So glad we did our virtual Seder. I was going to do much of nothing if it was just the 2 of us (was going to roast a chicken) but ended up going all out and pulling out the Passover stuff that the kids made in preschool. Now we have food for a week and my cooking for all of 2020 is done. No mas.
Just finished our Seder. So we had us three here, my mother joined us from LA, and an Israeli friend joined us from Chicago. It went pretty well, all things considered.
Chag Sameach to all!
Love hearing your stories. I wish we had thought to take a screen shot. Our Seder went well with the usual glitches (out of sync singing and people dropping off due to a power outage in the city.)
I hope we don’t have to do that next year.
@Lizardly I am sure your soup was great even without the parsnip. I posted a note on our neighborhood facebook page that I had forgotten parsley. Two neighbors stepped up with parsley, and one of the 2 needed the parsnips, so I drove through the neighborhood picking up and dripping off veggies. I ended up with so much parsley that I was able to share some with another neighbor who I’d first called to see if she had any, and she had also forgotten to buy parsley. Nice neighbor helping neighbor opportunity!
Thanks! It was a good soup. I am turning into my mother and don’t follow a recipe anymore so every year it is a little bit different.
I am glad the soup makers pulled together where you live for Passover success. I gave my yeast away to the non Jewish neighbor who bakes bread and hope he will remember me next week. Yeast has been a rare item in our supermarkets.
My DW was all over this. Took video and us singing “Dayenu” and screen shots of the the Zoom participates. It actually worked out pretty well we had all of the usual food brisket, Matzo ball soup, Matzo brittle, etc.
I’m feeling a little bad because Easter is my holiday to host. We usually have 12-15 of us here - and of course, we aren’t this year. I fully intend and hope we can “do” Easter as a family (besides the religious holiday we have several wonky game traditions that everyone looks forward to) at a later date - maybe the weather will actually be good then! - we’ve had some cold, rainy, muddy Easter celebrations.
I haven’t tried to arrange any type of virtual celebration. Should I be organizing this? Might it just end up awkward? I’m not in a “down” mood but I sort of don’t really feel like putting in the effort and figuring out when/how/ we can do this.
Not looking for a solution - just expressing how even without the pressure of organizing the "event’ because it’s cancelled for now, I’m STILL feeling the pressure! 
My D set up a “Passover” Zoom family get together for Saturday. We are not religious so it will be untraditional and won’t do a whole Haggadah. I think I will pull out the family made Haggadah that we used for many years when we used to gather each Passover at the home of a relative and share some of the passages. The patriarch of that family passed away recently from Covid 19 so it will have even more meaning.
I bought yeast yesterday and I’ll keep it in my car for now. I had an obsession with getting yeast while I could. I’ve been searching for weeks and I was in a panic if I didn’t buy it I might not find it again.
@abasket I know you aren’t looking for an answer, but you could be spontaneous. Send out an email about where to meet in Zoom land and people can dial in and say hi and eat their own food and drink their own drinks. For Passover, we had an agenda, tbh, so not so much just chatting. I did chat with people beforehand in an unstructured way to get it set up.
I have some online classes and we spend about half the class just being happy to see each other, not doing school work.
I threw out the idea to my siblings. Hopefully we will do a Zoom or other virtual meeting on Sunday for Easter. My mom and I had an impromptu Skype with relatives a few days ago and it was really fun to see them and catch up in live action.
I’ve at least arranged for my immediate family to video chat with each other on Sunday. We might do a virtual game or two. And I don’t know what it will be but I’m thinking to have my son and his wife over for dinner w/distance.
Thank you @Lizardly for the encouragement.
Looking forward to zooming with my sibs and the “outlaws” tomorrow for National Sibling Day.
For Easter, we sent D a Hello Fresh box and ordered the same one for us. We will attend online church together, then cook and dine together via Zoom. Would love to learn how to do a game or cards - maybe look this up on You Tube?
We are going to host a Zoom Easter. Everyone was on board with the idea. It will be low key, I’m going to find all the bunnies in the house and put out my collection of decorated eggs. (For a few years I was really into the Russian Easter eggs and we have some gorgeous ones from our time in Germany as well.) I have to make a cake for my online Corona Bake-off - so I’ll serve Blueberry Cream cheese Coffee Cake. Hope it tastes as good as it looks!
The big synagogue seder was less chaotic than I feared, although apparently our family sings the “wrong” melody. One unexpected benefit was that I now can connect names and faces for a couple of people who I was fuzzy about.
We will be having our usual Easter ham dinner with the 7 of us who are in our house right now. (Our two oldest kids are married/live far away and wouldn’t travel here for Easter even without the virus.)
Still going to dye eggs and make baskets for the “kids”–youngest is 15. The big difference is that we’ll be watching Easter mass on Youtube instead of in person. Weather forecast is for cold rain all day, so no outdoor fun.
I am torn between being happy to stay in PJs all day and wanting everyone to dress up for a photo. H and I will text greetings/photo to our siblings as we usually do.
“Let’s do one more take,” Title said. She later explained, with a little panic, that she hadn’t actually hit the record button. Such are the dramas inherent in producing a show that relies on iPhones and dozens of performers — including Ben Platt, Billy Porter, Judith Light, Tan France, Harvey Fierstein, Idina Menzel and Sarah Silverman — who are all in different places.“
“The result — God willing, because as of this writing it’s nowhere near done — will be “Saturday Night Seder.” It’s an original telling of the Passover story meant to entertain and bring together a mainstream audience for a few laughs, a bit of joy and some unavoidable reflections on the human capacity for transcendence amid danger and chaos. It will be streamed on the “Saturday Night Seder” website and on YouTube at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, April 11. (With some words beeped out, it’s PG-13 family viewing.)“
Just found this. I went to see my son a few weeks ago and my wife cooked him all the Passover dishes/hagadah etc he could handle and he froze it. We recently sent him Passover desserts etc. So we used Google hangouts and had our seder and took turns reading. It was actually kinda fun. My wife types out an overview version that includes what is happening “currently” in the world and it was very meaningful to acknowledge the first responders etc. We also include an orange on our seder plate for people that feel marginalized and to include the LGBTQ community. We sometimes have non Jewish friend join us so my wife made sorta her own introduction to Passover which now is just a tradition. It’s really well done and after we are done reading it most people are like “can we eat now” … Lol
The second night our shul pre recorded the second night sedar with our Rabbi and Cantor. We just played that and followed along for something totally different. We had my son just start at the same time and that worked out well.
At least we know we can do dinners etc going forward when the kids move away. Overall it worked out very nicely.
BTW. My kids went to Bernard Zell day school from K-8th. We have so much stuff but use their matzo covers etc. They are really nicely done and fun for us to see… Well, see what we paid for… Lol…
We were missing a lamb shank bone, or really any kind of bone, for the seder plate. So we used a Milk Bone.
S1 and DIL really thought outside the box and put a small, toy sheep on their seder plate. 2yo GD liked it.