Every year, a young religious couple volunteers to lead the seder. When they invite “all who are hungry and all who are needy” to come in a join the seder, they aren’t fooling around.
Many of the guests each year are victims of Passover-cleaning, a mania in Israel. Men with legs broken when falling from ladders while spring-cleaning hobble in from orthopedics. Patients with stomachaches from eating leftovers in the back of the refrigerator take their seats. A couple of poor souls with burns from kashering stoves with blowtorches always turn up.
Birthrates actually increase in Jerusalem at Pesach time, induced by pregnant women working too hard. At every Passover seder at Hadassah Hospital, there are always women in labor and those who have just delivered.
Doctors and nurses, lab technicians and anyone else who is on duty join patients.
“There’s plenty of room for wheelchairs, but we draw the line at gurneys, although there is a mitzvah of reclining at the seder meal,” said Rabbi Jacob Rakovsky, Hadassah Medical Organization’s full-time rabbi.
Those who can’t be rolled in get individualized seder plates at their bedsides. An anonymous donor donates all the seder food.
“Many of our patients are on special diets, and can’t drink four cups of wine and eat so much matzah,” said Rakovsky. “We do the best we can.”
The Four Questions are assigned at the last moment. The youngest might be a child from Hadassah’s Mother and Child Pavilion.
Latecomers sometimes arrive by ambulance.
If you’re stuck at a hospital, why is this called “the Good Luck Seder?”
“There’s a belief that there’s a sgulah (lucky omen) in leading this seder,” said Rakovsky. “Any couple that has done the mitzvah of leading the seder at the hospital has been blessed that year with a baby. Any single person who has helped has quickly found a mate. That’s why we have a waiting list of young people eager to spend seder night in the hospital.”