Coping When Holy Days Collide

Observant Jews this week face the holiday version of Mission Impossible: prepare a Passover Seder for Saturday night--the work equivalent of a Thanksgiving dinner--without being able to cook for 24 hours before the meal.

The culinary quandary is just one challenge posed by this year’s back-to-back pairing of the Sabbath, which begins Friday night, and Passover, which starts Saturday night.

The overlap of Jewish laws caused by the Sabbath-Passover conjunction isn’t that rare--it’s happened twice since 1981. But Orthodox and Conservative rabbis have been busy advising congregants how to perform the rituals of both holy days without violating Jewish law.

“People have had the remarkable reaction that this hasn’t happened before,” said Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David-Judea in Los Angeles, who sent a three-page e-mail to his congregation covering the holiday rules. “And every rabbi and his brother has put out a pamphlet on what to do.”

Passover celebrates the exodus of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. And the traditional Seder meal--which Jews outside Israel will repeat a second day on Sunday night--is as ritualistic as Jewish meals get.

Before the multi-course feast, traditionally including gefilte fish and matzo-ball soup, there is an hours-long ceremony around the Seder table retelling the story of the Exodus, designed so even the youngest family member can have a sense of the Jews’ flight to freedom.

As the tale is told, ceremonial foods such as parsley, horseradish and a mixture of crushed nuts and fruits are eaten in various combinations, evoking the senses.

Some of this year’s dilemmas can be merely inconvenient: cooking the holiday meal a day in advance and warming it after sunset on Saturday.

“The logistics are a real bear,” said Rabbi Joel Landau of Beth Jacob Congregation of Irvine. “But nothing should diminish the sanctity of the Sabbath. It can’t be compromised in any way for the next holiday.”

Other challenges can be quite tricky: How to keep leaven, or hametz, out of a kosher home during Passover when bread is traditionally used during the rituals of Shabbat meals that immediately precede the holiday.

For the eight days of Passover, observant Jews don’t use any leavened products in remembrance of their forefathers who had to escape Egypt before their bread had a chance to rise. Passover refers to the night when the angel of death “passed over” the houses of the children of Israel, sparing the Jewish first born during the plagues God cast on the Egyptians.

Kosher homes must be thoroughly clean. Boiling water is poured over pots and pans, Passover-only china is taken from storage boxes, pantries are cleared, and even car interiors are vacuumed.

The goal is to eliminate any hint of bread crumbs or other traces of leaven found in foods that are allowed under Jewish dietary laws all other weeks of the year except this one.

A product as seemingly unlike leavened bread as ketchup must be formulated especially for Passover because it normally is made with corn syrup. Among European Jews, there is a longstanding Passover tradition of avoiding any meal made with food that could have come in contact with utensils or mills laced with leavened grains.

Sharon Chase spend the past week cleaning her Irvine home.

“It’s the busiest week of the year,” said Chase, a Conservative Jew. “You’re supposed to clean everything, and I’m cleaning as much as I can. When you’re done, it really makes you feel good.”

Local rabbis have developed a few strategies for keeping a home ready for Passover while eating bread for the Shabbat meals.

One is to simply eat a small roll on an outside patio. Another is to carefully eat a small amount of bread on a paper plate--with a napkin ready so no crumbs fall to the floor. And a third solution is to eat egg matzo, which doesn’t contain leaven and also won’t violate the rule of refraining from eating regular matzo on the days leading to Passover.

“I think it’s a challenge for every household,” said Stanley Sigal, a Los Angeles pharmacist. “It requires a little bit more attention to the situation. It’s a reminder that one doesn’t go about the rituals by one’s self. One has to check with higher authorities. There’s something that’s very, very poignant about it.”

Many synagogues are holding Saturday morning services earlier so congregants can eat the last of their Shabbat bread at least two hours before midday Saturday, when the Passover prohibition against leavened products begins.

And events usually planned for Passover eve have been moved up a day to keep the Sabbath holy.

If this sounds complicated, it is.

“The arena of Jewish law is our holy space,” Kanefsky said. “We develop it, we delight in it. The more we can do with it, the greater our sense of the divine. The Jewish law is our temple. We make it complex. We like it that way.”

Some Reform Jews and outside observers might view them as legalistic hairsplitting, but observant Jews find profound meaning in the rituals.

“It’s not ritual for sake of ritual,” said Landau, an Orthodox rabbi. “The goal to appreciate the meaning of the ritual and try to enrich your life because of it. And if that’s not happening, you’re missing the boat.”

Sigal says he follows the customs because he believes that’s what God asks.

“It makes you closer to God,” said Sigal, whose wife took off 1 1/2 weeks from work to prepare their Diamond Bar home. “I don’t ask, ‘Why do I have to do that?’ If it has to be done, it has to be done.”

Rabbi David Eliezrie sees another benefit of this year’s dual observances.

“When you usually come to the Passover Seder, you’re exhausted by the work,” said Eliezrie, of Congregation Beth Meir HaCohen-Chabad Center in Yorba Linda. “This year, you can’t do any work. So when it comes, you can relax, take a nap and enjoy the day.”