Taste: A Sephardic Seder

Every year for as long as I can remember, my family has gathered at tables tiny or teeming with elbows to celebrate Passover, perhaps the grandest food festival of our Jewish year. No matter how long we sit (or how loudly some complain about sitting -- oy! --) the powerful retelling of the Jewish exodus from slavery to freedom ends with the same hopeful prayer: "Next year in Jerusalem!"

And every year for as long as I can remember, many of us share another prayer, although in lowered voices with smiles and winks: "Next year, a Sephardic Passover!"

We Ashkenazi Jews (descended from Europe) know, of course, that we can only dream of devouring some of the dishes enjoyed by our Sephardic cousins, descendants of the Jews of modern Portugal and Spain.

"Pesach [Hebrew for Passover] is a time when everyone wants to know how to become Sephardic because of the rice," says an amused Susie Chalom, executive director of the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis, whose Sephardic family hails from Turkey. And not just the rice. Add corn, millet, dried beans, lentils and other legumes, all turned into edible poetry by Sephardic chefs who know their cumin and cilantro.

The difference in food restrictions stems back as far as the 13th century, explains Israeli-born Yaakov Levi, a Twin Cities Jewish studies teacher and excellent Sephardic cook. Ashkenazi Jews worried that the five prohibited grains (wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye), called hametz, were grown next to the fields of rice and such, and could easily be mixed up in the milling process. To simplify, they banned them all during the weeklong festival (although in Israel today, many Ashkenai Jews do eat rice during Passover).

Sephardic Jews, however, felt that no laws would be broken by eating hametz-free foods during Passover. Judy Bart Kancigor, author of the newly published "Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes From the Rabinowitz Family," notes that the difference may be due also to how each of these communities lived.

"Sephardic Jews really lived on top of their neighbors," Kancigor said. This posed a greater challenge in preserving separate practices. Ashkenazi Jews, by contrast, "were really separate, and these rules kept them separate."

Lili Khabie, considered one of the finest Sephardic cooks in the Twin Cities, lovingly recalls how her large family (12 children) geared up for Passover in her native Beirut, Lebanon. "One month before Passover, my father would go to the bakery to grind and make the matzoh himself," recalls Khabie of St. Louis Park. Meanwhile, the women painstakingly cleaned the rice, then laid it outside to dry. They cleaned clothes, chairs and tables, and gave their walls fresh paint, too. "Everything is new for Passover," Khabie says.

At least 25 people gathered for those seders, she says. More than 30 years later, the mother of five grown children and grandmother of 12 feeds a similar army of family and guests who beg for her kibbe, (lean hamburger meat and matzoh meal, with fried chopped onions and pine nuts); her eggrolls stuffed with ground chicken, carrots, cabbage and onion; and her tea matzohs topped with hamburger, vegetables and pomegranate molasses. "Everybody loves my appetizers!" says the effusive Khabie, who cooks from memory. "Nobody can get the recipes from me," she says. "It's crazy!"

Victor Vital, of St. Paul's Highland Park, recalls a similarly robust Sephardic seder in his native Greece. As many as 20 people gathered to eat delicacies including lamb, chicken lemon rice soup with egg, and spinach pies.

"We lived a very Jewish life" in Greece, he said, with many Christian friends joining their celebration. That tradition continues today with up to 20 people (about a third of them non-Jews) at the house on Grand Avenue of his former wife, Aglaia.

While the seder meal included the best dishes of the year in his family, too, Rabbi Avraham Ettedgui of Minnetonka recalls another special Sephardic tradition growing up in Morocco. On the evening of the final day of Passover, the family celebrated Meemonah.

Meemona remains an important celebration for the Sephardi community in Israel, he said.

Dig in!

Fortunately for Ashkenazi Jews, many Sephardic recipes can be universally enjoyed. Many are found in luscious new cookbooks that will make us wish Passover were 365 days long (as long as we can stop eating matzoh after a week).

"Jewish Holiday Cooking: A Food Lover's Treasury of Classics and Improvisations," by Jayne Cohen, (Wiley, $32.50), includes recipes for Chicken With Olives and Preserved Lemons, Fish in Tomato, Rhubarb and Blood Orange Sauce, and Moroccan-flavored Brisket With Dried Apricots and Prunes, which can grace any Passover table.

Kancigor's cookbook, a mind-boggling 600-page compilation of treasured recipes, stories and family photographs, includes one of her favorite dishes, Fassoulias, a Sephardic string-bean dish with tomato and onions.

Whether one is celebrating in Sephardic or Ashkenazi style, the meaning of Passover remains rich and true and essential to tell, year after year.

"We're repeating this story for our children," Kancigor said. "This is a tradition that has to be passed on, because the story of freedom is a universal story. In retelling the story, you're actually living it."

Gail Rosenblum • 612-673-7350