Passover Stories from the Jewish Gauchos!

As April comes to a close, the Jewish Gauchos are reflecting on many a Passover memory of this month, and Pesachs of years past. And as for the future, L’chaim to next year in Jerusalem!

We asked and you answered! Here are the results of our passover preferences poll…

Matzah Brei should be....

Do you eat matzah outside of Pesach?

How long is your seder before the meal comes out?

I prefer to finish my seder off with a few rounds of rage cage

Pesach is one of the more accessible Jewish holidays for introducing non-Jews to our tradition. They get to join us in the seder, where we explain every drop of wine we consume and tell the story that will take them on the path of most guilt as they dip parsley in the symbolic tears of our ancestors. Yes, a little crazy for an intro to Judaism, but accessible nonetheless!

For the first time during college, I was able to go home for a seder with my family and friends. This year, as my brother and I’s friends now fall into the adult category, the Breier siblings have begun a new tradition of leaving wine glasses at the table, trading them for red solo cups on the patio, and finding our afikomen in liquid form. My parents have long been maintaining the tradition of welcoming our non-Jewish friends to our seders, perhaps because we could all use a tiny break from the big family gathering chaos. But it’s also because our friends have enjoyed learning about our traditions through seder participation so much that they ask to come again each year. 

Since graduating college and being farther from many of his close friends, my brother has had to get creative and intentional with his social time and welcoming friends to our house to hang out (or pregame). It only takes a few red solo cups, that my mom then washes for him to reuse, to transform our backyard table and bring a taste of college to home. 

With a family friend about to graduate college, and her younger brother about to go off to college, we banded together after the seder to give young Elliot a little college orientation. His big sis even took down a bitch cup for him. The child too young to ask has now gained wisdom to spread to the socially dead of UCSD in the fall.

My family’s deep value for sharing our home and our traditions has carried on throughout my life, and I carry it with me here at UCSB, inviting all friends to join me in my celebrations of community at Chabad and Hillel. Creating new traditions may 

A Pandemic Passover, contributed by Nadiv Meltzer

In 2020, the world shut down right before Pesach. Amongst heart breaking losses such as not getting my driver’s license and missing the dissection unit in Chemistry, it also meant that my family could not get together for the first night Seder, a tradition I have looked forward to every single year I can remember. 

Now, I’m “lucky” enough to be from a big family, so my grandma, parents, three sisters, and I all gathered around the table. Because my father is a Rabbi, he utilized Zoom and streamed the seder to our entire congregation. The local newspaper decided to run a story about it, which meant we had a socially-distanced photographer stand in our side yard and take a picture of us, sitting around the Seder table, with the laptop Zoom-ing to the whole congregation. I wore basketball shorts with my button-up shirt, as was the Zoom fashion. 

Nowadays, although Pesach is one of my absolute favorite holidays because the whole family gets together in person, our 2020 Zoom Seder is a fond memory and perhaps even a microcosm of the perseverance and resilience of spirit that is so embodied by the story of the Israelite’s Exodus from Egypt.

Maya’s Matzah Meals

Pesach is always a time to get creative, from the classics like matzah pizza, to more elaborate and honestly unnecessary innovations like Matzah sushi.  When you’re camping on Pesach, it might take putting yourself back into the sandals of the Israelites walking through the desert to piece together some meals with your matzah. 

Fig and Vine editor and resident adventurer Maya Kaye is no stranger to getting scrappy and making do with what you’ve got in the name of an excursion. When her camping trip with the excursion club overlapped with Pesach, she knew that at least no bears or fellow campers would be fighting for her stash of matzah. 

First on the menu for the excursion was chili, vegetarian for Maya. Cornbread or biscuits were replaced with the delightful dip of cardboard! I mean, matzah. Maya’s dipper was the talk of the group, getting those excursioners to adventure with their food. 

Up next was sandwiches to fuel the day of hiking. The fuel came in the form of turkey and bread, but no Kosher meat meant that cheese and lettuce had to take the spotlight in Maya’s sandwich. Matzah is not great for many things, but it makes a great mess of crumbs. Nothing like a dry pile of matzah, lettuce, and cheese to make you appreciate the outdoors. 

Maya’s cheese, lettuce, and matzah sandwich… well, sand.