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April 2001 Issue

Meetin' the Parents Over Matzah

By Sharon Schatz

My fiance Glenn and I met each other's families for the first time at Passover two years ago. It was an interesting time to do the "meet the parents" ritual because in addition to the "meeting" part, we were discovering our respective Jewish family traditions. We were both a little nervous.

The night before we left, Glenn did a lot of pacing and I did a lot of creative visualization about how I would not spontaneously throw up in front of Glenn's family.

When I think of that first Seder at Glenn's parents' house, I think of the food. Before we left, Glenn explained to me that his family was very food-oriented. He also warned his family that I wasn't a big eater and not to feel insulted if I didn't indulge.

When the night of the Seder arrived, I couldn't get over just how much food Glenn's parents and sister cooked for 18 people. I know it sounds like a cliche, but it just kept coming out of the kitchen, plate after plate after plate!

I later learned that every Passover, Glenn's mother and sister stay up all night preparing the meal. They like to yell back and forth at each other during the cooking process. "Where'd you put the white bowl?" "It's in the oven! What's wrong with you?" "The white bowl doesn't belong in the oven!"

If you didn't know them, this exchange could be misinterpreted as a fight, but it's not. It's just how the family communicates, which is a little different than my own soft-spoken clan.

Back to the meal…One of the first things…they put on the table was matzah. I love matzah, so I sort of went to town with it. Matzah with butter, matzah with horseradish, matzah with haroses…Uh-oh…suddenly, I was full!

That's when the appetizers started coming out. Matzah ball soup, stuffed cabbage, hard-boiled eggs, gefilte fish, etc. Then came the main course: turkey, brisket, veggies, an amazing butternut squash that Glenn's sister made, and much, much more.

It was all coming at me, like an assembly line. How in the world was I going to dig into this stuff with four huge pieces of matzah expanding in my stomach? Worried, I turned to Glenn. "I'm full," I whispered, apologetically. He turned to me looking just as worried and said, "Well, then you're in trouble."

When they passed around the sliced turkey, Glenn dumped two big pieces on my plate and whispered, "Just put these here." We were both a little paranoid. I took some kind of cranberry Jell-O salad and pushed it around with everything on my plate. I caught Glenn's mother and sister eyeing my plate to see if I was eating. I think I sort of fooled them.

The other thing that struck me was the sheer loudness of the room. I'm kind of a quiet person, which is one area in which Glenn and I are polar opposites. The volume of the room was like Glenn times 18! We went around the table reading passages from the Haggadah. That part was familiar to me. The Seder and post-Seder socializing went on until about 2:00 a.m., which was a bit different than my "it's-9:30pm-and-I'm-tired" family.

The next night, we went to my parents' house for the Schatz family Seder. My brother Michael is pretty religious, so he always leads the service. Michael is also very protective of me and wasn't going to just accept my new boyfriend without putting him through the ringer. He "called on" Glenn a ridiculous number of times to read from the Haggadah, kind of testing him. Luckily, Glenn was game.

Michael is also a pretty fun guy. Each year, he seems to have something new up his sleeve for Passover. That year, he'd read about an "interactive" Seder in one of the Jewish newspapers. When we got to the part about the plagues, Michael began throwing various symbolic items at us! I'm not sure this was exactly what the Interactive Seder Company had in mind, but, hey, it kept things lively.

For "beasts," he threw little plastic farm animals at us. For "boils," he threw ping-pong balls. For blood, he put this special food coloring in a glass of water and we "oohed" and "ahhed" as it turned blood red. Then, we all had to put on these funky glasses to simulate blindness.

I don't mind my wacky family, but I do have a Passover pet peeve, which involves the song "Dayenu." Here's my issue… When the song goes, "Day, day, enu," someone in my family always yells out, "Enu!" during that little pause after the first "enu." It's usually one of my little brothers or my nephew.

Maybe I'm weird, but this is something that has grated on my nerves since I was a kid. Anyway, I suffered through a few "enus" and at about 10:00 p.m. we called it a night.

As Glenn and I spent the holiday together, I began noticing some other differences in the way we practiced. Glenn always keeps kosher for Passover and never goes out to eat during the holiday. He doesn't want to unknowingly eat something containing yeast or corn syrup. For most of my post-high school life, I was never very observant. I usually attended a Seder each year, but I'd stopped keeping kosher for Passover. This was the year I began keeping it again--without being forced by my family.

I knew my family liked Glenn when my sister-in-law whispered, "He's cute!" across the dinner table at the Seder. Or maybe it was when my little brother Jake said, "He looks like the Glenn from The Wedding Singer," one of his favorite movies. (Just for the record, he does not look like that guy!)

Glenn claims that his family liked me from the start, but I believe that my reaching for a second helping of matzah bri at breakfast was the moment I won them over. I'd never had it before and it's amazing. Or maybe it's just the way Glenn's mom makes it.


Sharon Schatz is a writer/editor for a popular television network Web site. She is also a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

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