Seders in the Tropics
If there were a Guinness Book of Jewish World Records, there might be an entry for Seders Celebrated in the Most Random Set of Countries. If so, I’d be a prime contender for that title.
Vanuatu might be famous today for having hosted a slew of “Survivor” episodes on television. But when we observed Passover there, it was one of the most obscure places on earth. Indeed, in 1991 the then-10-yearold- country – previously known as the New Hebrides – didn’t even have television. Perhaps its only Jewish connection was that Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers immortalized one of the islands in their Broadway hit South Pacific. Yet three decades later, it was on Vanuatu that I had my own debut of sorts, conducting a seder for the first time as a head of family – in French.
Vanuatu, a Melanesian archipelago, had been governed jointly by England and France in what was called a condominium arrangement during its colonial era. For nearly a century France and Britain had competed for the hearts, minds, and tongues of the islanders. After independence, the country was still split between nominally English- and French-speaking citizens. In reality, the cleavage broke down between Protestants and Catholics. Being the rare Jew made it easier for me to navigate Vanuatu’s tricky theopolitical shoals as I did social science research.
France still retained a strong presence, especially in education. Indeed, the premier institution of education was the Lycée Français in the nation’s capital city, Port Vila, which was staffed, managed, and funded by France’s ministries of education and foreign affairs. As mazal would have it, the principal of the lycée at the time was a bearded, distinguished-looking Frenchman of North African origin, a Sephardic Jew.
Simon Alezrah had not participated in many seders during his years as a teacher and principal in France’s far-flung overseas colonies and ex-colonies. Ours was his first Conservative seder – not to mention the only seder celebrated in all of Vanuatu. But Monsieur Alezrah also knew some fellow tribesmen (Sephardic, not Melanesian) who had relocated from the nearby French territory of New Caledonia to expand their jewelry trade. Fortunately, my ritualistically forward-thinking wife had packed a French-language haggadah in January, when we took off from Boston on my sixmonth Fulbright grant, our 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son in tow.
“And what about the matzah?” you may ask. The nearest Jewish community is one thousand trans-Pacific Ocean miles away, in Australia, so thanks to the Chabad of Sydney, for the first time my family and guests observed the mitzvah of consuming handbaked shmura matzah.
Mauritius is another French- and English- (and Creole-) speaking island-nation whose grocery stores rarely stock matzah. Settled by the Dutch, colonized by the French, and then conquered by the British, this Indian Ocean republic is home to descendants of slaves from Africa and indentured servants from India. Most of the population is Hindu; Islam is the second most widely observed faith. But during World War II some of the most poignant seders in modern history were celebrated there. Fifteen hundred Jews, fleeing the pharaoh of twentieth-century Europe, made it across the Mediterranean in two rickety boats, arriving at the shores of the Holy Land only to be arrested by the British for attempted illegal entry into Palestine. They were deported to a detention camp on Mauritius. Thanks to the nearest Jewish community – this time two thousand miles away in South Africa – they at least could eat the bread of affliction while ruing their lack of freedom.
Today, one of the most popular attractions on the island is a crocodile farm owned and operated by a nice Jewish boychik from Australia. Think Crocodile Dundee with yiddishkeit. Owen enjoys local yichus; a not-too-distant ancestor had been deported from England to Britain’s down under penal colony for some petty larceny.
Within days of our arrival, in 1996, to begin another Fulbright-sponsored year abroad, Owen somehow heard about us and phoned from his farm. By the time Passover rolled around in the winter (seasons are reversed under the equator), we were such good friends that he asked if he could sponsor that year’s seder for all the island’s Jews in our more centrally located home. So we found ourselves hosting about 40 fellow tribesmen and friends of tribesmen.
We were amply provided with matzah and the other requisite accoutrements thanks to Owen’s far-flung connections, which even netted us a visiting American rabbi. Yet the biggest wonder of that year’s Passover was the matzah balls that my mother cooked, froze, and delivered in person, even though she returned to New York before the seder to spend the holiday with more homebound mishpocha.
In the category of most humbling tropical Passover experience, the hands-down winner would be our seder in Cochin, India. In 1987 we were guided clear across the subcontinent’s southern plain by Abe Aboody, a Bombay Jewish book printer whom we had befriended at our year-long home in Pondicherry, on India’s southeast coast.
Abe was sure that the venerable Koder family of Cochin would welcome us for the festival, even though he didn’t actually know them. By the 1980s India’s three Jewish communities – Bombay, Cochini, and Bene Israel – no longer were isolated from one another, as they had been for centuries. Nor was the traditional segregation between the “black” and “white” Jews in caste-conscious India still observed. For sure, residual intra- Jewish racism had not disappeared entirely. But, as I realized during a service in one of Cochin’s few functioning but still exquisite ancient synagogues, I was one of its bearers.
I had been called up for an aliyah. Unlike Abe Aboody and the Koder clan, the Torah reader was a “black” Jew. “How quaint,” I thought to myself. As this funny, you-don’tlook- Jewish character chanted directly from the Torah, I started to “assist” him, chanting the portion a nanosecond behind him, reading from my humash. (Unlike the actual Torah scroll, the humash has vowels for phonetic pronunciation.) Looking exasperated, raising his hand impatiently, the Torah reader shut me up. He knew Torah much better than I, and I should have known better than to distract him. In terms of judging who is a real Jew, he put me in my place. For good.
At the Koder family seder I was humbled again. It was there that I met P. D. Yehudi, a thick bearded man of dark Sephardic complexion and the intense eyes of a hasid. Only he was not Sephardic; nor was Yehudi his original name. Prem Doss, of Trivandrum, Kerala, was born and raised a Hindu, converting to Judaism as an adult. He brought to his Judaism an intensity, a discipline and spirituality that I realized I was incapable of bringing to mine. Was it because growing up infused with Hinduism provides a head start on transcendence and the Eternal? All I know is that this Indian ger (convert) exuded a Jewish aura that greatly surpassed my Long Island-inflected Jewishness.
Martinique, April 2002. For once, there is no kosher-for-Passover supply challenge. This Caribbean island has a very tightknit and well-organized community, made up mostly of French Jews from North Africa. Although eight thousand miles away, France is not only still the mother country but also the provider of all kosher food needs. I couldn’t help bursting with laughter when a visiting grandmother asked with great concern how we Jews in America manage if we can’t import matzah from Marseilles.
Rabbi Yehuda Erharar, the community’s volatile spiritual leader, was born in Morocco and grew up speaking Hebrew mixed with Arabic at home and French in the street. When his family felt compelled to leave North Africa, he insisted that they move to France. When his parents then decided to make aliyah, he insisted on going to America, which is how he came to attend Yeshiva High School in New York City.
But it was in Haifa that he finished his secondary education. After six years in Israel and army service, he moved to Ireland for his first job, working on a butcher crew. That experience landed him the job of ritual slaughterer for the Jewish community in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Rav Erharar also served as assistant to the chief rabbi of Panama. In the meantime, he was ordained twice – once in Israel and once in Philadelphia.
It is at this rabbi’s table in the French Antilles that we attended the most multilingual of all our tropical seders. (Somewhere along the line, le rabbin also picked up Ladino.) Rav Erharar’s family was not with him, and it was a challenge for him to prepare dinner for dozens of guests by himself, aided only by a Creole helper whom he overwhelmed and mystified with the arcana of Passover kashrut and seder protocol.
Oddly, there was only one overseas seder where I felt uncomfortable. There was plenty of matzah at that seder, and everyone had a haggadah. But I sat there, surrounded by hundreds of bare-headed Jewish men, and I felt uncomfortable because I was sitting at a seder table wearing a kippah.
I know that the gatekeepers at my internal Guinness Book of Jewish World Records would question this entry. This seder, at a secular kibbutz, was in Israel, hardly a place where you can have a random seder. Israel, after all, is the center of the Jewish world.
I’d have to concede them that point. But I have learned that it is only when you look at what you take for granted at seders in Israel, in North America, and in other centers of Jewish life, that you truly appreciate what you find around the world.
Dr. William Miles teaches in the political science department at Northeastern University in Boston.
