F Train to Paris

In which a Jewish family from Brooklyn moves to Paris, France for two years of work, school, and adventures.

Passover is coming. E. and I walk down the street singing the "Mah Nishtanah" at the top of our lungs, preparing him to sing it solo at the Seder. Today the kids and I lugged two shopping carts full of kosher wine, egg matzoh, and other Passover products home from Keter David, our local kosher store. The kitchen is spotless--the counters completely cleared, the fridge empty--and we will eat out every night between now and Friday to keep it that way.

Last year we took the easy way out and went away for  Passover. Taking advantage of proximity (a four-hour flight from Paris instead of a ten-hour flight from NY), we went to Israel, where we had a fabulous time at a hotel in Tiberias with my sister and her family, who did come all the way from NY. We traveled all over the Galil and Golan, circumnavigated the Kinneret, and then went south to Jerusalem for a few days. We ended our trip by spending Shabbat with my stepsister and her family, who live in a town called Oranit. I polished up my rusty Hebrew; only a few French words sneaked into my sentences. It was the first trip to Israel for the older children, and Ralph's first visit since 1987. (E. and I had gone to Oranit for a bat mitzvah a few months before.) We had a blast.

But this year, we decided to stay home. Hey, I didn't shlep my Pesach dishes to Paris for nothing--we're using them! We're hosting both Seders at our house, and friends from NY are arriving on Thursday. For the past two weeks, I've done virtually nothing but think about, shop for, plan for, and obsess about Pesach. (And now you know why I haven't been blogging. My son the poet has been picking up the slack.)

Well, that's not quite true. Somehow, despite all the Pesach preparations, I've managed to squeeze in two cooking classes and a few museum visits. If you're in Paris, I recommend the Matisse exhibit at Luxembourg and the Francis Bacon exhibit at the Picasso Museum.  I tried out a new cooking school, L'Atelier des Chefs, where classes are totally in French, which was challenging but wonderful. They offer an hourlong class in which you make a main course and a dessert--in this case, it was a salmon and asparagus preparation, followed by a fruit crumble that I've already replicated at home.

Tonight, after we get home from dinner at the Italian restaurant around the corner, I will light a yahrzeit candle in memory of my mother, who died fourteen years ago just a few days before Pesach. Her mother, too, died just before Pesach, and that concurrence made the holiday especially difficult for her. As a child I never understood why she seemed to hate Pesach; when I got older I realized there was more to her feelings about it than just resentment of the tremendous amount of work. The proximity of her death to Pesach hasn't wrecked the holiday for me, but has made these days leading up to it so poignant. As I shop and clean, as I cook the meals and set the Seder table, I feel so close to her. As it says on her gravestone, she was wonderful. I miss her.

posted by: pariskleinmans at 17:41 | link | comments (1) |

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#1  23 April 2005 - 06:31

 

Hope you have a wonderful Passover. Your trip to Israel last year sounds great. I really hope to get there one day.

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