Memories Of Passovers Past

Holy Cups Of Wine
Yossi Ginzberg
Special To The Jewish Week
When the Jewish emigration from the Former Soviet Union started in the early 1980s, Jewish organizations here tried to introduce the emigres to Judaism by inviting them, with limited success, as Sabbath guests to Orthodox homes.
We also tried, with the same lack of success.
This changed when we were asked to host a family of four from Ukraine: Yaakov, his wife Svetlana and their two daughters.
Our Shabbat meal turned out so pleasant that I called Yaakov a few weeks later to invite them for the upcoming Purim meal. His family came, and was pleased with the holiday atmosphere. I offered Yaakov a drink of scotch, but he said he was a teetotaler. I was surprised, but didn’t make

an issue of it.
This meal too went well.
Having successfully introduced Purim, I tackled Passover. Fortunately, it was easy; the family’s elderly grandmother was excited at seeing a seder again, after so many years without.
At our seder, I tried to fill Yaakov’s goblet with grape juice. He protested, saying that grape juice was only for children, and since it was a mitzvah, he’d happily drink wine.
The seder went beautifully. It was thus surprising to me when they didn’t show up for the second seder.
Not wanting to jeopardize our relationship with the family, I waited two days before calling to inquire. A daughter answered the phone, and told me “Your wine put him in the hospital.” She grudgingly informed me that her father had been in severe pain after the seder, he had been operated on, and was in Mount Sinai Hospital.
Afraid to confront him but feeling the obligation to atone, I went to the hospital with trepidation. At his room, I found the extended family there, adding to my tension.
To my shock, when Yaakov saw me he insisted on standing, which he did with visible pain, clutching the bandaging over his abdomen. A stunning surprise came with his warm embrace.
It turns out that the reason he didn’t normally drink was that several years earlier, just after applying for a Soviet exit visa, he had started to see blood on urination after drinking alcohol. A doctor ordered a full battery of tests, but because the family was in line to leave the country, rather than deal with the problem the doctor told Yaakov that if he had symptoms only after drinking alcohol, he should just stop drinking. Busy here trying to earn a living, Yaakov accepted this suggestion. The blood did indeed stop as long as he stayed away from alcohol.
Late that Passover night after returning from the seder, Yaakov felt the old pain return for the first time since his arrival in the United States, more severe than ever before. He walked to the small community hospital, where after basic testing, a sympathetic Orthodox doctor appeared in his room and quietly told him that he must immediately request a transfer to Mount Sinai. Yaakov and his wife made arrangements for the transfer.
At Mount Sinai, he was scheduled for emergency surgery, where a tumor was discovered. When Yaakov returned to consciousness, the surgeon informed him that one kidney had been totally removed as well as much of the other. He was left with the absolute minimum possible to live normally on. According to the surgeon, had the surgery been delayed even a little longer, Yaakov would have been required to live the rest of his life tethered to a dialysis machine.
Hence Yaakov’s words as he hugged me: “Your cups of holy Passover wine saved my life!”
Yossi Ginzberg, a resident of Manhattan, works in the insurance business for a living, but writes for pleasure.

A Seder Visitor
Yvette H. Gordon
Special To The Jewish Week
It was the first night of Pesach 1973 when Ambrose came to our seder.
The family had gathered at our home in New Rochelle. Our three sons were there: Steve, the oldest, with his wife Judy; Arnie, the middle, with his fiancée, Lynne, and her parents, sister, aunt, and two cousins; and David, the youngest, still in high school. Also with us were my husband’s sister Pearl, her husband, Stanley, their daughter Helene, her husband Chuck, their little red-headed twin girls, my two teenage nephews (their parents were visiting Israel) and of course my husband Herman and I — a total of 21.
The table extended from the dining area into an L-shape through the length of the living room. Herman sat at the living room end and I sat at the kitchen end. The night was warm, so we left the doors open.
Our home is set back from the street, over a hundred feet away, up a long curved driveway and hidden from view by large evergreen trees.
We had just finished the part of the seder where we say, “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” when my husband saw a young man standing behind me with hands clasped behind his back. Thinking it was a friend of one of our sons, Herman said, “Shalom! Eliyahu [Elijah the prophet] is here!”
I turned around and jumped up. I did not know this man. He was young, perhaps 25 or so, and slim, with a neatly trimmed black beard. He wore a black turtleneck shirt, tight jeans and sneakers.
My first thoughts were that we were going to be robbed. Steve and Arnie closed the doors and checked the rest of the house to make sure that no one else had come in. I slowly moved around to see what was in his hands – a gun? One of the carving knives left on the kitchen counter?
There was nothing in his hands. He was not carrying a weapon. Not wanting to upset him, I quietly asked, “What can I do for you?”
He said, “Nothing.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to watch.”
He did not smell of liquor; he did not appear to be on drugs.
I told him, “It is our holiday, you cannot watch, but you can join us at the table if you wish.” He said he would join us. I added a chair next to me, and Steve switched places with someone to sit on the other side of him. Facing him was Chuck, a gym teacher. As I went to get him a place setting, I hesitated to give him a knife and wine, but decided to treat him like everyone else.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Ambrose.”
“Ambrose what?”
“Does it matter?”
I said, “No. Where are you from?”
He said, “Does it matter?” He seemed to have a slight accent.
I gave up trying to make conversation. We gave him a Haggadah and went on with the seder. Steve explained the rituals as we went along. The only time he showed any reaction was when we read a prayer for the Russian “refuseniks” — Sharansky and the others — which was a popular thing at the time.
We finished eating. He ate very well. As we began to clear the table for dessert, he stood up and said, “I think it is time for me to go.” I got up with him as he walked around the table to the twins, who were about 6 years old.
He cupped his hands together over their heads, then opened his palms upwards, turned to me and said, “I left them a blessing, which they will need. Would you please show me the way to the main road?” He left, and I gave a huge sigh of relief.
My brother-in-law Stanley said, “That was some show you put on!”
I said, “That was no show.”
Stanley cried out, “Are you crazy? He could have killed us all!”
We joked that he was Eliyahu and that the photos David had taken of him would not come out. But they did!
Within the year, Stanley had died, Chuck had left Helene and abandoned the twins to their disturbed mother. Pearl, who had never worked before, got a job, moved into Helene’s home and took care of the three of them.
Ambrose’s blessing must have worked. Someone must have been watching over those girls, because they grew up to be beautiful women, went to fine colleges and got good jobs, and one is now married and has two beautiful children of her own.
Only recently, 34 years later, someone told me the meaning of the name Ambrose. It comes from the Greek “ambrotos,” which means immortal.
Yvette Gordon lives in New Rochelle.

My Very Special (Last) Pesach
In Berlin
Viktoria Dolburd
Special To The Jewish Week
On Pesach of 2004 the Jewish Student Union of Berlin decided that it would for the first time make the seders independently for its members and young adults. We would lead both nights, instead of relying on the services of the kosher restaurant in the Jewish Community Center for all the cleaning, koshering and special cooking.
No one realized how much work two kosher seders would include.
After the event was advertised and the first subscriptions flew in, there was no way to back out. We had to begin with the work.
But where to start?
Although I was no longer a member of the Student Union’s board, I was asked to help out; I quickly realized that someone had to take command. And here I was, at 23, a kosher supervisor, an event planner, a kosher-for-Pesach chef, manager of an international cooking team consisting of Israelis, Germans, Russians, Americans and Canadians — and a religious coordinator. After all, we had to find someone to lead the seder!
Fortunately the program director of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation’s Berlin yeshiva, who was a student himself, agreed to lead the Haggadah reading. His knowledge of German, English and Russian prepared him for this challenging role.
But soul food is not enough if you want to organize a complete seder. So pictures of kashering until deep in the night and giving orders such as “We need 50 more eggs!” or “How are we supposed to cook the soup on the second seder?” still come into my mind. I was lucky that my team, consisting of about seven not particularly experienced people, gave its best. Communication was not always easy; I had to learn how to translate recipes for chicken soup or matzah balls into several languages.
Nonetheless, by the evening of the first seder, in the kiddush room of a Jewish community center, we could see the fruits of our efforts.
About a hundred students showed up. The atmosphere was great. Everyone, on both nights, was patient enough to go through the whole Haggadah. They went late into the night. No one left early. They were rewarded with a rich meal, including wine and desserts. For some of the young people, it could have been their first time at a proper, kosher seder.
People came up and said they had a great time.
I left Berlin, for Israel, before the High Holy Days. Every year I think about the seders in Berlin. Two years ago I was in Canada on Pesach, at a Hillel. All the infrastructure was in place. I realized they were so lucky — they didn’t know how it is to do everything from scratch. n
Viktoria Dolburd, a native of Moscow who moved to Berlin with her family in 1990 and served for five years as a leader in the city’s Jewish Student Union, made aliyah in 2004 and works in Jerusalem as a public relations consultant.

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