KAPAHI – Cass Foster and his wife Nellie visited Kauai seven years ago.
They would return — and stay.
“People embrace each other regardless of their differences,” said Foster. “There’s a nice sense of family. It’s very comforting. And there’s a level of respect people have for different religions.”
The Fosters are Jewish. They said there are probably a considerable number of Jewish people on the island who don’t join in group worship because they don’t want to be part of an organized denomination.
“The first time I wore my yamaka out in public on the island, somebody stopped me and commented saying, ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen that.’”
So today, the Fosters will open their Kapahi home to friends for their annual seder dinner, which celebrates the beginning of the Jewish holiday, Passover. Normally the ceremony and dinner filled with deep-rooted symbolism can be a three-hour ordeal.
This year, the Fosters and their guests will put to practice the abbreviated-but-legitimate version of the dinner following all the rules in his book titled “The 60-Minute Seder: Preserving the Essence of a Passover Haggadah.”
Each food item on the seder plate holds meaning. There’s the shank bone, the egg, the bitter herbs, the paste, the vegetable and the lettuce.
The shank bone, for example, is a piece of roasted meat that represents the lamb that was the special Paschal sacrifice on the eve of the Jews exodus from Egypt.
“We substitute a stalk of celery since we don’t eat meat,” said Nellie. “It reminds us how fortunate we are to be free, unlike our ancestors.”
The lettuce symbolizes the bitter enslavement of Jews in Egypt, according to chabad.com. The leaves of romaine lettuce are not bitter, but the stem, when left to grow in the ground, turns hard and bitter.
It symbolizes the deceitful approach of Pharaoh in the early days which appeared soft and sensible, but gradually changed to forced and cruel labor practices.
“The horseradish on the seder plate makes you cry,” said Nellie.
They are tears, she explained, for what their ancestors were forced to endure under Egyptian slavery 3,500 years ago.
Nellie’s aunt, a native of Hungary who has passed away, still plays a role in their hearts during their seder meal.
“I always make her special chicken with onions, celery, peppers and a sweet and tangy sauce,” said Nellie.
Cass said his grandmother’s seder plate, an heirloom that was used for decades during her Passover celebrations, was handed down to him when she passed.
Cass credits his Grandma, Emma Weiss, for his beliefs today.
“Whatever I did, I had her whole support,” said Cass.
He senses a similar support on Kauai.
“I certainly feel the spirituality on the island and a sense of a higher power,” Cass said. “Everybody seems to take it slow here because we’re already where we want to be.”
Info: email the Fosters at SixtyMinuteSeder@gmail.com.
