Passover

Everyone has a favorite recipe for Passover brisket, passed down through the generations or discovered online. But dessert is another matter. Dietary laws forbid the use of yeast, flour and baking powder at Passover. It's a restriction that stumps beginning bakers and challenges even the most experienced. That explains why nearly 45 women (and three men - two husbands and a son) signed up to sip wine, sample hors d'oeuvres, and learn from the James Beard-award-winning chef and cookbook author Aliza Green, who conducted a class on baking for Passover last month at the kosher restaurant Max & David's.

Today is both Good Friday and the start of Passover. For Christians, the day recalls the crucifixion of Jesus on a hill outside Jerusalem's walls. Catholics, Episcopalians and some Lutherans mark the day with solemn observances, including the Stations of the Cross, which traced Jesus's journey from when he was condemned to death to his quick burial in tomb; and Tenebrae, a service during which candles are gradually extinguished while a series of readings and psalms are said or chanted.

Passover, the Jewish festival commemorating the release of the Isrealites from slavery in Egypt, begins at sunset tonight. The eight-day holiday is celebrated on the first two nights with a meal called the Seder. Focal points of the Seder include eating matzah, eating bitter herbs to commemorate the bitterness of slavery, rinking four cups of wine or grape juice to celebrate freedom and recitation of the Haggadah, a liturgy that describes the story of the Exodus from Egypt. During the eight days of passover, Jews refrain from eating leavened bread, replacing it with matzah to commemorate the unleavened bread the Israelites ate in their hurried flight from Egypt.

Every year during this season Jews gather around the Passover table to retell the story of our liberation from Egypt. In the tradition surrounding the seder, we are taught that part of the obligation of Passover is to regard oneself as having been personally freed from bondage and that it is particularly praiseworthy to expand on the story of Exodus. The traditional Haggadah recounts not only the redemption from Egypt, but also that seder night long ago when five rabbis gathered to talk of resistance to the Roman Empire.

About 90 people turned out at an Ascension of Our Lord Roman Catholic Church, F and Westmoreland Streets, yesterday for a model Seder, the traditional Passover meal. Led by Rabbi Daniel P. Parker of Temple Zion in Huntingdon Valley, the meal was designed to familiarize Christians with the custom. Among the items central to the Seder are, right, (clockwise from the wine) the eggs; charoset, a sweet mixture of nuts, fruit and wine; horseradish; greens and, in the center, saltwater. Above the Seder plate is the matzo, or unleavened bread; below it is the Haggada, which tells the story of the ancient Hebrews' escape from slavery in Egypt.

Passover week starts at sundown today, and traditionally extended families gather in homes for a recounting of the Jewish exodus from Egypt and the sharing of the seder, a ritual meal with courses steeped in symbolism. The story is retold, typically read from a text called the Haggadah, of how God, angered by the pharoah's refusal to release the Jews from slavery, killed the first-born sons of Egypt, but "passed over" Jewish homes. After the parting of the Red Sea helped the Jews escape, God gave Moses the 10 Commandments and the people wandered the desert for 40 years before reaching the promised land of Israel, according to biblical accounts.

Like other "nouvelle cuisine" these days, Jewish cooking has "gone light," as 35 of the 70 members of the Raquela Hadassah discovered last week when they gathered at the Kings Supermarket Cooking Studio at Main Street, Voorhees, for a kosher cooking demonstration. Culinary expert Shirley Rubinstein of Cinnaminson, a frequent instructor at Kings, and assistants Jessica Rudner, Joan Duffield and Ann Fitzpatrick, prepared a six-course meal last Wednesday several light years removed from traditional Passover fare.

Why is this toy different from all other toys? For one thing, the Plagues Bag helps children understand the story of Passover, the Jewish holiday about the Jews' exodus from Egypt in biblical times. The story of Passover, recounted each year at the ritual seder meal, is not usually the stuff of fun and games. "I grew up [in Philadelphia] reading the story from rote," said Simon Jaffe, executive director of the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan New Jersey in West Orange, N.J. "It was something we tried to rush through to get to the food.

The slim, blue volume appears at first glance no different from other books used at Passover meals to recount the ancient story of Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt. But unlike other Passover books, it has no prayers, no references to God except as a figure in ancient myth. The blue-bound book is a haggada, a collection of readings and songs to be used at the seder, the holiday meal of Passover. But it is - as its subtitle proclaims - a haggada "for a secular celebration of Pesach (Passover)

The Women of Reform Judaism of Beth David Reform Congregation, 1130 Vaughns Lane, Gladwyne, will host a women's Passover conference and lunch from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday. The conference will include spiritual and creative workshops connecting women and Passover. The cost is $20. Reservations may be made by calling 610-896-7485. PROGRAMS Stefanie Seltzer, a member of the speakers bureau of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia and past president of Child Survivors of the Holocaust local chapter, will discuss "The Hidden Child: Child Survivors of the Holocaust" at 7 p.m. next Wednesday at Woodside Cottage, Haverford College, 370 Lancaster Ave. The program is sponsored by Hillel for students at suburban college campuses.

Two days before the festival that celebrates the Jews' freedom from slavery, a class at Mishkan Shalom synagogue in Philadelphia burned pieces of paper that symbolized their liberation from another kind of bondage. They were private confessions, written on notes of paper. Rabbi Yael Levy set the fire to mark each person's transformation to a new place that would start during Passover, which begins at sundown Friday. The group was preparing for a ritual called Counting the Omer, a practice that begins on the second day of Passover and continues for 49 days.

Today is both Good Friday and the start of Passover. For Christians, the day recalls the crucifixion of Jesus on a hill outside Jerusalem's walls. Catholics, Episcopalians and some Lutherans mark the day with solemn observances, including the Stations of the Cross, which traced Jesus's journey from when he was condemned to death to his quick burial in tomb; and Tenebrae, a service during which candles are gradually extinguished while a series of readings and psalms are said or chanted.

I grew up in a rural town where there were only two Jewish families and, although one of the boys was a close friend in high school, I never thought to ask him what he was eating instead of the tuna noodle casserole and other standbys we Catholics were consuming. With age came diverse neighbors and brazen mooching at their tables, especially on holidays. I've now been to a multitude of Passover seders and have heard for two types of food-related conversations there: ones about heirloom Jewish family recipes that commemorate the ancient Israelites' hasty flight from slavery in Egypt; and spirited debates about what is acceptable to eat on the holiday, which this year begins at sunset on Friday with the ritual seder dinner and continues for seven days.

Parchment paper or vegetable cooking spray, for the baking sheet ½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter or nondairy margarine, at room  temperature 2 cups sugar 6 large eggs, at room temperature 1 teaspoon kosher-for-Passover  vanilla 2½ cups matzoh cake meal ¾ cup potato starch 4 cups (two 12-ounce bags) semisweet chocolate chips 1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or spray it. Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes.

What a divine season it is for Jesus on Broadway. On one stage, nuns make a joyful noise in Sister Act. On another, he figures highly in The Book of Mormon . Yet another has him as the central figure in Godspell . And he is now in revival - here, we're talking Broadway more than theology - in an effusive Jesus Christ Superstar , the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that opened Thursday. It's full of powerful, melodic '70s-tinged music - the show premiered in 1971 and "I Don't Know How to Love Him" broke out to become a hit. The score, with Rice's clever lyrics and Lloyd Webbers many fanfare songs, is great fun to hear again, or probably also for the first time.

It was a dark and stormy night. No, really. So dark and so stormy in the play The Whipping Man , or maybe just in Arden Theatre Company's production of it, that The Constant Metaphor blasts you from the first crash of thunder to the last flash of lightning, when mist and fog are rolling in through a door and rain pours through the show's sound design. I was ducking by then, sure that the Arden stage crew would run through the aisles with buckets to drench us just in case anybody missed the point.

IN THE CALM before the Game 7 storm last night at the Wells Fargo Center, Broad Street Bully gazed out at the ice and wondered, "Will the crowd be roaring, 'Booosh!' or 'Booo!'?" By the second period, he realized that it would be "Booosh!" all the way. Brian Boucher made 26 saves on 28 shots last night as the Flyers beat the Buffalo Sabres, 5-2, to advance to the Eastern Conference semifinals. "The floodgates finally opened," said relieved and happy lifelong die-hard Mike Greenspun, 50, of Cherry Hill.

Passover week starts at sundown today, and traditionally extended families gather in homes for a recounting of the Jewish exodus from Egypt and the sharing of the seder, a ritual meal with courses steeped in symbolism. The story is retold, typically read from a text called the Haggadah, of how God, angered by the pharoah's refusal to release the Jews from slavery, killed the first-born sons of Egypt, but "passed over" Jewish homes. After the parting of the Red Sea helped the Jews escape, God gave Moses the 10 Commandments and the people wandered the desert for 40 years before reaching the promised land of Israel, according to biblical accounts.

Lila Bricklin is director of development at North Light Community Center in Manayunk Monday night during the seder meal, Jews worldwide will relive the redemption of the Israelites as written in the book of Exodus. The Haggadah - the book used to guide the seder and a word that means to tell, or the telling - says that in every generation each Jew must feel personally redeemed; we're supposed to embrace the exodus from Egypt as part of our own experience. As history has played out the last three months across North Africa and the Middle East, I feel like I've borne witness to the Passover story on my TV and laptop.

The small gray loose-leaf binder is tattered. The typewritten letters - yes, from a typewriter - are fading. But for Jane Portnoy, that book is a vital taproot to her passion for cooking. It holds the recipes she started collecting growing up on the South Shore of Long Island, a mostly Jewish enclave, the place where her mother, Helen Zuger, a superb cook, diligently taught her daughter. The lessons took. Through college at Mount Holyoke, in the early years of marriage, when she worked as a French teacher, through medical school at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, and over the years cooking for her family, Portnoy has referred to that little gray book.