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Seder celebrates Israelites’ exodus
YOUNGSTOWN
Before their meal was over Wednesday evening, people partaking in the Interfaith Seder at Stambaugh Auditorium would drink four glasses of grape juice or wine.
The Seder would start with one glass. There would be another before the chicken dinner and two after, said Rabbi Joseph P. Schonberger, who led the celebration.
While drinking all that wine, the rabbi said, tradition dictates leaning to the left.
Why?
“So that if we drink all four cups of wine, we’ll look the same as we did at the beginning,” he said, to laughter.
The truth is, people in biblical times used to eat leaning to the left if they were free, he said.
And on the Seder plate at each table were traditional foods that those gathered at Stambaugh would eat before their dinner — each food a symbol of the Israelites’ suffering and the freedom they finally obtained from the Egyptian pharaoh after they crossed the desert and the Red Sea.
On the plate were hazeret, a bitter vegetable; haroset, a sweet, sticky mixture often made from nuts, apples and wine, which symbolizes the clay the Jews’ ancestors used to make bricks for the pharaoh; a Z’roa, or roasted bone to symbolize the special lamb that was brought to the Temple in Jerusalem on Passover as an offering to God; Maror, or bitter herbs, such as horseradish or romaine lettuce, to symbolize the bitterness of slavery; Beitsa, a burned offering, represented by a hard-boiled egg, brought to the Temple to be roasted in honor of the holiday Shavuot, Passover or Sukkot; and Karpas, a fresh vegetable such as parsley, celery or a potato to symbolize that Passover occurs during the spring, when a new life brings feelings of hope.
Those vegetables are dipped in salt water to symbolize the tears shed by the Israelite slaves in Egypt.
On the table is matzo — three of them, to remind the diners that there are still three kinds of people: those who are not free, those who don’t care about the freedom of others, and those who are free and work to help others become free.
The matzo, said Rabbi Schonberger, is one of the three major symbols of the Seder, a reminder of the flat, baked dough the Israelites ate as they fled Egypt — they did not wait for their bread to rise.
The other two are the Paschal lamb, which is a reminder of Passover, and the bitter herbs, a reminder of how bitter the Israelites’ lives were.
Those bitter herbs are also a reminder, he said, to care about other people — the poor, the hungry, the sick and those who are alone.
Also presiding at the Seder were the Rev. George Balasko of Jewish-Christian Studies, North and South; the Rev. Nick Maeger, retired pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Youngstown; and the Rev. Juan Rivera of New Life Church in Poland.
Girls from Akiva Academy, a Jewish day school on Gypsy Lane, sang traditional songs in memory of Susan Schonberger, Rabbi Schonberger’s wife, who died this summer, said Jack Kravitz, owner of Kravitz Delicatessen in Liberty Township, which puts on the dinner.
It is the second year for the dinner.
Kravitz organizes it with the help of Stambaugh, he said.
Mary Swinehart DeVille, who attended with her husband, Jack DeVille, said they saw an article about it in a newspaper.
“We are very ecumenically interested,” she said.
“Judaism and Christianity are from the same roots,” she said, adding that her father was a minister in Austintown, where the couple now live.
Kravitz said he had to carefully consider Jewish traditions when he planned the menu.
The meal was not kosher, he said, but it did observe basic Jewish dietary laws.
No dairy products were served, and every detail down to the salad dressing had to be considered — no corn oils or other oils with grains.
“Nothing that can rise,” he said.
“It’s challenging.”