Let My People... Get Vaccinated! Passover 2021

Hey there, my name is Rabbi Jen Gubitz, and I'm pumped to be joined by Rabbi Jodi Gordon as we welcome you to the OMFG podcast, Jewish wisdom for unprecedented times. Hey, Jodi.

Hey, friend. OMFG, what a fabulous 4-letter word. Those 4 letters really do the trick from, oh my gosh, why have they still not vaccinated teachers? To "OMFG, it's Passover already?" As rabbis, we have come to know that when the stories of our lives meet the stories of Jewish tradition, transformation, growth, something awesome happens.

Jodi and I are experts in the letters J and G, matzo ball soup, the relative merits of chocolate matzo, and songs with frogs. And we want to bring to you our conversations that express our love for Judaism and make it relevant in the world as we mine Jewish wisdom for strength and resilience in these unprecedented times with a dose of humor. Because as Groucho Marx said, to truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it.

This week we are talking about Passover, that great, amazing, beloved Jewish holiday that will start on the evening of Saturday, March 27th. And so to warm us up, a little game of Passover word association. Jen, are you ready?

Ready, born ready.

All right, the theme is favorite smells and tastes of Passover. Go!

My dad makes horseradish and you have to leave the house because it is so pungent.

Mmm, the smell of dill. Basically everything we eat in this house for the entire week has fresh dill in it.

Uh, there's these sesame candies that are really honey sweet delicious. And I don't think I would like them at any other point in the year, but they're so delicious.

They are very delicious. Also, the smell of— I think they're called boxwood ferns or like boxwood plants, but they're plants that have a certain smell that always come out right around Passover that I had around my house growing up, and I have plants in my house now.

I think my last one is those like little watermelon slices that come in 4 colors, none of which— none of the colors match their flavor. They're just all flavored sugar, but you feel like you're having a lime or a lemon at any given moment.

Sorry, one last one because it's an unpopular opinion, but I feel strongly about it. The orange-flavored Joyva gel ring.

I love—

yeah, I love the chocolate orange combination, like in anything. And Passover is the time where there is a candy readily available to me with just that combination.

Joyva, joyva, thank you for many, many of our sweet treats for Passover. So this episode, we're excited to introduce you to a friend and colleague of ours a little later in the episode, Rabbi Jeff Stonbaugh from The Well in Detroit. Our conversation with Jeff was a ton of fun and really got us thinking. As we get ready for our second pandemic Passover, I wonder what previous experiences we might bring to bear on this year's celebration. Jodi, have you ever had a Passover that wasn't like the rest before? Maybe you traveled somewhere or somehow celebrated in a way that just didn't match your previous Passover experience?

Totally. I've been thinking about that a lot recently, actually. I mean, let's be honest, we all thought last year was the anomaly. One Seder in a Pandemic, which most of us confidently ended by saying, "L'shana haba'ah biyachad," next year together in person. So here we are, and I think your question is spot on. I keep thinking about what other unique Passover experiences might help us all find a sense of peace, at the very least acceptance, I guess, as it were, with another unusual holiday. When I was 24, I traveled around the world for about 8 months and just in time for Passover, found myself in Delhi, India with the 2 friends I was traveling with.

And it was an incredible experience, but I don't want to lead with the headline.

Nothing was the way that I thought it would be. I was coming from my entirely Ashkenazi Jewish family background with seders on Long Island. And I had one idea about what Passover was. And then there I was in Delhi, And my experience there reminds me that the world is wide and life is long, and a little novelty or the unexpected can make for really rich memories. So here's my highlights tour. First of all, how we got to the seder. I looked up Jewish communities in India online. I emailed an email address. They said, "Come to this address on Friday night for Kabbalat Shabbat," and that was the whole message. And we were pretty dedicated. So we went to Shabbat services and they said, will all foreigners please stand and introduce yourself? And would you like to come to Passover Seder? So my friend and I said yes. And we were given a slip of paper with an address and a time written on it for the next night. Passover was starting on Saturday night, like it is this year. And that was it. And we, so then the question was like, where was there? So the Seder was held at the home of the Israeli consulate in Delhi. And we, you know, we took a taxi there and we pull into this gated compound which stood out so starkly against sort of the poverty and smoky background of Delhi itself. But then there was a question of who was there. So there were Jews from around the world, there were dignitaries, there were expats, there were hippie backpackers and locals, there were Jews from India, Israel, Argentina, the US, Russia, and England, and those were just the ones at my table. So we were given a Haggadah. It was written in Hindi, Marathi, Hebrew, and English. And when it was your turn, the leader, who wasn't the rabbi— there was a rabbi there who I think was meant to be the leader, but there was somebody whose job— it was almost like the Seder MC, like, and this person stood, they weren't sitting at this massive group table. And when it was your turn, he just sort of pointed at you and said, "Read it your way," meaning like, read it in your language. So if we got to me and it was time for part of the Maggid, they heard it in English. The person next to me was Israeli. They did the next part of the Seder in Hebrew, and we just sort of did it. The food totally shocked my Ashkenazi palate. I had— we had this Passover Seder dinner shipped in from Israel. It was my first time tasting Sephardi haroset. Dinner had rice, which for our listeners who might not understand why that's shocking or interesting, Ashkenazi Jews by and large don't eat kitniyot, or things that include rice, over Passover. Sephardim, Persian, Indian Jews, they do. And basically it was this totally wild, to me at the time, experience that now I look back on as one of my most treasured Passover memories. And from it, I feel like I learned the world is wide and life is long, and the Jewish people and our story are a much more diverse tapestry than we might already know. So I take that and I apply it to pandemic Passover too. And I just wonder where I can use not novelty, but actually like the experiences that are unlike mine to help make mine a little bit more meaningful.

That's awesome. That's such a great story. Passover around the world and the ways that we find ourselves at different Seder tables. I have a little bit of a Passover adjacent story. My junior year of college, I was living in Prague because I couldn't go to Israel because of the Intifada. And so I went to Prague. One of my best friends from college, Laura, and I sort of surreptitiously met in Israel and didn't necessarily inform our parents. It was fine. It was fine. And so we meet in Israel, and I— a friend from camp who was like my brother's age was like, want to go to Egypt? And I was like, sure. And I figured, don't tell your parents. And if you do, just tell them you were with Dan Schwartz. Who's a very respectable young man, and they'll think it's fine. So we went to the bottom of Israel to Eilat, took a sherut to Sharm el-Sheikh, which is like at the bottom of the Sinai Desert in the dark of night and spent a magical 5 days in Egypt. And then just in time for Passover, we came back from Sinai. I let my parents know where I had been. And came into Israel. So we made a real exodus to Israel for Passover. And the second part of the story is that Laura and I went to college in Indiana, and there's a bagel shop in Bloomington that will give you a free dozen bagels if you take a picture of yourself with a bagel somewhere in the world. And we were, we were doing it. And so Laura and I thought it would be a great idea to do this at the Kotel, the Western Wall, except it was the day before Passover and most of Israel had been cleaned out entirely of bread. Or at least Jerusalem. I'm not sure Tel Aviv was out of bread. We enter the Old City. We find like a bagel, a bagel in the Old City, and we sneak it in our bags because we're going to take it through security. As we're walking into the Western Wall complex, first we pass a bunch of kids who are stoking a fire. And I am freaking out because there's kids playing with fire and I go to get the police and they're like, no, it's fine. They're just, you know, burning chametz. No big deal. The only place in the world where it's okay for kids to be stoking a fire in a trash can for fun. And then we tried to go through security with our bagels and we did get through, but we ultimately chickened out of holding it up in front of the Western Wall because we were sort of imagining the headline, which would say like, Israeli security tackles American college students holding up bagel at the Western Wall on Erev Pesach. An alleged attack of bread during the Passover season.

Our listeners might remember that you've also worn bacon.

That's true.

So it feels like you brought a bagel on Passover, you were bacon on Purim, and I feel like now, you know, like 2 more holidays as lettuce and tomato and you're like set.

What's next? What's next? Yeah, so it was a, you know, it was a joyful Passover in Israel that we event with some family friends, but getting, getting from the exodus from Egypt through the Western Wall to the Seder table was long and humorous.

So guys, what is your number one favorite part of the Seder? Jeff, you go first.

The horseradish.

Hillel sandwich.

I like to lean because it's Relaxing. To lean at the dinner table. It's permission to put your feet up.

Singing. Big fan of funky songs.

To the tune of Clementine?

All kinds of tunes. I mean, I, you know, Chag Hadassah, classic. Some interesting melodies for Hallel. If you want to do, you know, that dabble in Hallel.

Little praise, little praise for you. Jodi, what else? What's your other— do you have horseradish in your mouth right now? Is that what's going on?

I'm just going to tell you that I grew up in like a not singy household, and my father-in-law is a very rotund, jolly person who looks actually like a leprechaun. And at my first time ever spending Passover with my now husband's family, he busted out a guitar and started playing the Four Sons to the tune of Clementine, which I had never ever heard before. And like, it's just an image of him I'll never ever forget. Like, for the rest of my life, he will be sitting in my Brooklyn apartment, just like Oh my darling, oh my darling, at the seder we will dine, we will drink wine. Let the wise ones choose the wicked. Totally. Oh my God. Okay, I'm ready.

We grew up in different households, Jodi, because I think the one thing that resonates with me the most from my childhood about Passover is songs like that. And I admittedly didn't even know that there were steps to the seder until I was in rabbinical school. and we learned them while traveling to Ukraine, and they all knew them and I did not. And it's actually a great segue because we're so glad to have Rabbi Jeff Stonbaugh here with us because he is going to share with us a lot of good info about Passover and about friendsseder.com. And one of the coolest things I saw in friendsseder.com is a kitchen towel with the steps for the seder.

That's right. In fact, in my household We, at every single step of the Seder, we picked a new song to sing through to that step in the Seder, even if it only took us halfway through like a verse. So if it was like, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," we would do like, "Kaddish u'urchatz," and then we'd have to stop and we'd find the new tune for the next one.

Nice. My sister and I figured out that "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" fits to all of the steps and that we could even do it in a round. Welcome, Jeff. Welcome to our Zoom room. Welcome to the OMFG podcast. Tell us, what was the most memorable OMFG moment this year?

I grew up outside of Seattle. That's a Northwest kid through and through. My mom helped to found a Jewish community school out there. My dad, uh, was not Jewish. I was a product of an interfaith household. He was very much into Buddhism and Taoism, and that's, that's the world I grew up in. So now my wife and I are living just outside Detroit and I'm running The Well, which is an organization that caters to the needs of young adults and people that are Jewish, Jew-ish, Jewish adjacent, or just like to hang out with Jews. Oh, my OMFG moment of the year was getting married in a pandemic. We got, we were supposed to get married in May. In Connecticut and ended up getting married June 14th. I know the date. In somebody's backyard in Oak Park, just outside Chicago. And that was an oomph moment for all kinds of reasons. The pandemic was just sort of getting— it was like in chapter 1 of the pandemic. We had 15 people total and we had cameras and the whole production was there. We had hundreds of people on Facebook, but It was just surreal. The whole thing was surreal.

Mazel tov! That's amazing. So now I'm in the presence of two newlyweds. Both you and our listeners know you and Jen share in common a very pandemic wedding. It's just something you'll tell your grandchildren about. Talk about— so, and speak— so speaking of telling our children, that feels like a nice segue to the thing that we do on Passover.

You guys are really good at segues, by the way.

Wait, can we get sponsored by a segue company?

So Jeff, as we head into pandemic Passover number 2.

Number 2.

Number 2. You are doing this amazing work with young adults in the Midwest over there, and you were inspired, and there's now this amazing thing in the world called Friend Seder. So can you tell us what inspired Friend Seder? And why does the world need it?

Sure. Well, Friendseder existed when I got here. It was born a couple of years ago, maybe 3 years ago at a Well retreat. And it was inspired by Friendsgiving and really designed this idea of like, oh, we need a Friendsgiving for Passover in the same way there's a Friendsgiving for Thanksgiving. And for a couple of years, as I ever understood it, it was really a resource hub for recipes and resources around the whole Jewish world, and designed, with the Haggadah designed in a way to really help empower young adults to have a Seder experience that really was, felt their own, and with the idea that they would be getting together before Passover and take something from that Friends Seder experience and bring it to their Passover table, because commonly young adults maybe don't feel so empowered at a traditional Passover Seder to be able to make changes or to shift things around and can sometimes feel, depending on the house you grew up in or your experience and when you sort of came to encounter Judaism, like a real foreign experience. So when I arrived and learned about Friends Seder, I was immediately inspired. The Well is in and around Detroit and serving young adults in the metro Detroit area and even out to Ann Arbor and other places and locally, really. But Friends Seder, I really feel, is for everybody. Like, this is an idea that needs to be bigger. And so this year, the centerpiece has really been this game that we developed to play through the Seder and let it be fun and accessible and a learning tool and really a medium for people getting together with their friends. If you're having a game night in March, you can make it the Friends Seder Game and give a nod to the Seder. If you want to have a Seder with your friends, it's designed to have a full Seder experience with your friends, and it doesn't even revolve around the dinner. We actually, little spoiler alert, in the game Shulchan Orech, we don't have dinner. We see it as an excuse to play with your food. So there are different games and challenges around playing with your food. And if you're playing the full game, you get points and you kind of pass through and go through. And I think that the world sort of needs this now because it's fun and it's playful and it's accessible. And I, and I really believe that when you can be fun and playful, it can lower the barrier to entry and doesn't have to mean that it takes away from it being meaningful or mindful. You can put those things together. And that's what we've tried to do with Friends Seder this year in the Friends Seder game.

Awesome.

I wanna play. I have mixed feelings about Passover in general this year because whatever. I, I just, because do I even need to explain? I'm just like, really? Really? Here we are again. So I think playing a game sounds like a new way to once again, reframe the ritual. Last year we said next year in person. We had no idea. We had no idea. And in some ways our ancestors didn't either, right? When they, when they ran from Egypt, they had no idea. It was a lot longer than that. I think we can see the promised land sooner than they might have, but playing our way to the end game feels really powerful to me.

I think it also takes some of the pressure off, right? I think, you know, Jeff, your description of, you know, we were in chapter 1 of the pandemic. I remember I took a picture of it and I posted on Instagram, but like I set a beautiful holiday table. And I cleaned up the detritus of remote schooling, which at that point was an even bigger joke than it is now, which is hard to imagine. But I cleaned off the table and I took out all of my favorite beautiful Passover plates and beautiful things. And I was so into it. I was like, great, this is the thing that's going to save me right now. Having a beautiful Passover table, even though it's just for the 4 of us and 2 of the us's, you know, our small children who are going to not sit still. And this year it's like, do we have that in us? And so the idea that play, right, might take some of the pressure off of having to create something that even resembles some other version of normal that now we haven't done for 2 years.

Yeah.

I think you've, I think you've put your finger on something.

So my mom was a kindergarten teacher. My dad was also a teacher and we sort of lived Passover always through the eyes of kids. In terms of acting things out and playing with plagues and making things fun and gamified. And I mean, not even, it wasn't even our family Seder. There was another family friend who hosted a Seder. You walked into her home and there was decorations everywhere. It was almost like an escape room, like a Passover escape room, but it was kids, it was all for the kids. And those were just so fun and playful and fun. I think that this, I hope something to tap into something like that, that can feel that. That kind of joy and lightness, which is, I think, part— I mean, like, I know the whole Passover experience is to live as if you were slaves in Egypt. We were saying in Art for Friends Seder, we're not living as if we were slaves in Egypt, more as if we were, you know, young adults in a pandemic in 2021 trying to look at a different way of tapping into this old tradition.

It's interesting how the aspects that we grew up with find their way back into our lives as adults, right? So for you, in some ways this is recreating the way that you grew up with Passover. And for some of us who, like, as you said, encounter Passover as adults for the very first time, or if you grew up with a particular way and you don't want to do it that way anymore, there's this power of Passover to allow us to recreate and innovate. And, and the rabbis of ancient days even imagined it that way, that when we tell the story and share it with our children, that how we do that has space for creativity and innovation.

What came up for me when you said that was just how much of Passover is really about the kids and passing the story on. And there's a great teaching that I like. I don't even know where it's from actually anymore, but it's this idea of the 4 children not sitting at the same table, but the 4 children being generational, like the the wise child is of one elder generation, and then underneath, then the next generation is the wicked child, the one who's just like countercultural to their parent, essentially. And then there's the one that— then there's the next child. Oh my gosh, that's just simple. It's like, I don't know what to do with my grandparents, my parents and grandparents. And then there's the one that just doesn't know how to ask. And in that teaching, I think like telling the story and being able to connect it to the next generation is all the more critical, and you gotta think sometimes creatively about how to do that.

What's your favorite thing about Jewish ritual? What do you think the point of Jewish ritual is? It's a big question. We have a lot of rituals, but in the context of Passover, perhaps, what is your favorite thing about ritual and why?

I love ritual. I, I teach that all the time. I say that, um, ritual is about marking time. And I think now since the pandemic, I like to think about rituals as marking maybe details that we'd otherwise overlook and small moments, not just big moments like big rituals, bar, bat mitzvahs, or b'mitzvahs, or weddings and life cycle events, but just even like Shabbat candles to me. Like if you don't mark Shabbat candles, it's really to transition from one, you know, minute to the other minute. It's like a detail that we'd otherwise overlook and miss, or havdalah. And it can really stretch out a moment, rituals. And we can sort of maybe even elevate an object like a candle or a candlestick, and all of a sudden we have a moment for some mindful meaning. And that's what I love about rituals a lot. I've been getting really into rituals over this pandemic.

Any other new ones that you've created to mark time?

Well, when the pandemic got started, Again, in chapter 1, we, my wife and I, my wife Stephanie and I really leaned into Havdalah. We never really did Havdalah. Like we had, we grew a Shabbat practice to light candles and it was also part of the job. And then Saturday night, you know, would come around and it would just sort of be a Saturday night. And then we started losing track of time in the pandemic and decided to lean into Havdalah a little bit. And we would, I would make a cocktail with like a little Havdalah cocktail. 'cause there was some cocktails like with port wine and stuff like that. I was like, oh, we could like integrate pieces here of the, of Havdalah and put it in a glass. And that was the beginning of like making a cocktail with intention and then like raising the questions that you might ask to a group of people that you like say for Havdalah, like what are you letting go of? What are you looking forward to? And those kinds of things that would start an intentional conversation. And then we'd feel a little different on the other end of it, which, and that It's just like one iteration of it. It's since come to look a few different ways, but that's the other cool thing about rituals that you can innovate it and change it around.

Did you feel a little different afterwards because you had had some tequila?

Whiskey, but no. I think different because you could really start good conversations.

I know.

But yeah, yeah. I would, like, I'm happy to share a recipe or two. I mean, what about you guys and rituals though? Really?

I feel like we both love ritual. I feel like, you know, the answer that you can say between other rabbis who like don't need the other fluff part of the answer of like, why did you become a rabbi? It's like, because you look at all the different roles that you can play in the Jewish professional world and like only rabbis get to do ritual. Like anyone can plan a program, stay in youth work or Hillel work for a long time, right? But rabbis get to do the ritual. I'm like, that's the neat part. That's the part where you're like, no, no, no, there's still something called mystery in the, in the world. There is still something that you can call it magic, you can call it mystery, but like, that's for me, that's the domain of ritual.

Well, I mean, we can call page numbers and we can hold this space, you know, like ritual is about, as you said, it's like feeling different afterwards. And yeah, we get to hold space in a way that maybe other folks don't get to. And that feels like a really big honor, especially for me, the rituals of holding space for grief, holding space for joy, which is all of the other rituals.

Little kids. Havdalah is like the Jewish ritual of families with young children, as far as I'm concerned. It's like, it's 4 minutes, there's fire, there's things that smell good. They're gonna get one more sip of juice, which is, that's maybe the most, you know, like everything about it. And again, it's like, it's the magic. It's the like, look, every other night of the week, we just say like, okay guys, it's bath time and bedtime, go to bed. And like, why is this day different from all other days? It's because like, we're going to actually do something even more special to mark the end of this particular day.

So what is, what is the magic of Passover then? What is the magic of Passover for you, Jeff?

Oh man. Like when I, the first thing I think about when it comes to the magic of Passover, it really has to do with the people that we're around and with. Like that's, that makes the memory, that makes the magic happen. And as somebody who's hosted Passover Seder, sometimes when it's over and people have left and like people are feeling up, that's like at the end, I just like, oh, shut down. Like just, it's time to now clean. And so like, that doesn't feel necessarily so magical, but I can recall different moments of, in different seders, whether it was at the house I had growing up, in my house growing up, or at my grandfather's house, or even in former Soviet Union, really, like a trip I also did with the custom with some friends during rabbinical school. There are magic moments, even just, I think, like kiddush, like making a kiddush or like lighting a candle and then like kind of having a story moment. And I think the magic is sort of watching watching other people sort of connect, I guess, to something, or like being able to facilitate that as a rabbi who can facilitate ritual. Those are, I think, where the magic moments— they're hidden. They're not, I think, so apparent because Passover is not just about one moment. It's about tying together a lot of moments, which is, I think, unique for Passover.

My Passover magic Honestly, it's— I can picture the room, the dining room that I grew up in. There were built-in cabinets, which I now as an adult am very into. But we had this round table and these chairs that were really comfy with this turquoise leather cushion. Not cute, but I loved them. Maybe they were cute. And anyways, we had this Elijah's Cup that was made by this artist who was also a family friend named Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Part.

And the wine obviously got drunk a little bit. Elijah's cup got drunk a little bit during Passover, obviously, once you open the door for him. And we grew up— I grew up with not a lot of Jews, so no one else on our street was opening the door for Elijah on that night. And it— and the magic was that, of course, the wine was always— the, the level of it was lower. Elijah must have visited our home. And eventually I knew how that worked out. Dad, I know it was you. I know it was you, Dad. I still miss that magic of looking and being shocked, sort of the wine being diminished, and knowing that it was part of a sacred game is, for me, what the magic feels like. And it's hard to find that as an adult, but I hope to create it someday.

So I have spent most of my Passovers in the Northeast, and I hate the winter. And so there's something both, like, there's the metaphor of actual Mitzrayim, and then there's, for me, like, I hate winter. And Pesach has always been such a sensory experience, and the magic for me is knowing that sometime around Pesach, and we're like a little bit early this year here, but it'll be close enough, like, I will open my door at some point and there will be a breeze that goes by and I will smell boxwood. The the cherry blossoms will come soon. It's warm enough to keep the door open during the day. And that is when like everything I eat will taste like dill and lemon. So like, it's a totally, it's a full body experience. And, but there's something magical about it, right? It's like, and to go back to the initial, to sort of my opening gambit on it, you know, I hate the winter so much and Passover like hints at like those first tastes of warm weather freedom, right? Like I can keep the door open during the day more and more and more and more. And like soon enough it will be like real spring, which in New England can sometimes also be— May. Whatever, fine. Like, and then it'll be summer, which is really our time to shine.

I think Jeff's Passover Havdalah cocktail should have dill and lemon in it.

Oh, I can make that happen.

Oh, it would be great. Like a vodka cocktail. With dill and lemon.

Or gin even, maybe.

I was thinking gin too. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

The herbaceousness. I love, I love dill. That's so still.

And lemon is totally like everything I cook for the entire week will somehow be dillish and lemonish.

Whenever I'm like, Dad, how did you make it taste like that? Like, why ask? He just added dill. I know it. He just added dill. And he also added Osem soup mix, which has basically no soup in it and no vegetables. In all MSG.

My husband is Persian. And so some of my newer Passover magic in the past few years has been like opening my eyes beyond the Ashken normativity of Passover that I grew up with. And so new Passover magic is the 7th inning stretch that is Dayenu and chasing each other around the dining room table with leeks and hitting each other. We had to switch to scallions because my kids get a little intense and leeks can hurt. Leeks are like a green vegetable. So we use scallions. Also, we eat rice. So we eat rice throughout Passover because that's how my husband grew up. And I'm very happy to have married into that reality. That's good for me. And there's an amazing Persian rice dish. There's all sorts of ways to make it, but the, the real, the part you look forward to is the tadig, like the crispy potato crusty bottom, fried at the bottom of a huge pot of rice. And Josh makes green rice for Passover. Which is— so the fried potato bottom crust, and then like enough rice that like a normal American person's like, who's going to eat all that rice? And like a Persian person knows like, we are, and it's probably not enough. So like a massive amount of rice filled with fresh dill and baby lima beans. And it's green rice. And the rice is— you put so much dill in that it literally like a bowl of it looks green. It's not flecks. It's like a lot of dill. And baby lima beans and it's so delicious. And we now, now I'm like, that's not enough rice. Use the bigger pot.

I would love that recipe, really.

I can, I can do this. That sounds so good.

Put it on the website too. We'll do that too. Right next to all the tea.

Famous! FriendsAider.com. Rice cakes and the cocktail, obviously. Favorite Manischewitz flavor?

Concord grape all the way. Only one.

Yeah, wait, Jen, is there something you need to tell us? Do you think there's another option?

So one year I was running a program called Seder Squad, which was in the similar vein of Friends Seder, helping young adults figure out how to bring Passover home with them. And I did all the food taste testing. So I got multiple types of gefilte fish, all the types of maror horseradish, and then a number of flavors of, of matzah shevitz as well, juice and wine. And I have positive feelings towards the— I believe it's called the cream blush Manischewitz.

Never had. I get thumbs up.

Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good. Um, favorite flavor of macaroon? I mean, for the Manischewitz in a tin type, to be clear.

Yeah, I think plain for me.

I can like really get with almost any of them except for the mint. I think I saw a mint one at Stop and Shop last year and I was like, I don't think so.

Ugh, gross. Yeah, I think they all taste the same no matter what flavors they put in. When I was doing the taste testing, I was leading the Seder and I think I took a bite of maror. Bitter, right? Really, really pungent. And I needed to wash it down, so I grabbed a cup that was next to me and took a swig. Salt water.

Fuck.