There's No Seder Like Our Seder...

I went to a women's Seder a couple of days ago and thought I'd tell you how I found it. I'm not Jewish but  BBF's mother is (he's an armchair Jew) and she organises this event each year.

Although this is not my heritage, I wanted to come along to see what happened - plus I heard there was quite a lot of cake and other baked goods made without flour! A Seder is a ritual feast to commence the starting of Passover and the telling of the story of the Israelites liberation from slavery in Egypt, but It's very rare to have a Women's Seder (pronounced Sayder) as the story is always told by men about the boys and men.

The evening was 5 hours long but it didn't feel like it; we ate symbolic food, drank wine and slouched to show that we were free! There were about 40 women of all ages (not all were Jewish) and we took turn to read paragraphs around the group explaining what the Seder was about and the retelling of the story.

It all took place in this gorgeous round building on the University of Sussex Campus, with cherry trees in blossom outside and the evening sun shining through onto us - it was a really lovely experience. I'm an Atheist but I actually felt quite envious of these people who had a shared story of their past and came together to remember what happened and celebrate their freedom. It wasn't overly religious and was more about community and remembrance.

We (they) sang some songs throughout the evening - the ones at the end were rehashed from songs like Leaving on a Jet Plane and There's no Business Like Show Business which was pretty fun. But there was a song at the start about the 4 questions which sounded so sad that I had to pull myself together to stop crying; but the Goodbye song at the end finished me off. Those Jews have some VERY sad-sounding songs and I actually burst into tears at the Shalom song.

I cry at Auld Lang Syne anyway but I think it was the key rather than the words as they were in Hebrew! I was pretty embarrassed but nobody seemed to mind. I made some coconut pyramids which went down a storm and I had a really good evening. BBF's Mum seemed really pleased that I came along and I'd definitely go again - and next year I won't be caught out by the sad songs hopefully!