Though Catholic high school student Taylor Eigsti was attending his first seder, he sounded like a seasoned pro when it came to avoiding leafy green vegetables.
“I’m allergic to parsley,” he said as he balked at dipping a sprig of it in a bowl of saltwater.
But sampling something new was part of the lesson plan for Eigsti and 70 other Catholic students who ventured to San Francisco’s Congregation Sherith Israel last week for a tour and traditional Passover seder.
The meal for Catholic teens was sponsored by the Catholic Jewish Educational Enrichment Program (C-JEEP), a project that works to increase mutual respect between Jews and Catholics. C-JEEP is run by the American Jewish Committee and the archdioceses of San Francisco and several other major cities nationwide.
“It’s different, very different. I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” said Kayti Sullivan, a freshman at Woodside Priory School in Portola Valley. Though Sullivan was talking about the zingy flavor of the pink horseradish she’d just sampled, her comments could have applied to how everyone slouched in their chairs, intentionally splattered grape juice on their plates and sang Passover songs to such tunes as “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and “My Darling Clementine.”
Classmate Trent Larsen said, “I’ve never eaten a meal in order. I’ve always just eaten whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.”
Besides dipping parsley, tasting charoset and guzzling down pitcher after pitcher of juice, the teens sang “Go Down Moses!” recited the 10 plagues and followed along in a service led by Rabbi Bridget Wynne.
Wynne talked about the plight of ancient Israelites and asked the students to think of modern people who are enslaved. The teens came up with plenty of answers: Tibetans, people in Kosovo, the Untouchables in India and the homeless.
“We look at matzah and think about history and also about people today who are in kind of a similar situation,” Wynne said.
The Catholic students already were familiar with the story of Exodus, answering in just two tries the number of years (about 400) that the Israelites were enslaved. One male student knew right off that Moses had led his people to freedom.
As for plagues, “They had like killer bees,” a female student answered before correcting herself. “Not bees, like locusts.”
Tom Webb, who teaches Hebrew Scriptures at Woodside Priory, considered the field trip invaluable for his students. Besides teaching a story from the Hebrew Bible, “it’s also going to help our students know the roots of our traditions” and create “a common bridge” between two peoples, he said.
Webb also was impressed with the “whole notion of experiencing food — we tend to consume food, not experience it.”
Student Patrick Romero liked how Jews “show the history through the meal.”
Though the seder lasted about 90 minutes, some students were amazed with how long the service went before the main course was served. “Is there any more?” a hungry Eigsti wondered after the matzah ball soup.
Matt Heintz pondered the notion that many seders go on longer than the one he was attending. At Easter, he said, his family says a prayer and eats and talks for a half hour or 45 minutes. The seder is “a long time to sit and wait.”
After a serving of chicken, mashed potatoes and vegetables, it was time to hunt for the afikomen, the hidden matzah.
“I saw a few of you making up your own afikomen,” joked Elizabeth Mizrahi, assistant director of the American Jewish Committee’s San Francisco chapter and director of the C-JEEP program. “That’s wonderful, you’ve been to seders before. But we’ve got ours marked.”
Junipero Serra High School student Max Spector found one of the two hidden pieces and raised his arms high as if he’d just caught a touchdown pass. He was rewarded with a huge chocolate bar shaped like a seder plate.
Anson Tharayanil, also a student at Junipero Serra in San Mateo, summed up the meal this way: “At first you think that Jews and Christians are really different. But there are a lot of parallels.”
As for the food, “the matzah balls are awesome,” he said. “I want to buy some.”