Pesach in Christchurch

I am sitting on my bed right now (my flatmates have decided to adopt a cat they found outside - brilliant!) letting a stomach full of matzah ball soup digest. Not quite my grandma's recipe, but quite decent all the same!


I did two seders this year - the first night at the Chabad House and the second night at the local synagogue. Now, a warning: for those of you unlucky enough not to be Jewish, you might not get all this. So, back to the story. The first night, of course, has all the local families doing their own seders, so I, without a family (insert dramatic sigh here) went to the local Chabad house, not without quite a bit of trepidation. You see, Chabadniks can be the Jewish equivalent of those college kids who join the campus police department to give out parking tickets because they really feel, deep down inside, that parking scofflaws are the scum of the earth. Okay, it's a stretch. In any case, I had little to fear, because the Chabad in Christchurch serves more as a community centre (as there is nothing of that sort here) so they tone down the proselytizing. The seder was mobbed - they spent a good half hour at the beginning rearranging the room so the 80-100 people present could all have a seat. I'd say the room was probably 2/3rds full of Israelis, who are culturally Jewish but not so much religiously. The whole thing was quite chaotic, with that many people and so little room. The Chabadniks tried to do the service a bit in English, but the Haggadahs were all Hebrew and with so many native Hebrew speakers in the room, it was almost hopeless. I had an Israeli family on side of me - the son and daughter-in-law had moved up to the Northland above Auckland a couple years back and the mother and father were in town visiting. On my left was Karen, who was on a working holiday from Chile and spoke as much Hebrew as I (none) and on my right some other Israelis that didn't introduce themselves. It was a good night in spite of the chaos, and I ended up staying there until 1am, helping clean up at the end. Would I go back? Well, not unless I have no choice, but I didn't so it did the trick. It was nice to see so much Judaism at once in Christchurch - even if the bulk of it was imported from Israel on tourist visas and not particularly religious - because this city really is homogenously white and Anglican.

That's all I have time for now. Part two will be later...