ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 4, 1996 TAG: 9604050054
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
Central to every Passover celebration is an awareness of an ancient story of liberation and redemption in the present tense.
For Karen Ramsey, this year's Passover celebration - which began Wednesday at sundown - truly marks a new beginning for an age-old festival.
"My family didn't observe" any Jewish holidays when she was growing up, Ramsey told a Passover workshop at Temple Emanuel last weekend. So, she is having to learn them now, as an adult, to pass on to her children.
For Ramsey, that means getting to know how to use a haggadah, a book describing the story of Passover, and how to prepare and conduct the ritual seder, a highly structured ceremony commemorating the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery 3,000 years ago.
The story of the plagues on Egypt and Moses leading the people out of bondage is one of the most widely known from the Hebrew Bible. And many people know about matzah, the unleavened bread symbolic of the hastily prepared provisions taken by the Israelites as they fled Egypt.
But those who did not grow up with the celebration of Passover may be less familiar with some of the other elements of the ritual meal.
The seder includes bitter herbs to remind participants of the bitterness of slavery; a roasted bone as a reminder of ancient sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem; a roasted egg offered as a sacrifice; a mixture of apples, nuts, spice and wine reminiscent of the clay used to make bricks by the slaves in Egypt; and leafy green vegetables as a reminder of spring.
Wine also figures prominently in the meal symbolizing the joy of life.
While Passover is a distinctly family celebration, it has community elements as well.
For one thing, the haggadah's demand to be open to strangers and its focus on explaining the ritual to the youngest child present makes Passover an ideal celebration to which to invite non-Jews, said Susan DuGrenier, who also participated in the Temple Emanuel workshop.
Many Jews also participate in congregational seders on the second night of Passover. Rabbi Jerome Fox will lead tonight's second-night seder at Beth Israel Synagogue of Conservative Jews. Lay people will lead the ceremony at Temple Emanuel, a Reform congregation that has hired a new rabbi who begins her tenure the first of next month.
Ramsey also plans to attend the community seder at Temple Emanuel to learn about holiday traditions and ways to incorporate them at home.
The congregational seder, long a staple at Temple Emanuel, also has become a fixture at Beth Israel in recent years, said Rabbi Fox, who expects about 75 people for tonight's celebration.
Participants include some who don't have large extended families in town to participate in a home seder, and some "who don't feel competent in doing their own," Fox said.
The congregational seder is "very valuable - a good way to learn the steps" for those who are unfamiliar with the ritual.
There are those who might argue that the seder should always be done at home, Fox said, and "the first night ought to be done as a family at home," if at all possible. But, "realistically, there are certain people who cannot or will not have a seder at home."
"This way they can fulfill their religious obligation and get something out of Passover."
Fox always encourages congregants to consider contemporary issues in Judaism as well as long-established traditions as they relive the story of Passover. This year, that includes the peace process in the Middle East and recent violence in Israel.
Despite the bombings there, Fox said an unprecedented number of Roanoke Valley Jews are planning trips to Israel in the coming year. Among them are a group of four youths who later this month will leave for a two-week trip that will begin at the sites of the Nazi death camps in Poland and conclude with the celebration of Independence Day in Israel.
"Obviously there are concerns" about safety and security, Fox said, but the travelers "are showing solidarity with the people of Israel ... despite the terrorism."
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