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Sunday, April 28, 2024

Church Parking Lots


Sunday Morning.  Late morning, just past 11AM.  For me, Passover, treated to a batch of matzoh brei for the first time this year.  Fleishig dishes completed, drying on the rack, with afternoon dedicated to washing milchig dishes.  Treadmill done.  With a break in the action, it seemed a good time to leave the house.  It being Pesach, I could not stop anywhere for coffee and really didn't feel like shopping.  I just drove, mostly the route that had become customary for my Covid lockdown escapes a few years ago.  

My route would take me mostly through a commercial area.  This being prime worship time, I opted to see which of the many churches my car would drive past had substantial numbers of cars in their lots.  Some did, some didn't.  The Catholic Church near me seemed to be doing well, the other on the main thoroughfare less well.  A Baptist church just down the road from me seemed popular.  A United Methodist Church occupying prime real estate, which I once visited regularly as a parent of the Scout Troop that they sponsored, had a parking lot proportional to its glorious building and spacious grounds.  There were cars there, but a lot of empty spaces.  Knowing the size of their sanctuary, where I have attended Scout events and concerts, I suspected their pastor would be preaching to a lot of open space, though perhaps they move their Sunday worship to a smaller room to create an impression of being more full, much like my own synagogue did.  And perhaps, some of the places I passed start their weekly worship early enough to have everyone on their way by 11AM.

This being a commercial main road, there were places with a lot of cars.  Places to eat breakfast, department stores, grocery stores.  The liquor stores on this route are all small ones and by state law would not open for another two hours.  But breakfast or acquisition of stuff seemed to attract more people than piety did.

Parking lots provide observation, though not data.  Clearly, though, the Roman Catholic Church and the Baptist Church functioned as Sunday morning destinations.  When I arrived home, I looked at the websites of places I had driven past.  11AM was indeed prime time for in-person worship.  I could even see a couple on stream, though the images focused on the pastor speaking from the pulpit without a panorama of the pews to assess attendance.  Unlike my denomination of Judaism which prohibits electronics on our Sabbath, each of these churches has an online option, so cars in a parking lot could be a misleading metric.

That said, there is considerable reliable data that church and synagogue attendance have atrophied across America, a slow attrition over decades with times of acceleration, but no times of meaningful reversal.  Retailers and restaurants, once prevented by law from being open during church times, now compete for people's presence.  My route did not take me past recreation sites like parks, golf courses, or Y's, though I could understand why people might prefer a golf cart or pool to a pew.

My route, and the observations it generated, may not be representative.  I live in an area where people have advanced degrees, engage in lucrative occupations, travel to other places a few times a year, and have the means to pay for their own amusements.  These are the people most likely to find the church less attractive than other activities they might be doing instead on their day off from what is often stressful employment.

And finally, as I browse the various websites, weekly engagement in ritual often seems less central to the congregational missions than it does for synagogues.  Nearly all have some sort of outreach agenda.  People may not be at church on a Sunday morning, but they serve in soup kitchens and distribute donated clothing to the poor.  Some engage in either evangelical activity or missionary work.  They have youth groups focused on recreation or socialization.  So even if attendance at worship disappoints the pastor, the energy of those churches may lie in other meaningful initiatives that enhance the church's fundamental purpose.  A drive past the buildings, even at prime time, does not always disclose what goes on inside the building to advance the people who affiliate with the many churches I drove past.

Friday, April 26, 2024

Coffee Downstairs

One of the curious Pesach deprivations for me has been to declare My Space chametzdig.  I never clean it.  Rarely do I eat there, but not never.  And I drink coffee in the morning and on many an afternoon a tumbler of ice to which about 50 ml of bourbon or scotch is added, then sipped while I type at my laptop.  The room is chametz.  As a result, during Pesach, I do not bring anything edible here.  I keep a special Melitta cone for the Holiday along with a fairly elegant stainless steel one-tablespoon scoop.  Filter in cone.  I bought a pack of 100 a few years ago, use maybe 15, wrap and store the rest between years.  Two scoops of commercial canned coffee in filter paper, then drip boiling water to fill a cup.  A splash of milk. Do this twice a morning.  However, I have to drink it in the kitchen.

My cell phone would get me to the internet but I leave it upstairs.  I could transport my laptop to the kitchen but table space is tight.  So I drink the coffee at the kitchen table without connection to the rest of the world, except for the radio tuned to the classical station.  To accommodate this, I've moved my morning medicines to the kitchen table to ensure full adherence.

A disruption for sure, though a petty one.  Four Pesach days are Yontif, one is Shabbos, so there are really only three days in which I am separated from my laptop while I sip coffee at the kitchen table.  My dependence on my morning habit, now well entrenched, just makes it seem more burdensome, though the rest of the year I still take morning coffee, made in the Keurig Express, to my desk, shabbos and yontif included.  The laptop stays closed, but instead I scan my whiteboard with its semi-annual projects list and my weekly initiatives to pursue those goals.  Coffee to accommodate Pesach downstairs has a different feel.  Restrained, confining.  Certainly when I travel, I also have morning coffee in a different pattern, whether at the hotel's buffet, a restaurant, or sometimes from a dispenser that I bring to my room or a public lounge.  That never registers as inferior.  Pesach coffee at the kitchen table, made without the Keurig Express generates a different experience.   A lesser one, though a temporary one.


Thursday, April 25, 2024

Claymont Library


Most of my semi-annual projects include an initiative to visit three places I've not been previously. Sometimes this entails travel, as a few days in Leesburg VA for spring break.  Sometimes places right nearby have slipped under my radar.  My home library branch needed some major construction revisions.  As a frequent user, I was directed to order my preferred books through the online reservation system but pick them up at one of two designated branches, one near my home, the other near Osher Institute and my synagogue.  My first reserve book, for which I waited about six weeks, arrived at the one near my home.  The message instructed me to pick up the book at the drive-up window, which I did.  I then parked my car, walked around their beautifully landscaped grounds, and sat on their porch while I finished the bagel with cream cheese and coffee purchased at the nearby WaWa a few minutes earlier.  I did not go inside, just drove home.

But on Pesach late afternoon, services completed, lunch a bit overeaten, computer off limits until sundown, I afforded myself a repeat visit, this time to go inside.  Despite living in my house for more than forty years, voting in the primaries just a few blocks away, and often donating to and shopping at the Goodwill outlet just blocks away, I had never been to the Claymont Branch of the New Castle County Library.  I had no reason to.  In my early years, I went to the local branch library, which was small, and occasionally to the Wilmington City Library downtown, which was much larger.  I would even sometimes drive all the way to the Morris Library at the University of Delaware, some fifteen miles away.  I had attended a meeting at the Woodlawn Branch, the other location for picking up books while my branch undergoes renovation.  But for the most part, the Brandywine Branch, greatly expanded to a campus with an adjoining park quite a few years back, has served my needs.  It became a place of escape.  While I took a few classes after retirement, mostly I would go there to browse books, read their magazines, use their computers, and sit in quiet space to outline ideas or projects.

Now I found myself at the alternate branch, Claymont.  This serves a suburb, perhaps best known for another campus, the high school alma mater of the President, where I have also only been one time to transport my daughter to her SAT site.  Despite its prestigious Catholic prep school, the town is considerably less prosperous than the neighborhood where I live.  The library, however, must have had its turn at renovation not long ago.  It sits on a small campus on a hill overlooking two ponds with professional landscaping.  While my branch serves a population of scientists, engineers, medical professionals, and lawyers, the Claymont branch's capture area serves a different group, people not often holding advanced academic degrees.  Its parking lot was ample, though smaller than my branch.  Surrounding the library was a cluster of townhomes, blocks of it, likely planned as subsidized housing, with attractive common spaces.  Despite glorious weather in the late afternoon, I saw very few people outside.

After parking my car, sitting on the library's porch a few minutes, I went inside.  The posted hours on the front window would have only given me fifteen minutes until closing that day, but with the need to absorb the users of my branch, the hours have been expanded to 8:30PM most nights, and some hours seven days a week.  It differed from my customary library in many ways.  Their front door entered into a foyer with a few chairs and the restrooms.  While my branch occupies two floors, this building has its entire collection on a single floor.  Its organization seemed similar to mine. Children's to the right, then fiction on the right, non-fiction on the left, audio-visual to the rear left.  In the back center were three tables of computers for patrons to use.  Nearly all were unoccupied.  I did not see a section for games and puzzles.  The magazines were on shelves in the far rear of the library.  The collection, both size and variety,  was far smaller than the racks at my home library.  

They did, however, have a subscription to MAD Magazine, which my branch does not.  I picked it up from the rack.  Cover price $5.99, though CHEAP in caps remains under the amount.  It now has a theme, this one the modern aspects of dating.  Spy vs Spy still appears.  Comic format had longer balloon entries than what I remember.  I found it juvenile, but my own attraction to it was when I was a juvenile.  The few pages I read seemed less funny, less witty.  I don't know the trajectory of their circulation in the fifty years since I last sought out an issue.  

Signs in various places indicated features targeted to different community segments, from a weekly Tuesday afternoon social for seniors to children's events.  I did not encounter the breadth of presentations that my home branch had, from movies to lecture series to children's activities.

I sat down on a few chairs in various places.  They seemed to have the seats placed lower than those at my home branch.  Some had swivels.  What seemed sparse were study tables and reading nooks.  There was one quiet room.  Mostly it lacked the sense of spaciousness that I had become used to.  

My library expects renovations to take a year.  Its surrogate, while pleasantly appointed, seemed less inviting a place to escape to.  Fewer private corners, fewer people milling around in central areas, far fewer magazines to browse through.

There remains a second library alternative, one farther away, but in proximity to the Osher Institute where I have occasion to drive nearly every weekday.  It is clearly more spacious, obvious on my one visit.  Its amenities await exploration.


Friday, April 19, 2024

Disruptive


Pesach has been my look forward to Holiday since I could anticipate Seder someplace other than my parents' house.  That probably takes me back to college, when my future in-laws started making room for me at their Seder.  It took very little work as a student.  Meals were provided at Hillel.  Some years, spring break would coincide with Pesach.  I never scrubbed my home, nor did I own, let alone have space for, a second set of dishes until I married.  Cleaning a kitchen nook did not take much effort. Only after I moved into my own house, then raised a family, did Pesach preparation get a bit hairy, as it remains.  Even at my peak physical condition, the boxes with designated dishes, multiple round trips to the basement, and shopping took its toll. The carpet shampooers would come a few days prior to converting the house, so worldly goods needed relocation.  First Seder took place at my mother-in-law's, where she did the preparation until her physical capacity could no longer sustain this.  I had a small second Seder at my house, mostly for my own household.  For a few years, we had a Seder caterer arranged by my in-laws.  And I worked on Yontif through retirement. 

Some tasks always fell to me.  Cleaning the refrigerator, shopping, and preparing most of the meals along with toting boxes.  The kids helped, but not that much.  I always enjoyed meal preparation.  Eventually, the Seder preparation fell to me.  I would design the menu, prepare the food, place it in containers, then transport it to my in-laws.  Once my mother-in-law passed, leaving my sister-in-law as the sole occupant, it made for better efficiency and less stress on me to relocate the First Seder to my dining room, where it takes place now.  

And as empty nesters, I may not give the kids their due credit for their contribution.  

The tasks are mostly the same, but I notice them more as my physical capacity has followed an age trajectory.  I still make menus, prepare food, shop for ingredients, share in the round trip transport of my sister-in-law and wash dishes.  In retirement, some other tasks have made an appearance. I have no excuse to skip shul, which means I am a convenient Torah reader for one of the days.  I cannot just assemble lunch as the house gets cleaned.  It takes an effort to use up what has been accumulated, partly to avoid waste, partly to create room in the refrigerator and freezer.  By the final two days, if done well, food has been depleted.  I rarely eat lunch outside the home, if I eat lunch at all.  Now it seems a necessity to have one meal at a restaurant for each of the three days prior to Seder.  

There are some things that I've not had to do in a while.  My need for dishes, utensils, and appliances has long since passed.  Pesach's frequent overlap with Easter season most years invites stores to discount clothing.  I now only wear dress clothing to synagogue a few times a month, have given much of it away, and really do not need anything of a casual nature either.  On April 10 each year I put the cold weather clothing to storage and t-shirts and shorts to bins in my bedroom.  Some years Pesach is long-sleeve, sometimes short sleeve.  My birthday falls into that season.  Just my wife and me and some phone calls to mark the occasion.  Dinner sometimes modified for Pesach.  

With three days to Seder this year, a late date on the American calendar due to leap year on the Hebrew calendar, I find myself on schedule.  Shopping done except for a few produce items.  Start defrosting meat tomorrow.  Carpets cleaned.  Began moving Chametz utensils and appliances to the basement.  Have enough clothing to get me through the Holiday without doing more laundry in advance.  Mainly cleaning the refrigerator, transporting boxes, washing Pesach dishes as soon as my wife completes the tasks for kitchen conversion, then spend most of Monday afternoon cooking for the Seder.  A disruption of routine, but a purposeful one with a gratifying outcome.

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Cluttered Garage

A few years back, my wife decided she would like to keep her car in our two-car garage over the winters.  She cleared enough room on the left half to store her car.  It remains drivable with only a small need to move a few things to the opposite side each fall.  The perimeter and right half of the garage have Stuff.  Lotsa Stuff.  Some of it is very useful.  There is a ladder that will get me to the upper roof of our house, though I think I'm past the age where that can be done safely.  I used the wooden step ladder to change a bulb in the garage.  Over the years I stored my briefcases and attaché cases there.  I harvested them this spring and relocated them upstairs, finding in the process one of my fondest purchases, a leather attorney's briefcase rarely used but still with two pens in its pen holder.  It now sits next to my desk, likely to remain unused, mostly obsolete but probably with enough interior space to hold a laptop and charger.  

Over decades I bought stuff that I thought I would use.  A large whiteboard for my office, never installed, but not taking up that much space when stored vertically.  My barbecues are mostly unrestorable.  Lawnmowers are all broken except the push reel mower that takes little room on a rack.  My many bicycles have sentimental value, particularly the blue 24" Schwinn 3-speed that my grandfather bought me for my 11th birthday.  I had it restored a number of years ago.  It still rides.  The kid's bikes and my 26" 10-speed racer with the curved handlebars are better donated, though they take up little room at the perimeter of the garage.  I once bought a bicycle carrier that installs in the trunk, on the remote chance that I might like to ride in a park.  It's still in its original box.  My Schwinn will fit in the car's back seat where it seems more secure than hooked to an external car rack.

So start with the easy decluttering, maybe.  Cardboard boxes far in excess of what I can use.  Break them down, put them outside for the next recycling collection. Not as easy as it looked.  Have to get to them by moving or stepping over other things.  Many have stuff in them, from foam packing peanuts, to foam inserts that held the original contents stationary.  And big boxes have little boxes inside with no floor space added until the big box gets recycled.

I have paint cans that go with hazardous waste.  Have no idea where the many tires would find their final home.  Children's furniture. Children's books.  Athletic equipment that will never be used again.  Residual curtain rods, external shutters, trash bins from companies that no longer pick up our trash.  Nothing is really that easy to clear.

Across the street sits a king-size dumpster, the final one after two previous ones have been filled, then carted away.  Our neighbor, who I really never got to know, expired at age 95, having been widowed for ten years.  His worldly goods filled dumpsters, with the onus of clearing all that stuff falling to his surviving children.  My garage project is much less than that.  I really don't want it to default that way.


Sunday, April 14, 2024

Planting Season


Unlikely to get more frost, so spring gardening approaches.  I did rather well this winter.  Having made a decision last year that vegetables go in the ground in the backyard, while culinary herbs grow in pots outside my front door and in my living room, some of my culinary crop survived.  I have a decent stem of rosemary, a somewhat straggly stem of sage, and a pot of spearmint that has begun its annual recurrence.  In the three chia pots, parsley has big leaves, though not that many.  Chives have been straggly, while basil underperformed previous chia attempts.  The hydroponic aerogarden's dill has overflowed and oregano grows abundantly.  Cilantro was a dud on two attempts.  Sage has sprouted from seed.  Chives has only a few leaves but probably enough for a sandwich.  Basil planted indoors did not sprout, probably due to excessively soggy soil.  Pot put outside to dry a bit, and I have plenty of fresh seeds for a do-over, or to plant basil in a different pot and use the soggy one for something else.

While different plants have different optimal direct in-ground times to plant seeds or transplant vegetables grown from seeds indoors, for my region, the weeks between Passover and Mother's Day seem the calendar's sweet spot.  My pot collection exceeds what I really want to plant.  Moreover, each year Shop-Rite sells discounted flourishing basil, chives, and parsley in containers that I can simply transplant to larger containers all ready for harvest.  I must choose primarily which herbs I want to grow, then enrich the soil, plant the seeds, and label what I have planted in each pot or subsection of a larger pot.

The backyard poses more of a challenge.  I've been formatting the vegetables in the manner of a Square Foot Garden, mostly with disappointing results.  I also have an accessory area that I misjudged trying to plant beets and carrots.  Basically, I have few weed problems because the landscaper many years ago installed weedblock cloth in the defined beds.  My two 4x4 foot beds will generate 32 squares.  The weedblock layer, however, limits my ability to grow root vegetables, despite a previous attempt to make the soil thicker.  Moreover, tomatoes grown from small pots purchased at a top nursery overtake the square allotted to them.  They grow leaves and stems that exceed the ability of my plastic stakes to maintain them upright.  It does not help, that the weedblock layer makes it difficult to insert the supporting stakes as deeply as I might like.  The abundance of green and paucity of fruit suggests that the nutrient mix needs to be better.  Since tomatoes are one of the reliable plants that always taste better from my garden than what the supermarket, or even farmer's market can offer, this gets priority.  I think I will only grow two plants this year, allotting each two square feet, and supporting with cages instead of stakes.  Eggplant and peppers also never reach their potential when grown from nursery pots.  Peppers are easily obtainable at the supermarket, but eggplant more expensive.  My bok choy and lettuce never produce.  Swiss chard is iffy.  Green beans sprout, but the harvest is difficult.  Maybe four squares this year, and a different four than previous years.  Vining plants like cucumber and squash often do well.  Since they need room to spread out, they can only be planted at the outer squares of the grid, but they often produce a very gratifying yield.  This may be the place for that accessory planting portion separate from the 4x4 grid, or maybe even a reason to use a linear rather than grid format for this year's vegetable garden..

Then, once I know what to plant, I need to get the seeds or shoots.  Many of my seed packets are quite old.  I should get some fresh packets.  The best price on seedlings is always Home Depot on sale or the local nursery.  I've priced seeds several places.  I prefer the local hardware store, not because they are better seeds or better value, but because I am grateful for the many times they made it easy to get the home maintenance items I needed in a trouble-free way.  I can spend a little more for loyalty, but I also need selection.  The best prices on seeds seem to be Walmart.  Target sells Burpee for slightly more, but it's a good deal closer than Walmart.  Lowe's seemed expensive.  Home Depot is out of the way, worth it for plants, not for seeds.

So it seems best to invest the week before Passover and Chol HaMoed on planning.  What to plant, herbs and vegetables, which squares or even whether to continue this Square Foot format.  The soil will need to be enriched, so a few packages of organic soil enricher, maybe get a soil test, maybe consider some chemical additives.  Buy a couple of tomato cages.  Then mark and plant and set a maintenance schedule.  Indoor went well this winter.  No insurmountable obstacles to duplicating a reasonable herb and vegetable yield outdoors this season.




Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Pesach Shopping


Specialty foods selected, about $160 worth.  Not yet including dairy which has not yet been certified, eggs which Pesach recipes require in abundance, and produce which has a short shelf life.

For a few weeks I have been poring over recipes, some sorted by internet, others from my considerable cookbook collection.  Only two big menus to prepare, the Sedarim which have roughly the same dishes each night, and shabbos Pesach, the times when guests join us.  For all the effort, though, it is the availability of products and pricing that drive the final menu.  Matzoh boxes have become shrinkflation, sold in four pound instead of five pound boxes.  Still discounted, 50 cents for each one pound box after the coupon.  Five pound boxes still exist, but their discount plays out at 80 cents a pound.  I don't think I ever use more than four pounds during the Festival.  Oils are outrageous.  Even EVOO which does not require special certification no longer has discounted brands on the Shop-Rite shelves.  Dates were reduced in price, so I could make Sephardic charoset this year, or maybe both my apple and date varieties.  Turkey half breasts reduced so that becomes the Seder entrée.  Almonds and walnuts purchased.  Nut torte for desserts. Dried apricots too expensive and I did not see Sunsweet prunes so tzimmes for shabbos Pesach will need to be reconsidered.  Jarred gefilte fish unreasonable.  Frozen loaves are a better buy and taste better.  I got two loaves of different brands.  Did not get jarred horseradish.  I think I will grate my own this year, unless I have an unopened jar from last year.  Found a shank bone.  They used to give one to each customer.  Now $4.  I have a turkey neck in the freezer since Thanksgiving, but I really like to have the shank bone on my Seder Plate.   Overlooked chicken leg quarters which are on sale and I need for making soup.  Go back for those, but room in the freezer is currently a bit tight.  Matzoh meal in big package.  I use it all through the year, and it is discounted now.  One jar of fig jam, discounted.  And once a year I buy the evil soda, the bottles with the yellow cap indicating sweetened with cane sugar.  Dr. Brown's a better buy than Coke or Pepsi.  And seltzer, some plain, some flavored.  Mix the plain with wine.  There are many processed foods now, candies, and jellies.  This is the only time of the year when I can get kosher marshmallows, not just with a kosher gelling agent but kitniyot-free for Pesach.  Can't beat that.  And canned orange segments brighten the salads.  I make my own dressings.  Would not even consider Passover cereal, though my family got it as a kid.  And no advantage to matzoh ball or latkes mix.  So my only serious omission was overlooking the chicken parts for soup, which can be purchased later.

A friend plans to shop for her Pesach needs in a larger Jewish town, either at a kosher megamart in Baltimore or a smaller one in South Jersey.  I share her impression that the local offerings have waned a bit since the pandemic.  But I have enough for all meals I need to prepare during the eight restricted ingredient days.  Get chicken parts later.  Dairy gets its certification a few days before holiday.  Trader Joe's has the best price on eggs each year.   And they have premium beef.  And produce at Sprouts or Super G is usually of better quality than what Shop-Rite offers, though priced a bit higher.

A few days off from the markets now that I have most of what I need, then complete the project in the coming week.

Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Anti-Semitism from Afar



My introduction to the thoroughly inhumane attacks by a planned initiative from a Gaza militia on Israeli civilians came as an announcement from our Rabbi as we davened shacharit on Simchat Torah, a day in which traditional Jews keep the electronics turned off.  In the ensuing six months, the responses from around the world, and many places in America where American Jews have been thoroughly engaged for some three generations, have made this an inflection point.  A Sentinel Event for sure.  A Never Event, probably.  Hostility to Israel, the one place in the world that accepts Jews in political distress and offers us sovereignty, has always been an undertone of political discussion.  It is no longer an undertone.  In America, we have political displacement as those chronically uneasy affiliations with the minority communities sink with a predictable mutual detriment.  I find opportunists only too eager to flip the majority Jewish vote a generation after the white wage-earner vote was flipped. 

Within the Jewish community, I read essays by Jews on the political right too eager to purge their organizations of individuals who challenge their hardball pro-Israel and intersected politically conservative agenda.  They seem totally oblivious to a certain reality that the people they wish to evict from their Jewish circles may be the people they need to support nursing homes, Hebrew Schools, and a campus presence.  They've made certain Jews expendable by ideology.

Amid this, some people gifted with that blend of knowledge, experience, saichel, and the ability to craft paragraphs that flow from one to another have brought upper-tier analysis to the forefront.  Two seminal essays appeared in The Atlantic, both rather lengthy but I read each in their entirety.  A response of somewhat lesser length appeared in The Forward.  Several years ago, I decided to add two subscriptions as a semi-annual initiative.  I selected The Atlantic and The Forward.  Good decisions, renewed each year since.

Since the response in The Forward incorporates the other two, and takes a very different position on how American Jews should best grapple with the many dilemmas and uncertainties of where we find ourselves, I add my own comments to that essay.  And while anti-Semitism has become more publicly explicit, my own personal exposure has been mostly from afar.  Shuls have more visible security, but that predated the Gaza attacks.  And the synagogue where I was married had two vandalism events.  But I still appear in public as the best representative of Judaism that I can be with no realistic fear for my personal safety.  

These are the original publications:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/us-anti-semitism-jewish-american-safety/677469/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/jewish-anti-semitism-harvard-claudine-gay-zionism/677454/

 https://forward.com/opinion/600187/antisemitism-united-states-israel-gaza-war/

The growing panic about antisemitism isn’t a reflection of reality

Yes, antisemitism is up — but prominent voices are confusing protest with bigotry

American Jews are being whipped into a panic about antisemitism.

There is no doubt that incidents of antisemitism have increased since Oct. 7. But prominent voices in the American Jewish community are making it harder to fight. Would challenge this They have mistaken political protest — however misguided — for bigotry some of it is bigotry, conflated anti-Zionism and antisemitism there are Americans being attacked because they are identifiable as Jewish or their property is damaged because it identified as belonging to Jews, and exaggerated the crisis on the far left while ignoring the far greater one on the far right.  We can argue whether either is a crisis

I do not question the motivations of those who have spoken out against antisemitism in this way. We are all in pain, and we all want a world in which people of all backgrounds can live their lives in safety. But the rampant hyperbole, confusion, and both-sidesing of this present moral panic are making it harder, not easier, to respond effectively.

 

Bottom of Form

Antisemitism is rising because of a brutal war

For example, consider two widely circulated recent essays in The Atlantic, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending,” by Franklin Foer, and “Why The Most Educated People in America Fall for Antisemitic Lies,” by Dara Horn. Both attribute the rise in antisemitism to the resurgence of an ancient, timeless hatred, rather than the obvious proximate cause: a brutal war, which is producing images of unthinkable horror to be streamed daily on social media.  I think it is.  The response on campuses defending the attackers as heroic was immediate.  The condemnation of the President’s response was immediate.  And it was the Islamic, African-American, and progressive elements that emerged essentially immediately.  The very real human cost in Gaza came a short time later.  There was no acknowledgment of the nature of the attack itself or condemnation of the glee many attackers displayed.

In Foer’s 11,000-word piece, few sentences mention the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza, where more than an estimated 32,000 Palestinians have been killed so far. “I don’t want to dismiss the anger that the left feels about the terrible human cost of the Israeli counterinvasion of Gaza, or denounce criticism of Israel as inherently antisemitic — especially because I share some of those criticisms,” he writes.  Much of it is very anti-Semitic, and has been.  The exclusion of American Jews from progressive causes such as BLM was a work in progress.  So was the difficulty in defining anti-Semitism for formal policy purposes as Jewishness has been inseparable from Jewish sovereignty. While I think Franklin Foer is wrong about the end of the American Jewish Golden Age (yes, I did read all 11K words over two sessions)  the virulence of the protests and its direction towards American Jews speaks for itself.  What I think he got wrong is the ability of American Jews to create things, whether institutions for our and public advancement, philanthropy, ideas, or expertise.  Those all remain valuable and don’t seem threatened.

But that is, effectively, exactly what he does, ascribing the increase in antisemitism to anti-liberal trends in American culture, and describing antisemitism as “a mental habit, deeply embedded in Christian and Muslim thinking, stretching back at least as far as the accusation that the Jews murdered the son of God.” The war is barely even an inciting incident.  I think that’s another area where Foer is wrong. Father Coughlin, Henry Ford, and Charles Lindbergh have all been discredited on a one-way ticket in America, though my Islamic medical colleagues tell me the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is required reading in some of their history curriculum in their Middle Eastern primary schools.  The American parochial school kids no longer seek out the Jewish kids for taunting when school lets out.  But in the Islamic communities and in some of our community of color, mistrust of Jews as Jews is still conveyed through household.  And it is usually tied to a justification, whether over-extending their dhimmi status by having a sovereign state or oppression as slumlords.

Horn, like Foer, largely dismisses concerns about the war. The word “Gaza” only appears six times in her essay. Yes, she writes, there are “the many legitimate concerns about Israel’s policies toward Palestinians and the many legitimate concerns about Israel’s current war in Gaza.” But those “cannot explain these eliminationist chants and slogans” — e.g. “Palestine from River to Sea” — “the glee with which they are delivered, the lawlessness that has accompanied them, or the open assaults on Jews.”  She got it right.

There are numerous omissions in this short passage: How many protests are gleeful? Certainly the primary attacks were.  I think they take more of a form of revenge  Defacing property, intimidating expression, making credible threats to safety, and locking Jews in campus rooms has its illegal elements.    (Few that I’ve seen.) What percentage are lawless? Is “‘river to the sea” always ‘eliminationist,’ despite what many pro-Palestine voices insist  It has that intent. f But as the response acknowledges later, these chants come from people with no authority and therefore no accountability.  Having the onus of implementation of this desire would change the approach.  Then again, the Gazans are eliminationinst in their manifesto and acted as if this attack were one episode in the larger initiative.

Most significantly, though, both Horn and Foer write as if this is the first time in history that a war or catastrophe has provoked bigotry. But this is always the case. Just as Islamophobia rose after 9/11, and just as anti-Asian hate rose with the onset of the pandemic, so antisemitism is rising now. One could even say the same about anti-German and anti-Japanese stereotypes in the 1940s. or the ending of slavery in America or calling sauerkraut Liberty Cabbage.  The wars proceed because the sides object vehemently to each other.  But irrespective of precedent, we need not tolerate this or rationalize it now.

None of this is to excuse these spikes in bigotry, or to deny that the bigotry exists and is dangerous. It is only to note that the most obvious explanation for the current eruption is not a grand meta-narrative of American or European history, but rage at an ongoing war in which Israel’s conduct has received widespread international condemnation.

No, anti-Zionism is not antisemitism

Second, the moral panic conflates legitimate anti-Zionism with illegitimate antisemitism.  Not understanding why one is legitimate and another is not.  Certainly Popes for a thousand years thought their targeting of Jews was legit.  So did inquisitors.  So did Romans and Babylonias who created our diaspora.  All are interferences with pre-existing established Jewish norms.

Foer’s essay begins with a harrowing account of a Jewish high school student in Berkeley, California, who was “scared” by “a planned ‘walkout’ to protest Israel.” I do not doubt that this student was scared. But what actually happened? A misguided political protest, along with unsubstantiated rumors of “phrases shouted in the hallways, carrying intimations of violence.” It is not antisemitism whenever Jewish people are upset by anti-Israel actions or statements.  No, Jay, it is about fear for safety.  The statements were somewhat normative in a past era, whether by Spielberg’s fictional portrayals in The Fablemans or by encounters with parochial school students in my youth.  The difference is that the fear was not justified, though Spielberg’s character was in fact assaulted.  And Kristallnacht was a very real episode in history.  The kids at that Northern California HS attended that HS the year before.  Their fear is now.

Foer also reports secondhand accounts of Jewish students at other schools in the Bay Area being targeted and harassed in ways that are clearly antisemitic. But he lumps these incidents togethter as if they are the same, which they are not. Protesting against Israel, however misguided or disturbing, is not antisemitic; harassing Jews is.  But one becomes justification  for the other, and inseparable from the fears of the victim of physical harm

Foer asserts, without support, that the left “espouses a blithe desire to eliminate the world’s only Jewish-majority nation … valorizes the homicidal campaign against its existence, and seeks to hold members of the Jewish diaspora to account for the sins of a country they don’t live in.” Notice the elisions: Foer blends together anti-Zionism, support for a “homicidal campaign,” and targeting Jews. (Even the caricature of anti-Zionism is incorrect, as many on the left support a democratic state where Jews would still be a majority, but all would have equal rights.)  Certainly most of the anti-Zionists and Islamists do not attack Jews because they are Jewish.  I’m sure Jewish and Islamic physicians share patients as before, both in America and in Israel.  But as we learned in Pittsburgh, where the slain doctor was a college friend and in Monsey where I was raised, it only requires a few real threats to be deadly, irrespective of how the majority behave.  What matters is the failure of condemnation.  That is new.

This conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism is far greater than a few articles. As reported in the Forward, after Oct. 7, the Anti-Defamation League changed its criteria to define a much broader swath of anti-Zionist activity as antisemitic; anti-Zionist protests account for 1,317 of the 3,000-odd “antisemitic” incidents the organization tracked in the three months after Oct. 7. So they agree that Oct 7 is a demarcation point that changes what is acceptable levels of intimidation. As Forward reporter Arno Rosenfeld wrote, “a large share of the incidents appear to be expressions of hostility toward Israel, rather than the traditional forms of antisemitism that the organization has focused on in previous years.”  Except that these incidents are directed at American Jews because they are Jewish.  Much like Venn diagram circles that intersect.

The extremism of some left-wing responses to the war is indeed troubling. I agree with Foer’s dismay that “a disconcertingly large number of Israel’s critics on the left did not … share that vision of peaceful coexistence, or believe Jews had a right to a nation of their own.” But are they antisemitic? Yes.  Their Venn Diagrams also intersect with other things. And what about Jewish anti-Zionists (many of whom are friends of mine) — are we really to believe that they are all trapped in some neurosis of self-hatred?  Or do they have a political view to which many of us object?  I’m not sure I know any Jewish anti-Zionists who think that Herzl, Ben Gurion, and Holocaust refugees who settled in Israel were a blight on world history.  I think they don’t want the people there now to have to move on like they did in Spain.  There are criticisms of the government and have been since Begin made Likud the dominant party nearly fifty years ago.  The gripes are with policies and innocent human pawns, not with Jewish sovereignty.

I am a progressive Zionist. Even if the dream seems dim today, I believe in a two-state solution with justice for Palestine and security for Israel. But while Foer’s language of “a nation of their own” sounds benign in principle, in practice, it has meant a nation that displaces another people and denies its 5 million members basic civil rights. Except that it was prompted by a number of attacks that made an offense the best defense.  That rarely appears in these essays from either side.  Nor does the other reality that peace has been achieved among other former antagonists that acknowledge the reality of their neighbor Israel.  For all the talks and proposals, the Palestinians, or the Egyptians before them, never had to submit their wish list of what it would take to reconcile, while the Israelis and the Americans did.  Baseball may have had the right idea.  Each states their demands. The more reasonable is accepted with little negotiation.  Deals are often better when each side has an incentive to consider that if too demanding, they lose.  Moreover, an entire generation of American progressives has grown up during a period in which Israel’s right-wing governments have successfully undermined any efforts toward peace and coexistence. It is not antisemitic to oppose this. For many people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, it is just.  Begin was the first right wing government.  The Abrahamic Accords came with Netanyahu at the helm.  Jews visiting Petra started in 1983.  It is much less the government than the partner’s trustworthiness.

Right-wing antisemitism remains the greatest threat

The moral panic regarding antisemitism also overlooks an essential truth: that although antisemitism on the left is real, and arguably escalating, it still pales in comparison to antisemitism on the right.  Until they both become deadly.  The right has had lethal episodes for a while.  From the American left, this is new.

After a shocking upsurge during the Trump administration, right-wing antisemitism has now reached unprecedented proximity to power. One particularly serious example: Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina. Robinson is an antisemite and Holocaust denier. In 2017, he wrote that “there is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered.” (Robinson is also a sexist, homophobe, and Islamophobe.)  He hasn’t been elected yet.  And once in office, NC has laws that limit his implementation of policies that target Jews for harassment.  Compare that to DEI programs at our universities, which while well intended, function as zero sum game to promote one identity, whether of color or LGBT over previously excluded minorities who have proven themselves, as in Jews and Asians.  There is political power of people you never see and leverage against you by people that you encounter daily.

This man isn’t a misguided high school teacher or student activist. He may become the next chief executive of the ninth most populous state in our union. He’s been highly praised by Donald Trump. This is extreme antisemitism at the highest levels of the GOP.

And, of course, there’s Elon Musk, who despite his Auschwitz apology tour has platformed — and personally reposted — hardcore antisemites, including Trump. Not to mention Kanye West, now known as Ye, whose public antisemitism has aligned with a sharp right-wing political turn, and whose most recent album went to the top of the charts.  But he doesn’t deny people on the left access to his platforms either.

No one accused of antisemitism on the far left has a platform comparable to either of theirs. Again, none of this is to excuse the presence or tolerance of antisemitism on the left — only to put it in perspective.  Actually I think DEI affects a lot more Jews diligently striving to be their best self a lot more than anything Ye can influence.

Yet in Foer’s telling, they are merely two manifestations of the same phenomenon. “In the era of perpetual crisis,” Foer writes, “a version of this narrative kept recurring: a small elite — sometimes bankers, sometimes lobbyists — maliciously exploiting the people. Such narratives helped propel Occupy Wall Street on the left and the Tea Party on the right.”  Or in another era of Mayor Lindsay, my HS era, you live in squalor because of your Jewish landlord and his partner at the furniture store.  Some would say the quest for rights without accountability.  My assessment of the Palestinian avocates today.

But wait a minute. Occupy’s narrative is accurate, but the Tea Party’s is not. Occupy rails against the 1% — they exist. The Tea Party rails against imagined “elites” — now imagined, as part of the QAnon conspiracy theory, as cabals of globalist pedophiles. And when a single protester in Zuccotti Park raised an antisemitic banner, people intervened, and the movement reaffirmed its opposition to antisemitism. There is no equivalence here.  Or really, one is more credible than the other.

Likewise, Foer claims that “America’s ascendant political movements — MAGA on one side, the illiberal left on the other — would demolish the last pillars of the consensus that Jews helped establish.  That’s the one part where he seems accurate. They regard concepts such as tolerance, fairness, meritocracy, and cosmopolitanism as pernicious shams.” Really? Rightly or wrongly, the left thinks they’re fighting for fairness and tolerance — or at least against starving a million children as part of a brutal war. Or BML or DEI.  Noble concepts until you start excluding people who would like to be helpful.  These long pre-dated the Gazan casualties. The right is fighting for an American nationalist ethno-state. There is simply no symmetry here.  I think more likely there is a gap between what they claim they want and what they will insist upon if returned to power.  Moral Majority has been around a long time, as have megachurches.  So has the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Never heard a peep about a legislative repeal.  Not a word about restricting the cultural practices of those already here.  The Asian and Middle Eastern restaurants in the Deep South are pretty safe.  If migrant workers are needed to harvest rural crops in George Wallace country, the hiring will go on as before.  And from our end as Jewish multicultural advocates that enabled our achievements in the wide culture, we have no reason to restrict their hunting hobbies.  Abortions ended in my lifetime.  My OB text, circa 1975, still had a chapter on septic abortions which disappeared.  I doubt if the Christian nationalists, for all their rhetoric, want that medical condition to return.

Terrified, tribalistic and isolated

The moral panic over antisemitism isn’t just factually unsound. It’s helping make American Jews more isolated and paranoid.  But with reason.  We weren’t that way last Rosh HaShanah.

It’s obvious that American Jews are feeling disoriented, terrified and traumatized by Oct. 7, as well as by much of the world’s mixed response to that day’s horrific violence. The trauma of the last several months — experienced, in various forms, by Jews, Muslims, progressives and many others — has contributed to the degeneration of our public discourse on the war.  The public discourse on a lot of other things had not gone well before that.

But our moral panic is at once born of this trauma and making it worse. It has caused Jews to become even more terrified and tribalistic. Terrified isn’t the right word, nor is tribalistic.  After the Pittsburgh massacre took my own medical friend, the condemnation was universal.  The condemnation of the Simchat Torah attack is a long way from universal.  And we haven’t done well protecting each other.  On the Jewish Trump side, there are calls to purge Jews who find him objectionable from some mainstream organizations that they dominate.  And it has precedent.  The heavy-handedness of Hillel International on its own chapters that challenged the Zionist litmus test of the parent organization took place before the current millenium.ro The reality is that most of us go to shul at the appointed times, though with enhanced security.  Companies have not withdrawn their Hechshers in solidarity with the anti-Zionist or anti-Jewish pressures.  Hiring goes on as before.  If we were economically prosperous before, that has not been reversed.   It has undermined our solidarity with other vulnerable groups at precisely the time at which we are threatened by the nationalist right. Forgive me, but a number of progressiove organizations expressed their hostility to Jewish participation in their movements years ago.  And it has fed the illiberal campaigns of right-wing culture warriors, who have preyed on American Jewish fears to further their own agendas. Or they understand Maslow’s hierarchy.  You protect your safety before you seek the higher noble principles. We are being fed a diet of hyperbole and misinformation, and we are reacting out of fear.  Except that elements of that fear are both legit and ever closer to home.

To be sure, some progressives responded abominably to Oct. 7, and continue to use irresponsible, incendiary rhetoric about Israel. And we need to be very consistent about identifying them and what they are about. We spend too much effort fighting with each other. There are outrageous things happening on some college campuses. And we have to be openly oppositional to that with negative consequences for outrageous activity. But let’s not lose the thread here. The real crisis is not leftists on campus but white nationalists, insurrectionists, election deniers, science deniers and conspiracy theorists seizing two if not three branches of the federal government. Actually it is the loss of partnership with the progressives that make these people confident that their majority will eventually emerge.  And we are not the ones who undermined that uneasy but protective partnership. That is the Titanic. College activists are the string quartet playing on the deck.

Finally, the consequences of this fatalistic view that antisemitism is everywhere, and that it can never be eradicated, are dark indeed. Professor Shaul Magid has called it “Judeo-Pessimism,” taking a cue from “Afro-Pessimism,” a view that holds that racism can never be eradicated.  Like medical conditions, rarely cured, mostly successfully managed.

For Judeo-Pessimists, antisemitism is a kind of immortal, recurring hatred that simply is part of Western culture; again, Foer describes it as a “mental habit, deeply embedded in Christian and Muslim thinking.” As such, antisemitism can be fought but never destroyed.  That seems to be where anti-Semitism has gone historically.  And as Bari Weiss recommended in her book on this, the best defense is to be the most visibly honorable Jew you can be,

The natural endpoint of such a view is perpetual paranoia, together with an extreme form of right-wing Zionism.  Not at all.  Zionism has always been part of our consensus.  What we have stopped doing internally is seeking the Middle.  It tells us that we cannot trust the international community, and can only trust Jewish strength.  It dismisses human rights concerns, since the oppression of our enemies is the regrettable price of Jewish survival. Often it is.   Because if we are always and everywhere oppressed, then the Jewish future lies not in engagement with wider society, but in our strength in opposition to it.  Not at all.  Even in our darkest times, we have always had buffers, whether the Turks and Dutch of Inquisition times, Righteous Gentiles during Nazi domination, and the liberal ideologies in America that Franklin Foer and Dana Horn described in their essays.

This is a bleak vision, and reflective of the trauma which gave birth to it.  The Lachrymose View of Jewish History has its element of accuracy.

To be sure, there are good reasons to be scared right now. But the human capacity for freedom lies in our ability to transcend that fear — to recognize it and not be controlled by it. We can recognize that the better angels of our nature are not naive, but are wiser and more trustworthy than our passions, even when they are felt strongly. Moral panic is not the way forward.

Rabbi Jay Michaelson is a contributing columnist for the Forward and for Rolling Stone. He is the author of 10 books, and won the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists award for opinion writing.

 


Friday, April 5, 2024

Pesach Menus


My kitchen has established itself as my source of recreation if not creativity.  I've collected cookbooks, kosher and general pretty much since receiving my first paycheck.  When I first subscribed to cable TV, the Food Channel became a staple, though no longer is as instruction from experts waned in favor of endless competitions.  The internet brought searchable recipes, refined by keywords from kosher to Valentine's Day to dessert.  The cookbooks are not obsolete, though, as they reflect what masters with skills far exceeding mine have tested and thought about.  

A few times a year I plan and toil more than others.  Thanksgiving with its traditional tastes.  Always roasted turkey.  Always sweet potatoes, but not always presented the same way.  Wife's birthday, elegance for two.  Shabbos dinner with guests, elegance for four.  The sukkah, a confined space.  And the annual challenge of them all:  Pesach or Passover.  This Festival has its blend of ritual, dietary restrictions, sharing with guests or in my younger years being a guest, and imagination.  Thinking and discussing some concepts of Freedom, still part of our political discourse today.  And we discuss obligations, as we are mandated certain things like eating matzoh, drinking wine, and tasting bitterness.  Imagination also entails creativity, making those foods on the permitted list with special presentations to reflect abundance amid restriction.  The absence of bread does not have to convey deprivation.

My kitchen gets scrubbed, unpermitted foods sold by my Rabbi acting as my agent, and my largest grocery bill generated as I select some mixture of need and want with significant price markups.  Matzoh in a five-pound box.  Matzoh meal.  Some specialty dairy and candy.  Macaroons as a quick snack.  Even soda made with cane sugar, the only time of the year when this appears as an acceptable grocery purchase.

The Festival lasts eight days.  The first two evenings and the last two are formal Festivals, with the Friday night during the Intermediate Days presenting another occasion for a special dinner.  As a practical matter, by the final two Festival evenings, people are pretty tired and tend to try to finish up what they've prepared earlier in the Holiday.  So the culinary challenges really appear for the first two nights devoted to ritual Seders and to shabbos dinner.  

The Seders, or Sedarim in Hebrew, have some specified eating obligations.  We drink four cups of wine at designated times while we recite the story of our collective and personal redemptions from Egypt in a monograph called a Haggadah.  Parsley is dipped in salt water.  We recite a blessing over a wad of raw horseradish sweetened with an unspecified amount of a fruit-wine-nut blend called Charoset.  We eat not only matzoh, but pieces from specified parts of the three boards which we set out on our tables.  And though not part of the Haggadah, many communities including mine begin the supper portion with a hard boiled egg sitting in a puddle of salt water.  None of this requires a recipe search, other than Charoset whose contents vary by regional tradition.  Being of Eastern European ancestry, mine is a mixture of shredded apples, ground almonds, and kiddush wine with a splash of cinnamon.  Other places use dried fruits such as dates, apricots, or figs as the base.  In America, where we embrace multiculturalism and live in prosperity, Eastern European families will make their Charoset from the more expensive though flavorful dried fruits, though I go for my more economical tradition.

Much like Thanksgiving, the menu often reflects compromises between traditions that do not change from one year to the next and with creativity.  Kosher cookbooks invariably contain a chapter with recipes in compliance with Passover's dietary limitations.  My own Seder preparation grid has eleven categories:

  1. Charoset
  2. Appetizer
  3. Soup
  4. Matzoh Balls
  5. Salad
  6. Dressing
  7. Entree
  8. Kugel
  9. Vegetable
  10. Dessert
  11. Beverage
Cookbooks and web searches yield ample possibilities but over decades my own basic pattern has declared itself.  Ashkenazi Charoset.  Gefilte fish for seder, usually for shabbos as well, though a stuffed vegetable will sometimes make a good shabbos substitute.  Chicken soup, homemade.  Composed of chicken parts, carrots, celery, onion, pepper, maybe a turnip, maybe a kosher for Passover bouillon cube, all boiled in my biggest and oldest stock pot for hours. That chicken will fall off the bones, only to reappear as chicken salad or stir-fry the final two Festival nights.  Matzoh balls have multiple variations.  The matzoh meal box has the basic recipe of eggs, fat, and meal in a basic proportion.  I like to add some club soda, maybe some parsley to the batter.  Others like to add ground nuts.  Some people stuff the matzoh balls with ground beef.  My fat is vegetable oil.  Others opt for chicken fat, known as schmaltz.  I boil mine separately in water, then add to the soup.  Others add their uncooked balls directly to the simmering soup.  And how many to make and of what size?

Salads are one of those uncommitted variable dishes.  Vegetables other than legumes and rice are permissible.  Mine can be tomato-based, cucumber-based, lettuce or cabbage-based.  Some make beet salads, but not everyone likes beets, though borscht is also a Passover soup classic with a large contingent of enthusiasts.  Indeed, the college caterer used to serve a small bowl of borscht with a boiled potato during the Intermediate Days.   Dressings come bottled, but vinaigrettes are easily created with olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and seasonings.  Mustard to create an emulsion is not permitted.  My salads tend to be simple:  Israeli with several diced vegetables or cucumber with thinly sliced onion.  Lemon juice and salt and parsley complete the taste.

It is the entrees that showcase the effort and the planning.  Realistic choices are beef and poultry.  For a crowd, which Sedarim often have, a whole turkey takes the least effort relative to yield.  Brisket comes in different sizes.  Many families center the meal around that, a display of taste and generosity, as a five pounder could run a multiple of what a whole turkey costs.  But they will each serve both Sedarim.  Smaller attendance opens more options.  There is whole chicken, chicken parts, turkey breasts. small briskets, tzimmes made with beef or lamb cubes, rib roasts, and stuffed veal breasts.  The price of crock pots, air fryers, and Insta pots has declined to where people can purchase one only for Passover use. While the number of guests drives the final selection, appliance availability also needs reckoning, as most people only have one oven and four stove top burners to spread over several dishes. The soup will occupy one of the two large burners for a very long time, as will a whole turkey in the oven.  Matzoh balls, and made from scratch gefilte fish also use up considerable stove top.  

Starches take several forms.  Some cooks just make potatoes or tzimmes as the side dish.  This being a time dedicated to matzoh, kugels or puddings based on matzoh have become popular.  Some people opt for the easier potato kugel.  Whatever form, the kugel has a starch base mixed with eggs.  Additives such as carrots or mushrooms give character.  Potatoes are moist, but matzoh needs to be reconstituted with either water or a few ladles of chicken soup from the stock pot.  Most are baked, some are done stove top.  Sometimes the matzoh kugel becomes matzoh stuffing for the poultry entrée.
  
Vegetables could be anything.  Seasonal items go on sale, in my region, asparagus is discounted most years.  Carrots are versatile with boiling, roasting, and glazing.  Green beans are the only beans permitted.  Many a Bar Mitzvah caterer includes green beans with sliced almonds on the dinner plate, something acceptable for Passover.  And beets are sweet, though not universally liked.  More adventurous people may opt for artichokes, a staple at an Italian Seder table.

Dessert is another branch point, a restricted one as dairy is not permitted with a meat meal and flour not permitted with any meal.  Eggs become the agent to allow products to rise.  Finely ground matzoh or potato starch become the sources of substance, and ground nuts add bulk and flavor.  Fruit desserts such as sorbets or poached pears are popular.  I find nut cakes tasty and reasonably straightforward.  Others prefer sponge cake, which seems like a waste of yolks unless repurposed to crème brûlée for a dairy meal.

And beverage.  The Evil Coca-Cola.  Tea, plain or mint.  Club Soda laced with Manischewitz.  KP wine.  

So I find myself at pluripotent menu planning with a lot of uncertainty.  I think it better to set the menu, then shop, though others would advocate for food selections to drive the menu.  My grid has a lot of open squares, both for Shabbos and for Sedarim.  Recipes from kosher sites and my kosher books are all suitable.  Recipes by popular cooking magazines do much less well at maintaining within the Pesach and Kashrut boundaries.

And I have to wash all dishes before starting and afterward.  So tentative:

  1. Kiddush wine
  2. My usual apple-almond charoset
  3. Boiled Frozen Gefilte Loaf with grated fresh horseradish
  4. Chicken soup in my stock pot
  5. Matzoh balls seasoned a little differently than before, boiled in water, never in soup
  6. Cucumber Salad
  7. Half-turkey breast
  8. Matzoh Kugel a la White House Seder
  9. Carrots sweetened in some way
  10. Almond torte 
  11. Evil Coca-Cola with the yellow cap
And consider shabbos later.