Is this kosher for Passover?

Who knew that probably my most orthodox (religiously) Passover celebration would be celebrated in Albania, making it quite an unorthodox event indeed . . .
I'm not religious, not even really a little bit. But I love culture, tradition, customs, holidays and food, so last year when I happened to be in Elbasan during the week of Passover and was roped in to helping throw together a Seder at the last minute by Molly, a G12 PCV who is much more observant. This thrown together Seder was lots of fun, with a few other trainees and some Albanian PC staff, but it was not really like any Seder that Molly or I had had in the past (we tried to make our own matzo, it was interesting . . . ). This year, Molly decided months ago that she would host a Seder at her house in Vlore and started making plans.

The first thing that she did was call the Chabad Center in Thessaloniki. Chabad is a sect of Hasidim that has centers all over the world and does outreach to Jews. Molly called them hoping to get some kosher meat (she has been vegetarian since she arrived here since kosher meat isn't available). It turns out the kosher meat was really the least they could do. The rabbi in Thessaloniki arranged for two huge boxes of meat, a very large box of kosher for passover stuff and enough matzo to last for weeks to be sent with two traveling rabbis. Basically, Molly mail ordered rabbis. Seriously. Who knew that you could mail order a rabbi? Or two?
Before the rabbis arrived with their massive amounts of food, we had to prepare Molly's house. Not being observant in my house, I had the vague idea that you had to get rid of the bread in the house before passover, but we never really did that. But with the rabbis coming we had to be serious about clearing out the bread (and everything else not kosher) and then cleaning the house. For starters, Molly had an incredible amount of food that had to be cleared out and taken to another volunteers house, like more food than I have ever had in my house, more food than I probably ever had in my house in America. Since nothing in Albania is officially koser (and even less is kosher for passover) we basically cleaned out her entire kitchen. We then proceeded to scrub everything down. Even with all the scrubbing and clearing out, when the rabbis arrived they covered every available space in tin foil, just to make sure. We also took all of the utensils and dishes to be used and dipped them in a spring nearby to make them kosher. This was a bit weird, and the Albanians filling up their water bottles at the spring thought we were nuts. For once I agreed with them . . .

The rabbis, Ari and Mendel from Brooklyn, are "young rabbis" (unmarried) of the Chabad sect. They went to religious school their whole lives and started to study to be rabbis when they were very young. It was very interesting to talk to them since I don't think that I have ever had (or probably will ever have again) the chance to meet and talk to a Hasidic rabbi (or man for that matter), since there is generally separation of the sexes in the orthodox Jewish groups and not much interaction with other groups. Chabad, however, is a really interesting group. With a philosophy of outreach, there are Chabad centers all around the world serving Jewish communities. They actually compare themselves a little bit to Peace Corps and their leader often reference Peace Corps as a model for their outreach missions. The mission as I understand it is for the rabbis to help moderately observant Jews (Molly) become closer to their faith and secular or nonobservant Jews (me) come back to the faith. I don't think I'm going to go out and join an orthodox community anytime soon, but it was still interesting to talk to them.

After two days cleaning, we then spent two days cooking. We made all the passover staples- tzimes, brisket and matzo ball soup. I also experimented a little with the random ingredients I had and made apple matzo meal muffins (similar to the vegetable kugel that I would make at home, but without the sweet potatoes). Travis (the other lapsed Jew living in Vlore) came over and helped by creating a wonderful potato apple matzo stuffed chicken. With limited oven space and random ingredients I think that we came up with two really fantastic meals. For the two Seder dinners we had 11 guests at each (including me, Molly, Travis and the rabbis) some Albanians, one Kosovar Jew, a random Israeli guy living in Kosovo and of course some Jewish and some non-Jewish volunteers.
The day after the second dinner I stayed in Vlore to be part of a panel discussion in one of Amy's classes about culture in different parts of the US. The rabbis, restricted from work (including travel) for the first two full days of passover, stayed until sundown after the second day and then raced back to Thessaloniki to get a flight back to the US before the Sabbath set in . . .

This was definately one of the more interesting passover celebrations I have had in my life . . . all I can think now is . . . next year in ?????

PS- because the rabbis kept a pretty strict level of kosher and observed the "no work" rule for the first two days, we also tried to observe this, so there are not many pictures (taking a picture is work too!) all of these pics were snapped before sundown on the first day.

The Newbies

This week I got the first real chance to get to know some of the new group of volunteers. They arrived a few weeks ago and have been keeping busy with language, training and awkward host family moments . . . oh the memories!

So first, I had two of the group come up to Peshkopi to visit me for the weekend. As you know, I don't get too many visitors, so I went a little nuts preparing for them- I made chocolate chip cookies and stuffed peppers and then pancakes and I shared my peanut butter, ranch dressing and maple syrup . . . they were in American food heaven! Anyway, Kenji and I had a really good time showing them around town. On Sunday, Katie wanted to go to church. Although the pastor of the church is a good friend of mine (he is a great young guy, really motivated and working with us on the radio station) I have never actually gone to services, so I decided to go with her. The church is small and the congregation small and young. The service was really nice and simple- lots of songs, not too heavy on the preaching or ceremony. Throughout the weekend I acted as an interpreter for the newbies (they have only been here three weeks) and I was able to understand and translate most of what happened during the service.

After church, Jennie from Puke showed up (all these visitors at once!) and we walked all together (with Kenji and Seth) to the hot springs just outside of town. The Peshkopi hot springs is probably one of the better-maintained springs in the country (I know of one outside of Elbasan that is apparently really dirty). There is a private hotel and state owned spa building in which you can get a private bath (I think, we didn't actually go inside). But outside there are a few natural pools that you can just dip your feet into. We were just planning on walking by, but of course we were hajde-d (told to come in) by all of the Albanians wetting their feet. After our dip in the hot springs, we headed back to town to watch a soccer game. Peshkopi won the game against Kukes 2-0. Jennie, Katie and I were the only women at the game and we all attracted a huge group of young boys (mostly wanting to talk to us in English). This is actually the first game that I have gone to in Peshkopi, mostly because I never seem to know when they are and it has been so cold . . .

On Monday Seth and Katie came to work with me, sort of. I say sort of because we went to my office and said hi, but left pretty much right away. My office is about the size of a large closet and already had 4 people in it. There was not really anywhere to sit and I also didn’t want to disturb my coworker’s work- right now they are working on the large report for the program design and have a lot of work to do. So instead, we went across the street to the café where I can pick up the wireless from my office and hung out. We talked about what my daily routine usually is (like I usually would have stayed in the office) but also how flexible my schedule is and I told them about the different projects I am working on. In the afternoon we met up with Kenji and I decided to bake him a chocolate cake for his birthday. In the evening we met up with a couple of our Albanian friends (Turi and Kenji’s counterpart Habib) and went out for pizza to celebrate. We couldn’t find any birthday candles so we lit sparkers on my cake. Turi also brought a cake (with actual candles) and so hopefully Kenji will get two wishes.

When Seth and Katie left Peshkopi, it was really just the beginning of my week full of new volunteers. I have been working for a few months with a woman at the Tirana World Vision office on a workshop on stress management and office conflict. Our first two workshops were scheduled for Elbasan this week, so I traveled to Tirana with Seth and Katie. On Wednesday morning I found out that one of the trainees wanted to do a Passover Seder that evening. For me, Passover has similar feelings and memories as Thanksgiving and other holidays because when I was young my family would always hold a Seder. Some years we would have up to 30 people and usually my dad was the only Jew there. When I heard about Molly’s plans I sent a text to my mom (probably at like 4 AM- sorry mom!) to have her send me the family recipes. After my training I headed over to Ornela’s (one of the Albanian teachers) house to join the cooking all ready in progress. Passover has some very specific traditions, especially around food. Although there are many things that we did not have, we made due and used what we thought were appropriate substitutes. We had homemade matzo (a first for both me and Molly) and no horseradish (we used pickled vegetables- we couldn’t think of anything really bitter!). The meal was great though with soup, chicken and of course lots of wine! The really interesting part of the evening was introducing both other Americans and some of the Albanian staff to Passover. Molly is much more religious than my family has ever been (grew up in New York, keeps kosher) and so we had very different traditions and experiences of the holiday. As she said often- put 3 Jews in a room and get 5 opinions!

Today I met even more of the trainees when I gave a presentation on NGOs with some other volunteers for training. I have now met all of the COD volunteers, but not many of the Health or TEFL. They find out next week about their site placements- I am hopefully getting both a Health and TEFL volunteer up to join me in Peshkopi. I think I am almost as anxious as they are to find out where they are going and to find out who I will be living and working with for the next year. Overall, this has been a great week getting to know Group 12. I’m excited about them and I know that they will do a great job!