Category: Jewish

Passover 2022

On May 3, 2022

Photo by Danielle Shevin

Finally after almost 3 years of isolation and pandemic, my group of American/Jewish/Swedish friends could meet in person and celebrate Passover together again. We gathered at the Party House on Reimersholmen as we usually have done for many years now and sat down to an organized dinner. It was so great to see all who could make it. This year our Seder plate had two additions on it. I am generally a traditionalist and don’t like changing the contents of the Seder plate to suit current politically correct modernity but I made an exception this year. This year we added an orange and a beautiful sunflower blossom – the orange to symbolize women leading services once usually reserved only to men and the flower to remind us what is going on in Ukraine at this moment.

Here is what I had to say before we started our service.

It’s so nice to see all of you today. It’s been 3 years since we met to celebrate Passover in person. Technically it’s not really Passover any longer. Yesterday was the last day so I guess Passover has passed over us. Passover is over but here we are…

Here we are. Think about those words: here we are. We almost weren’t. I waited too long before trying to book the Party House and when I went to book our usual day, Good Friday, I discovered someone else had booked it before me. Saturday, påskafton was also booked, as well as Easter Sunday. Today was the only available day this weekend, so here we are.

This holiday which we celebrate every year, is especially apt this year, given what has been going on in the world right now. Passover reminds us how we had to pack up what we could carry with us and leave a land that we had been living in for many generations, at almost a moment’s notice. We didn’t even have time to let our bread rise.

A similar exodus is happening over in Ukraine right now. I can’t stop watching CNN show me how Ukrainians are being forced to flee from their homes and escape to other countries. While they aren’t being chased out by horse-drawn chariots and their bread comes in plastic bags from grocery stores, their hasty and dangerous exodus reminds me of the Passover story. It tells the tale of a people who want to be able to live in freedom and self-determination just like the Ukrainians do today.

The Passover story of the exodus from Egypt, 13 centuries before Jesus, was the founding myth of the Jewish people. But, it was just the first of many such expulsions. 7 centuries before Jesus, the Assyrian empire sacked the northern Kingdom of Israel and deported the Jews to Assyria. Then a little over a hundred years later Babylonia, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon’s Temple and carted us off to Babylonia. It took fifty years before the Jews were allowed to return to their homeland and could build a new temple. That Temple got destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and once again Jews were scattered across the ancient world far away from their home. This time the expulsion would last for 2000 years.

During those centuries Jews were given the choice to either leave or die, by cities or countries throughout Europe and north Africa. During the early middle ages, Spain became a haven of prosperity for Jews only to be ended with the devastating expulsion by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. I’m not going to list all the places that first welcomed us only to later expel us. You can look it up on Wikipedia.

But in spite of all that moving around, the Jewish People survived. We learned how to carry with us our culture, our religion, our history – to not tie it down to the place we were living in. In today’s world, forced migration is getting more and more common. Sometimes because of war like in Ukraine, or because of environmental catastrophes like forest fires in the American west or rising sea levels for island nations or desertification in sub-Saharan Africa. With each new place the Jewish people were forced to move to, we learned to live there within the new rules of the place and also as Jews and when we had to leave we took with us the influences from that place and incorporated them into ourselves without losing ourselves in the process. This ability to adapt and change and still remain true to our heart is something we can teach the rest of the world in these days of involuntary migration.

So, here we are, sitting here, today, as Jews still do, in a small building on Reimersholmen, remembering that very first move. Granted we are not all here – some of us, from my group of J.A.P.S., couldn’t make it today. Hopefully next year we can all be here together once again.

So, let’s start the seder.

Off the board

By Hilarie

On October 20, 2010

In Jewish, Life

Today was my last day on the board. While a bit relieved I also feel a bit sad about it. Board?? What board you ask. Diving board? Ironing board?

About 5 years ago I started getting involved in a number of Swedish organizations. And by that I mean organizations where I was probably the only Native English Speaker in the group. My kid was growing up, a staff job had begun to replace the freelance life (which, anyone who ever had a freelance life knows, makes it hard to plan anything in advance), my family didn’t need me as much as before, I had finally begun to feel confident in speaking Swedish and I had completely stopped blow drying my hair. I felt like I had some extra time on my hands.

The first organization I joined was a group called Progressiv Judendom i Sverige (PJS). It was a non-profit association formed to bring Reform Judaism to the Jewish Community of Stockholm. As a long time member of Stockholm’s Jewish community, I had spent many years complaining about the very conservative, almost Orthodox and extremely lifeless and meaningless type of services conducted in the Great Synagogue here. When I heard that a group was forming with the intent to start holding a more liberal and different type of service, I realized that I had to put my money where my mouth was and join. When I saw that the contact person had the same telephone exchange as I did I realized that she must live right near me and it was just fated for me to be a member. I’ve been on the board ever since. I do the website. But I’m a very bad webmaster – always late updating. But we have very pleasant monthly board meetings across the park from my place in Eva-Britt’s apartment, where we eat home made soup and chat before starting our meetings.

The next group I joined was sort of an offshoot of the first. It is the infokommittén of the Jewish Community. I got volunteered for it by a fellow PJS board member but don’t regret joining. Its a loosely organized group of people working in the advertising and media branch and the main thing we have in common is that we are Jewish. We gather at the Jewish Center every 5 or 6 weeks to discuss how to keep the Jewish community here alive. In other words how to increase the number of paying members. There is a wide range of Jewishness in the group, from Orthodox to secular to cultural, with an interesting mix of personal stories and like with most European Jews a wide range of different national experiences. Everyone is very professional and whatever differences we have regarding how we practice our own brand of Jewishness never seems to get in the way. Its interesting and I get to hear about all the inside workings of the community.

Finally, the last group I joined is the one that I no longer am a member of. For almost 2 and a half years now Ive been on the board of the Thorildsplan gymnasiums föräldraförening. I guess you could call it the PTA of my son’s high school. Once again, I was on the board of a brand new organization. The woman who has been the chair and guiding force is named Ann. And it just accidentally turned out that she was the mother of one of Bevin’s three best friends in his class. Once again fate steps in. That we have our sons in common was just another reason to join. I have always been very involved in my son’s schooling, ever since I enrolled him in a parent cooperative daycare. In lower school (1-3 grades) I probably went on every day trip as a class parent that his class took. In middle school I was a class parent every year and helped plan his sixth grade class trip to Åland. I also went along as a class parent on that trip too. And in 9th grade, his final year of grammar school, I once again helped to organize their final 2 day trip, going along as class parent one more time and I ended the year as a chaperon at his school prom.

But by the time a kid reaches gymnasium (high school) it seems that most Swedish parents are no longer interested in their kid’s schooling. Very few gymnasiums have PTAs. But Ann was determined to start one at Torildsplan gymnasium. And I joined her in her quest. Together with a few other board members we would meet about 8 times during the school year in the school’s teacher’s lounge to drink our coffee and discuss how to get parents in the almost 1000 student school interested in being a member. At Open House we gave out flyers, telling them about our organization. It was an uphill battle. Parents just didn’t seem interested. Tonight was the General Annual meeting for the new school term. 5 or 6 new parents came to the meeting. Which was good, since this past spring my son graduated from Torildsplan and is now in college. Some of the new parents were willing to join the new board. Ann, whose son graduated alongside mine this spring, was still willing to take on the responsibility of being the Chair. I, however, felt my time on the board was over. I feel that its time to move on to something new. But even as I left the cafeteria and walked along the corridors headed for the door while the new board members held their first meeting, I felt sad. It was an ending and I think endings are always sad. When my son graduated this spring, it was also an ending. But up ahead, just around the corner, he had a whole new school life waiting for him to begin, in college.

I’m still on the board of PJS, I still will be going to meetings of the infokommité, but my time on the föräldraförening has ended. I wonder what is waiting for me – what is it that is just around the corner.

Family

By Hilarie

On July 25, 2010

In Jewish, Life, Stavsnäs

You can pick your nose.
And you can pick your friends.
But you can’t pick your friends’ nose.
That rhyme has rattled around in my head ever since I was a little kid. I don’t know why. So much other stuff doesn’t seem to be able to stay in there but that little ditty does. I always thought it was funny for some reason. The idea of picking one’s friends. It’s not the same with family. You can’t pick your family. They become attached to you the moment you are born. And they follow you for the rest of their lives. When I was much, much younger I used to wish that we could also pick family. One goes through a certain period of one’s life when FAMILY is either embarrassing, annoying or just plain irritating. It isn’t until you move far away from them that you realize just how important FAMILY really is.