No passing on Passover Seder with Hillel

Passover Seder is traditionally an intimate event with close family and friends but many… Passover Seder is traditionally an intimate event with close family and friends but many Jewish students who are away from home don’t attend Passover Seders. Instead of focusing on what they’re missing — the family connection — the Hillel Jewish University Center is encouraging students to host their own Seders.

Hillel students and staff will hold at least 18 Seder meals across the city tonight and tomorrow night.

The Hebrew word Seder means “order” and refers to the religious service of the same name. Jewish followers observe the service and meal on the fifteenth of the Hebrew month Nisan. The Seder marks the beginning of Passover, which commemorates the biblical event of the Hebrews’ escape from Egypt and runs today through April 6 this year.

The Hillel-sponsored meals will take place in the Hillel JUC, located on Forbes Avenue, apartments, dormitories, fraternity houses and the William Pitt Union. About 370 students are signed up for the satellite Seders.

The Hillel JUC hosted about 100 to 150 Jewish students from Pitt, Carnegie Mellon and the city’s other universities last year, said Pitt student Carly Adelmann, a Hillel JUC intern who is organizing the group’s Passover program.

“Having 100 to 150 people at a Seder is not the same as a traditional family Seder,” Adelmann said. “We took the idea of family and broke it up as a more intimate experience.”

Hillel JUC sponsors the Seders, providing food, tables, chairs, training and Haggadahs, the religious text that sets out the order of the Passover Seder.

“Hillel made it really easy for students to host their own Seders,” said Brianna McDonough, jewish life chair for the Pitt Student Board of Hillel. McDonough will co-host her first Seder at Hillel tomorrow night.

While some of the Seders will be traditional, a few will have non-traditional twists, like a vegetarian Seder hosted by Carnegie Mellon student Aaron Weil.

Adelmann chose to forgo the catered food that Hillel offers to hosts and will cook her own meal instead. She plans to do an around-the-world Seder in her apartment. She will serve quinoa, which is a grain-like crop, meatballs with spaghetti squash and curry potatoes, among other foods.

But most students will host traditional Seders.

Pitt student Benjamin Robinson will host a traditional Seder in his Forbes-Craig apartment. Seder dinners can last between 45 minutes and several hours.

Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority will host a sisterhood Seder in its suite and Zeta Beta Tau fraternity will host a traditional one in its house.

A Seder retells the story of the escape of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. The host retells the story through the Haggadah.

After the Seder, a meal is usually served. It traditionally consists of gefilte fish, matzah ball soup and a brisket or chicken dish. The meal is usually up to the discretion of the host.

Students could sign up for a Seder on the Hillel website and choose which Seder they wanted to attend. The deadline to sign up was Mar. 24.

Hillel will still have its traditional Seders on the first two nights of Passover at the Hillel JUC starting tonight at 6:30 p.m. There will be limited tickets at the door for $10.

To help students hosting Seders for the first time, Rabbi Scott Aaron of the Agency for Jewish Learning, which is a foundation to promote Jewish learning in Pittsburgh, presented two mandatory workshops for the student hosts. He provided instruction on the use of the Haggadah and the basics on how to lead a Seder.

Students attended a Passover preparation event last Thursday at the Hillel JUC. Passover begins at sunset tonight and concludes at sunset April 6.

Hillel provided white, ceramic plates so that hosts could paint their own Seder plate for their Seder dinner. The Seder plate will hold the Passover symbols in the form of a roasted egg, roasted lamb shank bone, bitter herbs, parsley and charoset. Each item has a significant role in retelling the exodus from Egypt.

Other students were also encouraged to make a personal Seder plate.

“Making the plates was a thank you to all of the hosts for offering to host a Seder and a fun way for them to remember their hosting experience,” Adelmann said.

Pitt students Marc Schutzbank and Reva Gorelick provided a Passover cooking demonstration, giving students ideas for keeping Kosher.

They made a kosher snack of matzah, trail mix, nuts and chocolate chips.

Matzah is a cracker-like unleavened bread made of white plain flour and water. It serves as a substitute for bread during Passover to serve as a reminder of the Jewish people’s exodus.

The Jews left in haste and did not have time to bake bread, but just mixed flour with water and quickly baked it without waiting for it to rise.

Schutzbank and Gorelick won the Hillel JUC’s “Iron Chef: Latkes” competition last December.

Kosher food laws are extensive. According to Jewish dietary laws, pork, rabbit, eagle, owl, catfish, sturgeon, shellfish, insects and reptiles are not kosher. Other species of meat and fowl must be slaughtered in a prescribed manner to be kosher. The animal is killed quickly with a sharp knife in a single motion through its throat.

Jewish people can not consume meat and dairy products together.

McDonough said it’s difficult to eat kosher foods, because there aren’t many options available.

Last year, she forgot to order her kosher meals, so she ate matzah pizza for a whole week.