradition, it is typically stored in a bag or wrapped in a piece of cloth.
With nearby bowls of animal crackers to help keep their creative spark alive, Ally and Gabriel Friesen, 4, began working on their Passover projects, with Eliyah Houston, 3, and her brother Moshe Houston, 2, pursuing the same goal next to them.
Jennifer Friesen, Gabriel’s mother, said she takes him to PJ Library sessions to make sure he has opportunities to learn about Jewish traditions that she didn’t have.
“It’s for him to be able to grow up and be a part of it and get to know all the traditional stuff that I missed out on,” she said.
B.J. and Kim Johnston helped daughter Josephine, 1, who was interested in the marker colors but needed a little help with her craft projects.
The couple said Rabbi Vered Harris, the spiritual leader at their house of worship, Temple B’nai Israel, had encouraged them to allow their tot to participate in the sessions and activities like it.
“Rabbi gave the recommendation. She said even if you think she can’t understand it, she can absorb it by being around it,” Kim Johnston said.
Clark said Jewish leaders always have wanted children to be engaged with the Seder meal, and thus the afikoman was introduced. The Seder is a sacred, ceremonial meal, which includes special foods, prayers and rituals that help to tell the story of the Israelites’ redemption from Egypt.
Matzoh is a Passover staple because the flat unleavened bread (resembling a cracker) is an integral part of the Passover story.
There was no time for the Hebrew slaves’ dough to rise before they fled Egypt and Pharoah, so their resulting unleavened bread, matzoh, is often called the “bread of affliction” or the “bread of haste.”
Clark said the afikoman is the middle piece of matzoh taken from three matzoh squares at the Seder meal.
The children at the recent PJ Library session used markers to decorate their bag for the afikoman.
“Bubbe (grandmother) is going to like it!” Clark told Ally as the young girl and Gabriel both expressed great pride in their finished bag.
Family members said they already had participated in several activities designed to share Passover on a child-friendly level. Barton-Lewis said Alley had made a Seder plate at a Shabbat Tot activity at Temple B’nai Israel.
And Friesen said Gabriel got a chance to make matzoh at Chabad Jewish Center for Life and Learning.
Nechoma Goldman, Chabad’s program director, said the matzoh-making session at Chabad’s Hebrew School was in keeping with the organization’s mission to teach Passover traditions and other aspects of Jewish life and culture to young people.
“It’s really our history. It’s who we are so it’s important to teach it to our children. They are the next generation,” she said.