Passover in Times of Corona

The “Berlin Tisch” project originally wanted to connect as many guests and hosts as possible for Passover seders. Because of the new coronavirus, their concept changed:

“Nearly 120 households signed up for a Passover parcel from Berlin Tisch. A motivated team jumped into action and distributed haggadahs, matzah, charoset, and maror throughout the city – without any personal contact with the people who ordered it, of course, but with plenty of personal dedication. This helped many people celebrate Passover at home without having to travel around the city themselves.” – Nina Peretz

Photo: Freunde der Synagoge Fraenkelufer e. V., 2020

Together with a friend, Ruth Zeifert and her daughters Rahel and Golde filmed a video about the ten plagues. They took the day off from homeschooling, turned the kitchen table into an arts-and-crafts station, painted the ten plagues, wrote a script, and recorded the narration: “It was terribly exciting and very pleasant and meaningful.”
Video from 2020

“There were seven of us on three screens, with me outside on my roof terrace! Jake specially prepared a coronafied haggadah. It was nice, except each of us had to do EVERYTHING! So much charoset! The songs were lots of fun, but they didn’t really work so well because the audio in Zoom has a short lag time and ultimately each person has to sing for themselves – but we all finished at about the same time! ... It was nice that it worked out, but I’m still looking forward to next year’s seder with everyone at the same table!” —Allison Brown

Photo: Allison Brown, 2020

This year, Chabad Berlin put together 1500 Passover packs for members, families, and seniors in need. Volunteers put together the parcels and delivered them personally to save seniors and at-risk groups from leaving the house unnecessarily.
Chabad Berlin, photo: Jana Erdmann, 2020

“I spent a whole day cooking the chicken soup we all love, as well as a bunch of matzah balls and charoset – a friend of mine and some of my family came before the seder to pick it all up, carefully wrapped, on the street. The seder was correspondingly modest, very tasty, and we all followed the history of the exodus alongside the epidemic it caused (plagues) separately from our own tables at home. Passover 2020 was something we will probably be telling the next generations about in detail.” —Irene Runge

Photo: Irene Runge, 2020

The Huberman family had their seder between Berlin and Israel.
Photo: Sapir Huberman, 2020

Karen Engel and her daughters put together a little cookbook titled Seder for One. The recipes are kosher, mostly vegan, pareve, and vegetarian.
The introduction reads:
“Jews all over the world celebrate Pesach with family and friends. In this year of the coronavirus, Jews all over the world are quarantined at home, many alone with a small family. But nevertheless, we can still make our own little Pesach seder special and meaningful.”

Photo: Janina Engel, 2020

With adequate distance, fresh air, a Zoom conference with Israel, and separate tables, three Jewish families conducted an Israeli-French-Swiss seder in the yard of their Berlin home. “It was the strangest but also the most creative and relaxed Seder I ever had,” commented one of the participants.
Photo: Seger Pessach, 2020

“This year, we held our seder at home as a small family, myself, my husband, my son (8), and my daughter (5). My parents-in-law in Berlin and my brother-in-law in Israel were there via Skype. We took turns reading from the Haggadah as always. It was just a bit harder with the songs sometimes because of the slight time lag. In the photo, my son is showing the computer the gift he got for finding the afikoman.” — Hannah Bloch Markowski

Photo: Hannah Bloch Markowski, 2020

“I spent the summer semester of 2020 at the American Academy in Berlin. On Passover, I found myself there not only without any family, but as the only Jewish fellow. My ‘seder for one’ was an attempt to maintain something of the Jewish tradition. Kevin Jerome Everson was also a fellow. He’s a wonderful photographer and filmmaker. He is exploring the lives of Black workers in the American Midwest and the legacy of slavery in the United States.” —Prof. Liliane Weissberg

Photo: Kevin Jerome Everson, 2020

“My parents and my brother in Israel, one sister in one house in Israel, another sister in the Netherlands, and me in Berlin. A distance of 3365 kilometers, but it feels close...” —Rinat Gad

Photo: Rinat Gad, 2020