Seder Stories: Passover Thoughts on Food, Family, and Freedom (Hardcover)

Passover is the Festival of Freedom in the Jewish community worldwide. More than any other holiday, it symbolizes what it means to be Jewish: family, food, and fun coupled with an obligation to pass on their story to future generations.

Seder Stories contains the memories of childhood Seders from 101 Jewish people. Some of them are famous, like Rabbi Harold Kushner and attorney Alan Dershowitz. Others are famous only within their circle of friends and family. Some of the stories are funny, some poignant, some thought provoking and worth reading. All of them are charming.

Seder Stories is a gift book filled with delightful anecdotes of cleaning house, eating hard matzo balls, and milking kosher cows. Following an introduction that gently (and briefly) reviews the background and importance of the major Passover traditions, the eight chapters that follow are filled with as many as a dozen stories revolving around a central theme. Each story is told in the first person and retains the storyteller's voice. Stories come from folks of all ages, many professions, and all parts of the United States.

"What I remember about Seders when I was a child is the never-ending food -- the brisket, the matzo balls, the killer horseradish," writes Rips. "What my children remember about their Seders is Elijah, in person, striding in the door, loudly playing 'Eliyahu' on the trumpet, dressed head to toe in trend-setting dark brown polyester with a rope belt to accentuate the ensemble. Over the top? Maybe. But Passover is one time of the year when it seems appropriate to go all out."