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.
