This is the Forward’s coverage of the Jewish holiday of Passover, also called Pesach.
Passover
The Latest
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Culture The Kitniyot Question: What’s a Convert To Do?
The question of kitniyot presents an interesting challenge for the converted. Kitniyot — literally, “little things” — is the umbrella term used for the specific foods not eaten during Passover in the Ashkenazi tradition, including rice, corn, beans and lentils. It’s a practice whose origins are unclear; but what is clear is that this anti-legume…
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Culture From South Africa, an Activist’s Recipe Recalls the Power of Food
The early years of Nelson Mandela’s life as an organizer and revolutionary were marked by cross-cultural experiences centered around the table, even when such alliances were frowned upon politically. The Indian South African community, and the solidarity it showed in passive resistance campaigns, deeply influenced Mandela’s later mass actions and encouraged Mandela and his colleagues…
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Culture From Egypt, a Traditional Dish Links to an Ongoing Struggle
At the start of 2011 the world watched as the Egyptian people overthrew longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. It is not often that we can so easily honor the Haggadah’s instruction that “In every generation one must look upon himself as if he personally has come out of Egypt.” The Jewish community of Egypt dates back…
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Culture Jerusalem: Easter, Passover
Poet Stanley Moss, who talked to the Forward about poetic and religious practice, reads the following poem, which he wrote, at his Passover meals. 1 The first days of April in the fields — a congregation of nameless green, those with delicate faces have come and the thorn and thistle, trees in purple bloom, some…
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The Schmooze National Poetry Month: The Unhagaddah
Like the Psalmist who demanded his listeners to “sing a new song,” American poet, writer and cultural activist Esther Cohen proposes two alternative ways of engaging with Haggadic texts this Passover. The first piece we’re featuring on The Arty Semite today is as “new” of a song as it gets; in the light of recent…
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Culture Questioning the Questions
Ruth Fath of Princeton, N.J., asks a timely question: “Does the Yiddish word kashe, as in the fir kashes, the ‘Four Questions’ asked at the beginning of the Seder, come from the same root as the Hebrew word kasheh, ‘difficult’? Our rabbi points out that in Hebrew the Four Questions are known as arba ha-kushyot,…
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The Schmooze The Secret History of Women’s Klezmer
A new radio drama titled “The Witches of Lublin” is being offered to public radio stations as a Passover special. Written by Ellen Kushner, Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom, the hour-long production features original klezmer music by Strom and the handiwork of Long Island-based audio drama producer Sue Zizza. The cast includes the prolific audiobook…
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Food New Food Justice Haggadah Refocuses Seder
The Passover seder is Jewish drama. Over the evening, a tale of slavery and liberation, despair and hope, narrow straits and open possibilities unfolds. We experience this drama through food. We lift high the matzah, the bread of affliction, for all to see; we taste the painful maror to remind us of embittered lives and…
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