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Scallion fights, soft matzo and other Passover traditions live on around the world
Indian Jews smear animal blood on their doors. Ethiopian Jews gorge on chickpeas. Iraqis dump wine after the meal. And matzo might be soft and squishy, depending on where in the world the recipe hails from.
Adapting Passover to the cultures and conditions of the places where they lived is a practice Jews have sustained for centuries around the globe. Today, even as many of these communities live far from their countries of origin, these regional traditions continue in the diaspora. Here are some of them.
India: Blood on the door, rice in the tandoor
On Passover in India, members of the Bene Israel community mark their doorposts with blood.
Traditionally, families slaughtered cows or goats and pressed bloody handprints onto their homes, echoing the biblical commandment in the Exodus story. While some Indian Jews continue that tradition, it has adapted over the 20th century. Today, a kosher butcher in Mumbai saves papers stained with the blood of animals he ritualistically slaughters and distributes them to community members so they can continue the tradition.
“It’s the commandment to put the blood on the door,” said Yael Jhirad, a Mumbai-based member of the Bene Israel community, who called the practice a “hallmark” of their tradition.
For Indian Jews, the food eaten during Passover looks entirely different than the usual fare, Jhirad said. Bene Israel Jews avoid dried spices, a staple of Indian cooking, out of concern that they may contain chametz, the leavened grain products forbidden during Passover, which can result from even small amounts of fermentation.
Rice flour is also central to Indian Passover traditions. Until the modern era of commercial food manufacturing, its preparation was labor-intensive: A month before the holiday, rice would be washed, dried in the sun and ground in mills used exclusively by the Jewish community to avoid contamination. Women gathered for weeks to prepare the milled rice, eventually turning it into flatbread. Before gas stoves, families even constructed clay tandoor ovens specifically for Passover.
Today, only about 3,500 Jews remain in India, most of them in Mumbai. Many now celebrate at communal Seders held at the city’s five active synagogues. “It becomes a great way to meet the community and be together,” Jhirad said.
Ethiopia and Yemen: A Passover time capsule
Because Jews in Ethiopia and Yemen were geographically isolated for centuries, many of their Passover traditions developed with little outside influence.
Ethiopian Jews, known as Beta Israel, practice a form of Judaism rooted primarily in the Torah, without later rabbinic additions. Because of this, they do not traditionally use a Haggadah to tell the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt. Instead, in Ethiopia, the Jewish community gathers outside the local synagogue on Passover to hear the story of the Exodus recited by religious leaders known as kesim. Today, Ethiopia is considered to be home to the largest Seder in the world, where 4,000 Jews congregate in Gondar, Ethiopia, to hear the Passover story told.
According to Brhan Leibman Worku, an Ethiopian Jew who lives with her family in Israel, preparation for the holiday in Ethiopia takes around three weeks. Many fast before the holiday and immerse themselves in water, often at a nearby river, to “enter the holiday with a sense of purity and intention,” and “become spiritually ready to receive freedom.”
Before the holiday begins, Worku said Ethiopian Jews consume a strict diet of chickpeas, which, in Ethiopian Jewish custom, were thought to purify the gut and digestive system.
Ethiopian Jews maintained the biblical tradition of animal sacrifice during Passover. But when many immigrated to Israel in the 1980s and encountered rabbinic Judaism, Worku said, Ethiopian Jews were shocked that other Jewish communities no longer practiced the custom. “They were like, we’ve been doing this for thousands of years,” she said.
Today, approximately 13,000 Jews remain in Ethiopia, with most having immigrated to Israel. Many of Israel’s 150,000 Ethiopian Jewish citizens purchase and share a cow or sheep between several families to eat during the holiday to commemorate that earlier practice.
Ethiopian matzo also differs from the crisp, cracker-like version familiar to many Jews and was instead baked fresh daily to maintain a soft texture. In Ethiopia, only post-menopausal women prepared it, a practice tied to concerns about ritual purity. That tradition is still kept by many Ethiopian Jewish women in the diaspora.
In Yemenite communities, too, matzo is soft, warm and flexible, resembling a laffa bread. It is traditionally mixed, shaped and baked in clay ovens, all in under 18 minutes to ensure kashrut. ”In Yemen, the community did not settle for pre-holiday baking; instead, they insisted on baking fresh matzo every single day of the festival,” said Shai Naggar, an expert on Yemenite Jewry. The Yemenite matzo is said to be most similar to what the Israelites might have eaten during their escape from Egypt.
Yemenite Jews do not use a formal Seder plate; instead, the entire table becomes one large display, with greens arranged around the edges and symbolic foods placed at the center. The Haggadah, which arrived in Yemen 350 years ago, is not read in turns but “recited in a loud, communal chant by all participants,” according to Naggar.
The only solo of the night comes when the youngest child recounts the story of Exodus in Judeo-Arabic: “Ma Khabar Hadha Al-Laylah” — “What is the story of this night?” It is often told through folk tales, one of which is “the story of an Egyptian elderly woman whose dough-made idol was eaten by a dog.” It is intended, said Naggar, to illustrate the futility of idols.
Iraq: an Seder in Arabic
While only three Jews remain in Iraq today, Iraqi Passover traditions continue in the diaspora — often in Arabic.
Iraqi Haggadot frequently include Hebrew text alongside translation and commentary in Judeo-Arabic. “In the old times, the women and children didn’t know Hebrew or Aramaic,” said Lily Shor, an Iraqi Jew. “So they translated it into Arabic for them to understand.” Several of the songs in an Iraqi seder are also sung in Iraqi Judeo-Arabic, an endangered language only spoken natively by 6,000 people in the world, including “Ha Lachma Anya” (“This is the bread of affliction”).
Unlike many Ashkenazi Seders, where fingers are dipped into wine and then back on plates to symbolize the plagues, Iraqi families pour the wine from one cup to another and then discard it outside the home — sometimes down the street — to ensure the plagues remain far away. Children are told to close their mouths during the recitation, and the food on the table is covered, all to ward off bad luck.
At the end of Passover, Iraqi Jews traditionally ventured out into wheat fields, placing the green stalks over their shoulders, eating them, and blessing one another with “santak khdhra” (a green year) to call in a prosperous year ahead. “I still remember the taste,” said Shor, who continues the tradition today with her family in Israel, using myrtle branches instead of wheat. Many diaspora families use leafy greens to continue the tradition as well.
Moroccan Jews go out with a bang
For Moroccan Jews — most of whom now live outside Morocco, especially in Israel — one of the most distinctive celebrations comes at the moment the holiday ends, known as Mimouna.
In Morocco, Muslims and Jews came together to close out the holiday together. Because Jews had no flour or other chametz ingredients in their homes as the holiday ended, Muslim neighbors would bring over chametz-filled ingredients for their Jewish neighbors to cook with. Joseph Pool, a Moroccan Jew, recalled his Rabat-born grandparents describing Muslim neighbors bringing over “fresh flour, fresh butter, fresh eggs, and the Jewish neighbors would make traditional pancakes and sweets. You would go from house to house, enjoying the food.”
Now in the diaspora, Moroccan Jews continue the Mimouna celebration by hosting parties to commemorate the holiday’s end. Traditional Moroccan dance music is played, and an anise-flavored Middle Eastern spirit called Arak is served along with an assortment of fried Moroccan treats. “Moufleta,” a yeasted pancake drenched in butter and honey, and “sfenj,” a Moroccan-style sugar-covered fritter, are classic Mimouna desserts.
The Persian seder gets physical
In Persian Jewish households, the Seder takes a physical turn.
During Dayenu, family members hit one another with bunches of scallions and herbs, symbolizing the whips used during slavery in Egypt. “All of the courtesy and politeness of Persian culture is washed away,” said Tannaz Sassooni, an Iranian Jew who lives in LA. “Grandkids go at their grandparents, parents get their aggressions out on their kids, cousins, aunties, everyone gets into it.”
The origins of the custom are unclear, though some suggest it may stem from the abundance of greens and herbs in Persian cuisine.
Many Persian Jews also refrain from eating dairy during Passover out of an abundance of caution that it may have been contaminated with chametz, since dairy products in Iran were often handled by non-Jews. At the end of the holiday, known as Shab-e Sal, families celebrate with a dairy-rich meal, including yogurt dishes and a cold rice porridge.
For Sassooni, the tradition remains deeply personal — a reminder that in the diaspora, Passover customs are preserved even when the conditions that shaped them no longer apply. When she once asked her mother why they continued avoiding dairy in the United States, where kosher dairy options are readily available, her mother became emotional. “Because that’s what my dad did,” she said, teary-eyed.
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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