Refugee Seders in Lublin
Twenty six years of leading communal seders could not prepare us for what we would experience
“Thank you very much,” said Olga with her hands over her heart. “You lifted our spirits and helped us smile again. You took our minds from the war, and created a real celebration of life, thank you.”
Thanks to nearly one hundred donors, dozens of volunteers, and major amounts of Divine providence, the Passover Seders for refugees in Lublin were wonderful and inspiring. The seders were transformational for the participants and organizers. It challenged us to create new ways to engage adults and children in an ancient ritual which is full of symbolism and meaning, in multiple languages simultaneously. When we finished Chad Gad Ya at 11:30pm Saturday night, with participants voicing the different characters in the song, we realized how fortunate we were that everyone had a positive experience, and marveling that participants stayed so late.
Rachel, Shlomo, Naftali and I, with Jonathan and Natalie Gerber and their three children arrived in Lublin the Tuesday night before with a sprinter bus packed with supplies from Israel, Warsaw, Los Angeles, and Vienna, on a mission to create the most joyous and delicious Passover. We were determined that this refugee seder would be an experience of a lifetime for all the participants. Not only should it be delicious, but the room must be beautiful and we need to have tons of activities for the children. Oh, and it had to be done in Russian and Polish, and most people had never had a seder.
Often when people think of a refugee, we think of a forlorn person who has nothing. And since this person has nothing, they will be fine with whatever they are given. However, that is not what our tradition teaches about how to treat a refugee.
The Shulchan Aruch teaches that we should treat people who have fallen on hard times with the dignity and respect that they were accustomed to. “It is incumbent upon the people of the city to supply them with all their needs, in the manner they were accustomed to before they became poor...” (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 34:3)
The Ukrainian refugees at the hotel are lawyers, engineers, teachers, business owners, salespeople etc who are not accustomed to handouts. They left their homes, businesses, livelihood, schools, synagogues, and cities as Russia’s war bore down on Ukraine. Now they live a few to a room in a hotel. They have frozen bank accounts, fathers and cars left behind in the war zone. They once enjoyed meals out at restaurants, and good bottles of wine. One twelve year old told me that he could host all our families in his “giant” home in Kyiv when the war is over.
So I asked Kamil, the amazing head chef, “Can you make a feast — even without your regular products — like you would for a Polish wedding? A gourmet and elegant meal where you spare no expense?”
“For sure, Rabbi Yonah,” Kamil assured me, “no problem.”
Rachel and Kamil started discussing what Kosher for Passover is all about. She explained that we don’t use lots of Polish go-to foods like kasha, beans, barley, or rice. And about twenty other things like soy sauce and non-kosher balsamic vinegar.
“No bread?”
“No, sorry no bread.”
“What about Soya?”
“Sorry, no soybeans.”
He started looking less optimistic. So Rachel went online to look for traditional Polish recipes that would work well on Passover. Chicken with mushroom sauce. Beef over mashed potatoes. Creamed broccoli soup, without cream. The meal started to come together. Rachel found a bunch more ideas on Polish food websites. They created some menu options and shopping lists.
Together with Shlomo, Naftali, and Agnieszka, who works part-time for the Jewish community, we went out around Lublin markets to purchase additional supplies and new items for the kitchen that we could not kosher for Passover. The hotel director and manager also went out to find supplies and ingredients, like 20 lbs of horseradish root. We were excited that the hotel had just ordered a new set of dishes, but they had not arrived yet. We were optimistic, but when they had not arrived by 10 pm on Thursday night, we wondered if this gourmet meal would be served on paper plates. It’s not easy in Lublin to just go into a store and buy a set a of one hundred and fifty restaurant quality place settings. Thankfully around 2 am, a taxi arrived and unloaded a couple dozen boxes. The dishes had arrived.
When I explained to the hotel that we will have more than one hundred people for sure — the Hotel manager called and hired extra kitchen and wait staff. I explained that we would start serving the soup at 8pm, but I knew it would be later. (Turns out that it was served by 9.) The augmented kitchen staff, in a newly kosher-for-Passover kitchen, began on Friday to prepare everything. Rachel and I were worried that there would not be enough time. The 40 kilo of meat we brought from Warsaw was frozen solid. The donated packages of chicken breasts were in a deep freezer. While this would have created panic in most Jewish homes, and by all reason we should have been extremely worried, we were going with the flow. It’s going to happen someway or another. These expert Polish chefs got to work quickly on Friday, creating multiple courses and appetizers in record time. Rachel even had time to teach the kitchen how to make charoset.
The wait staff, mostly newly hired Ukrainian refugees, decorated the tables with freshly laundered and ironed, white table clothes, and a couple hundred tulips we got from the market. They set out wine and water glasses, and brand new and koshered cutlery, including separate fish and meat forks and knives.
We were aware some people had never been to a seder, and that the first night, in addition to refugees in the hotel and living in Lublin, we would be joined by members of the Jewish community of Lublin. We set up 130 seats, but it didn’t look like enough. We asked the staff to add another thirty seats. We set out Haggadas in Russian and Polish.
The Gerbers decorated the tall columns in the middle of the room with blue streamers, so that we could reenact the crossing of the Red Sea with the children. Then they put together a dozen seder plates for the adults. Tzofiya and Rivka prepared several dozen “10 Plagues in Candy” plates, plus cups of kosher for passover red jello for the blood.
As the meal was not going to be served until well past 8:00 pm, we decided to serve appetizers in the synagogue before services when people arrived. So Tzofiya and Rivka headed to another room with a couple of Israeli volunteers who had come for Passover break to Poland and began making cheese and fruit stick appetizers, and cutting up kosher for passover cakes. As 6:00 pm approached, the kitchen staff set the banquet style tables with the salads, herring, plates of hard boiled eggs, parsley, romaine lettuce, freshly ground horseradish and salt water. We knew from prior experience in Eastern Europe, people will want to eat as soon as the Seder begins, and you can still run a great seder.
But we still did not know who was going to come. We had been forewarned on arrival that many refugees might skip the seder as it’s “religious.” Agnieszka said, “Do you think anyone will come?” She had only a handful of RSVP’s from the community.
I reassured her. “It’s Passover. And a free dinner. They will come!”
At 6pm guests started to arrive.
The first night I led a some songs on guitar before candle lighting in the great hall of the Yeshiva Chochmei Lublin. The hall had once been the training grounds for the most learned rabbinical students in all of Europe. But this night, it was a very different assembly, most without any Jewish prayers experience. So I led a short service which was mostly singing, and then we invited everyone to the dining room. There were not enough seats, and we had to add more.
Then I changed into a Moroccan-style jalabiya, and gathered all the children in the middle of the room. We sat on the floor. I re-enacted the story of Moses asking Pharaoh to let the Jewish people go, in Polish with a Russian translator named Alexander from Lviv. We also had a translater from Turkenistan who spoke excellent Russian, and was Muslim. When Pharaoh said “no” the last time, the volunteers handed out candy “provisions” and I ran with the children back and forth across the dining room, “We are crossing the sea!” I yelled. And we ran back and forth again and again, until we made it to the “other side” of the sea.
After some additional instructions, I made the Festival and Shabbat Kiddush, and we asked some of the Ukrainians and Poles to read, alternating between three different Haggadot. We asked the four questions, discussed four kinds of kids, the Pesach offering, Matzah and Maror, and the eternal relevance of Passover. When I got to “in every generation they rise up...” That is when all my rabbinic experience and thirty years of leading seders came up against the reality of what we were doing.
At the start of the Seder we read, “all who are hungry come and celebrate Passover” in joy. I sang and danced.
But now, the reality that we were making a seder with a room full of people who had escaped the death and destruction of Ukraine just days before — I just started to cry. I could not speak. I could not utter another word.
Somehow, as if infused with words and energy that I did not have, I yelled in Polish and English, “Pharaoh did not destroy the Jewish people 3500 years ago, and Putin will not destroy us today. Just like Pharaoh suffered a terrible defeat, so too will Putin.”
Pharaoh did not destroy the Jewish people 3500 years ago, and Putin will not destroy us today. Just like Pharaoh suffered a terrible defeat, so too will Putin.
The Poles and Ukrainians, the Israeli volunteers and the French and American Jewish humanitarian aid volunteers, the American Jewish couple on a Fulbright, and the American studying medicine at Lublin Medical school and her husband, the waiters and waitresses too — everyone clapped their hands in joy. We raised our hands to the heavens asking for Divine assistance, and in thanks. We made another L’Chaim.
On the second night, we had eighty refugees join us for an even more intense and joyous evening. I said that any child who asks any question gets a prize. The Gerbers had made sure we were stocked with prizes and candy.
“Can we go to the moon tonight?” young Sasha asked as the first question of the Seder.
“Yes,” I answered, “After dinner, we can visit the moon. But first we have to do the seder.”
And then the floodgates of questions opened. A couple dozen children descended on the head of the table. Thanks to an English speaking 11 year old tzitzis and kippa wearing boy from Kyiv and our Muslim translator we were able to field all the questions.
Why the roasted egg? Why the parsley? Why the tulips? (we like tulips) Why the funny Yarmulke? (I had changed into a Bukharian one for night two.) Why no bread? Why are there pennies in the water? (to keep the tulips straight) What football team do I like? We didn’t even officially start the seder until 9pm.
We ended the evening in a huge circle dancing to Shana Haba B’Yerushalayim, Next Year in Jerusalem, fully aware that the participants of the seder were not sure where were they going to live next week, let alone next year.
Creating these Seders was only possible thanks to incredible support from more than eighty donors, Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Jonathan and Natalie Gerber, Shayna at Pico Shul, the JDC , the Jewish Community in Warsaw, HaMachanot HaAliyah volunteers, the staff at Hotel Ilan. And my cousin Michal in Tel Aviv who went shopping with Shlomo for hours. And maybe other people who donated food, supplies and suitcases in LA — We are grateful for everyone’s help and assistance. It was a global effort.
Chag Sameach!
In the next newsletter I will write about our visits to refugee centers in Eastern Poland, the Medyka border crossing to Ukraine, the men driving an ambulance to donate in Kyiv, and about efforts in Krakow to aid refugees and much more.
