With the Basics Down, People Head Up Their Own Seders

When Ady Fisberg was a child in Brazil, she and her family would gather at her grandparents’ home for a big seder, served on special china. But the degree to which the Haggadah was read, she jokes, was tied to how hungry the seder leaders were.

Now living in Houston, Texas, she will be cooking up a storm with her mother and two friends, preparing to host between 25 and 30 guests together with her husband, Matt Levine. This year, Passover starts at sundown on Monday, April 14.

Yet there will be differences in the seder Fisberg-Levine will hold from the ones she attended when she was young. Everything will be strictly kosher, and she is working hard on preparing a program that will both conform to halachah (Jewish law) and be meaningful to her guests.

Her current seder is modeled largely on the public seder hosted by Rabbi Chaim and Chani Lazaroff, co-directors of Uptown Chabad in Houston, where she spent many seders as a single person before she married.

Fisberg-Levine is among the growing number of individuals and families who now host their own seders at home, basing the evening on their experiences at Chabad-sponsored public seders or more intimate seders in the homes of Chabad shluchim (emissaries).

“Rabbi Chaim has this way of making everything interesting and relevant,” she explains, “which is what attracted me and many other young professionals to Chabad in the first place.”

Following his lead, she and her friends try to bring something new to the seder every year. She also encourages people to bring songs they know from home to be added to the repertoire of songs she and her guests learned at the Lazaroff’s Passover table.

Ady Fisberg-Levine, right, says she models her seders, which she now holds at home, on the public ones she attended when single in Houston, using recipes and song tunes she learned from Chanie Lazaroff.

Although she does not keep a strictly kosher home, Fisberg-Levine says she does Passover 100 percent—just like she saw the Lazaroffs do.

“Before I met them, Passover was very hard. Practically, the only thing we knew we could eat was matzah, and we ate it until it was coming out of our ears,” she recalls. “Chani showed me so many amazing, delicious recipes—we have no shortage of good food to last for the entire holiday.”

However, she remembers being bowled over to discover that the Lazaroffs did not serve matzah-ball soup at the seder. Following Chassidic custom, Chabad practice is to make sure matzah does not come in contact with any liquid on Passover, lest some bits of flour become wet and turn into chametz (leaven).

Another surprise was the fact that when her hostess fries food during Passover, she uses rendered chicken fat (schmaltz) instead of oil, avoiding commercially produced items over the eight-day holiday.

“Of course, it was delicious,” says Fisberg-Levine.

All New for Them

While Fisberg-Levine came to Chabad seders with childhood memories, when Yelena and Ilya Shulman of Skokie, Ill., attended their first Passover seder in 2006 at the home of Rabbi Yochanan and Yona Posner, it was all new for them.

Rabbi Chaim and Chanie Lazaroff, co-directors of Chabad of Uptown in Houston, and their family put the finishing touches on a community Passover seder.

“Growing up, we had no Passover at all,” says Yelena Shulman, who was born in Mink, Belarus, and immigrated to the Chicago area as a child. “So our first exposure to the seder experience was at the Posners.”

Two years later, the Shulmans hosted their first seder for more than a dozen family members, conducted in a blend of Russian and English, using an English translation of the Haggadah.

The most memorable quality of that first event was the sheer length of it, recalls Shulman.

“We had just learned about everything that needed to be done,” she explains, “and apparently, things took longer than we thought. In the middle of the seder, I heard my grandmother whisper, ‘If I make it out alive, I’m not coming back next year.’ ”

But she did come back—again and again.

Yet even as the Shulmans became more adept at planning and hosting it, Shulman says that for the first few years, she still relied on Yona Posner to send her the ceremonial items to be placed on the seder plate. (This year, Shulman is going to Israel for the holiday.)

“She made it all look so easy, cooking for 100 guests the first night at Chabad and 40 more at home the second night,” say Shulman. “Of course, it was hard work for her. But whenever I feel like complaining about how much work I put into Passover, I just think of Yona.”