Chicken Bone?

Tonight ends the week-long observance of Pesach (Passover). It started with the Seder. My roommate who is also studying abroad did not have a Seder to attend (read as - she did not want to go to her extended family's Seder), so we decided that we would have our own Seder. She told us the 5 things we needed for the Seder plate: Boiled egg, Maror, Parsley, Apples and Walnuts, and a Chicken bone. Each item is symbolic.

So two of us ventured to the shuk that morning to gather our supplies for dinner and the plate. Although this is a little embarrassing to admit, we didn't know exactly which herb was parsley, so we asked the man at the stand. Since we were there we asked him what Maror was, and he pointed to something that looked like the heart of a cabbage - so we got it. Neither of us wanted to carry around a chicken bone for the day, so we decided we would figure that out later. Oh, and we were told to get wine, since during the ceremony each person is supposed to drink 4 glasses of wine. So we got sweet white wine - the only kind either of us actually likes - and only one bottle, because we didn't want to pay for two.

When we brought back our supplies we got an hysterical laugh from my roommate. Apparently by Maror she meant horseradish sauce. How were we supposed to know? And the wine is supposed to be red, because it symbolizes blood. We decided that the wine could symbolize the platelets part of blood instead. While preparing the plate I realized that we never did figure out that chicken bone thing. So I grabbed a carrot, broke it in half, and decided that kind of resembled a chicken bone. We cooked the dinner and were ready to go.

We did the whole ceremony, except drinking 4 gulps of wine instead of the 4 glasses as to not run out. There was a moment during the reading of the Haggadah when everyone is supposed to look at the chicken bone - so we looked at the carrot.

After the proceedings there were songs that were put to popular tunes with lyrics specific to Passover. They were hilarious and we sang them loud and boisterously with our oh-so-beautiful voices. It was a great time, albeit it makeshift.


It should be noted that while writing this blog post I decided to look up Maror. Turns out we were right!