Wishing all the members of the tribe (and more specifically those I am related to) a very Happy Pesach and, as always, a very happy sponge-cake-filled birthday to my cousin Steven! Passover is my favorite holiday of the year and I am very sad to be missing it for only the second time in 23 years. Even when I was living in Madison, and Seder fell in the middle of the week, I always decided it was more important than school and made the trek back to Buffalo Grove to be at the Albun/Rapoport Seders. Nothing, ever, in the world, can beat at Albun/Rap Seder, which have, over the years, included such crowd favorites as: a kids table comprised entirely of those over 20 years old, a Wrestling Buddie dressed as Pharoh, my mother having to eat from doll sized cutlery, rousing renditions of Chad-gad-ya, froggie name tags, English/Hebrew/Spanish translations, a wide array of David Rap supplementary materials, family rounds of Slivovitz, and many a Rose Albun toast. If you think your Seder is better than mine talk to Logan (my college wifee) who has for the last few years attended both nights, and can attest to their glory.
In order to fill some of the void caused by missing my favorite time of the year, Monday night I ditched out of school a little early, in order to ride up to Seoul and participate in the Chabad-Seoul Seder.
Yeah, you read that correctly. Chabad is in the house, even in the ROK.
So, Monday after school, I met up with a few fellow MOT-NET's and enjoyed a few hours worth of Chabadness. As I have only attended Mendel and Henya's most wonderful UW-Chabad House, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the seder. At the end of the night (and by that i mean at 10pm when I left 10 minutes into the festive meal in order to make it on the last subway) I decided the following. I really appreciate Mendel and Henya for their amazing kindness and open minds to those students from all religious backgrounds. You rock my socks. I also really appreciated the traveling Rabbi who led the Seder and came off as somewhat of an evangelical-lubaviture due to an excess of passover excitement. He included just enough awkward-dad-jokes (no digs at Carl, just "dad jokes" in general) to make me feel like I was getting the bit of silliness I require in a Seder. He also taught me that when you drink each of the four cups of wine you are supposed to (and this is a direct quote) "Fill the glass as high as you can, almost to the top, and drink the entire glass at once while leaning to the left." Chugging wine isn't exactly my style, but (whatever you have to say about Orthodox Jews) they, like the Korean's, do not mess around.
I did not and do not appreciate all aspects of ultra orthodox Judaism; but, then again, that's why I am not Orthodox. At the end of the day was it anywhere near Albun/Rap caliber? Obviously not. Am I glad I went? Definitely.
As Passover also marks the onset of Spring (though I hear the Midwest is trying to prove otherwise) I will include another set of favorites in this post. The following are a few (or rather a lot) of my favorite pictures from the last few weekends documenting the waves of cherry blossoms that overtake Korea each Spring.
The blossoms last about a month and a really only in full form for a week or too. For many, they mark the official start of Spring and are a reason to throw off those winter coats head out to your festival location of choice and enjoy the beautiful effect with ten's of thousands of your countrymen. And OBVIOUSLY we must take advantage of the ample opportunity for glamor shots. Why wouldn't we?
חג פסח שמח
Anyeong[hikheseyo].
에밀리
