From Scarcity to Abundance- A Passover Seder to Remember

A short talk for the Germantown Jewish Center morning prayer service  
Thursday April 2,  2015

The second half of Parashat Shemini (11:1-47) of the Torah that is read this week introduces the topic of everyday Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws.

Now with Pesach coming, we also add on the layer of Kosher L’Pesach the dietary laws to help to fine tune this practice for the 8 days of the Passover holiday. We live in a place with easy access to foods and goodies to make our seders festive. But I want to tell you a story of a time during the Civil War when it was not so easy to find everything needed.

To set the scene: April 3 is the 150^th anniversary of the fall of Richmond which would soon lead to the various surrenders in 1865.  I have been studying this for a year to prepare for a trip to experience the reenactments of Lee’s retreat and surrender at Appomattox on April 9. It is there where Lee and Grant sat in a simple house to write the words that would give the confederate soldiers the freedom to return to their homes. This year the anniversary is smack in the middle of Pesach. In 1865, Pesach was celebrated on April 11.

So here is one story during the Civil War  when 19-year-old Private Joseph Joel of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry organized a seder in 1862 with 20 others in his regiment who were encamped in West Virginia. (which split off from Virginia to be a free state)

Their commander, Rutherford B. Hayes (the future 19^th president) gave them permission to take the time to celebrate.  To begin the soldiers sent someone to Cincinnati, Ohio. They found a Jewish merchant who sent them “seven barrels of Matzos” along with “two Hagodahs and prayer-books.”

A number of the Jewish soldiers were dispatched to the countryside to find various food items for the festive Seder meal while others stayed behind “to build a log hut for the service,” a possible reference to a temporary synagogue.

They improvised the rest.

For maror they found a weed, whose bitterness, Joel wrote “exceeded anything our forefathers ‘enjoyed.’

Instead of Charoset he wrote, “ We got a brick which, rather hard to digest, reminded us, by looking at it, for what purpose it was intended.” That evening, Joel and the 20 other Jewish soldiers sat down and conducted the Seder.   “There, in the wild woods of West Virginia, away from home and friends, we consecrated and offered up to the ever-loving God of Israel our prayers and sacrifice,”  he wrote.


The ceremonies were passing off very nicely, until we arrived at the part where the bitter herb was to be taken. We all had a large portion of the herb ready to eat at the moment I said the blessing; each eat his portion, when horrors! what a scene ensued in our little congregation, it is impossible for my pen to describe. The herb was very bitter and very fiery like Cayenne pepper, and excited our thirst to such a degree, that we forgot the law authorizing us to drink only four cups, and the consequence was we drank up all the cider. Those that drank the more freely became excited, and one thought he was Moses, another, Aaron, and one had the audacity to call himself a Pharaoh.

The consequence was a skirmish, with nobody hurt, only Moses, Aaron and Pharaoh, had to be carried to the camp, and there left in the arms of Morpheus. This slight incident did not take away our appetite, and, after doing justice to our lamb, chickens, and eggs, we resumed the second portion of the servce without anything occurring worthy of note.

“I doubt whether the spirits of our forefathers, had they been looking down on us, standing there with our arms by our side ready for an attack, faithful to our God and our cause, could have imagined themselves enacting in this way this commemoration of the scene that transpired in Egypt,”.

While a number of the participants in that memorable Passover commemoration later died in battle, Joel survived a number of wounds and after the war he moved to Staten Island with his wife.
So, as we eat in ease and abundance, freedom and comfort, let’s remember those who continue to fight in conflicts for whom the freedom to celebrate this year must be done with watchfulness, and creativity.

Hag Sameach

For the full story in the Rutherford B. Hayes collection go to

Seder of 1862 

Marching on to Richmond

A year ago I wrote a chorus of a song for which I had no deep knowledge:

Hip hip hooray we are marching on to Richmond
You'll see us come with the Stars and Stripes held high
Hip hip hooray we are marching on to Richmond
Jeff Davis better slip away tonight

It was a rousing melody of momentum for an ending to the war, but I was still at the beginning of my journey, so knew little about what went into the fall of Richmond and the aftermath. Just couldn't write the verses, so that is where the writing stopped.  Last [Saturday] night, almost exactly a year later, among 20 songwriters after a day of songwriting at the Philadelphia Area Songwriting Alliance (PASA) winter Songworks I wrote 4 verses in 15 minutes, distilling some of the most vivid elements of this dramatic fall of the Confederate capital.

In some ways  I felt my own triumph at being able to fashion from what I had learned 4 succinct verses that invoke the horror, the release, some humor, and finally the bravado that only the eventual victor can have.  It was a release for me to write without apology a Union victory song.

Perhaps it is fitting that the verses were written at this time-one week before the anniversary date, and as it happens, one week before the Festival of Freedom, the Passover seder.

To listen, go to: Marching on to Richmond

Chorus

Hip hip hooray

We are marching on to Richmond

You’ll see us come

with the Stars and Stripes held high

Hip hip hooray

We are marching on to Richmond

Jeff Davis better slip away tonight

These last 4 bloody years,

was all that we could bear

We’ve circled round this capital

And now we’re finally here

Hip hip hooray

We are marching on to Richmond

You’ll see us come

with the Stars and Stripes held high

Hip hip hooray

We are marching on to Richmond

Jeff Davis better slip away tonight

General U S Grant

Came here from the west

He’ll take us on to victory

With cigar in hand

Chorus

We see the city burning

[Tredagar] Iron works ablaze

It’s time we took charge of things

Now we’ve got them on the chase

Chorus

Sherman’s marching north

After Johnston’s tale

Lee’s army of Virginia.

Let’s throw them all in jail!

My cup runneth over

Just when I think I've found every corner of Civil War online resource, I am introduced to yet another, and another. Tonight at our third and last week of the Appomattox campaign class, Pat showed dynamic maps of the battles that trace the journey from Richmond/Petersburg to Appomattox. At the end of class, she gave me a few of these in color, but I had noted that they came from the website civilwar.com, the site of the Civil War Trust.

Yet another nearly bottomless treasure full of static maps, animated maps, historical maps, 360 degree views, Civil War trust preservation days. Names that I am familiar with, others to become.

The journey to Appomattox one month to go

The pieces are coming together as I begin a 3 session class about the Battle of Appomattox that after the first session brought me to tears. Tears for the men who died even one week before the key surrender (though of course not the end of the war). Hearing about the siege of Petersburg, seeing the maps that show the whole region from Richmond to Appomattox, having read and gotten to know through books and reenactments and symposiums and trips and songwriting some of the people and events over the past year. Amazing. I feel like I know these men and women somewhat and can feel the heartbreaking end as it draws near.

So why the tears. From the beginning, I, like many was intrigued by the brilliance and fighting spirit of General Lee and his corps of generals and soldiers.Yet horrified by the damage that was done in their names. So as I hear about Lee's words in a letter to to 'President' Davis that he received during St. Paul Sunday church services, that it was time to evacuate Richmond, I felt the sadness and defeat to come. 

I think it is absolutely necessary that we should abandon our position tonight…

Telegram from Robert E. Lee, in Petersburg, to Jefferson Davis, in Richmond, April 2, 1865. 
 (quoted in The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac, 1861-1865, E.B. Long with Barbara Long 1971; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), 663)

Jefferson Davis  abandoned the capital late that night on a train bound for Danville, Virginia.He was eventually captured on May 10  Description of Jefferson Davis' capture

Lee held on with 55, 000 men against the Union's 100,000 Army of the Potomac, the James and the Shenendoah as they thwarted his efforts to reach Danville in the south. These Federals created parallel lines in an attempt to outrun Lee's 4 converging lines of soldiers, calvary, wagons and even sailors unused to forced marches.

I can see the path now that I want to take over the course of the week that I'll be travelling. Richmond for a day, Petersburg and surroundings, then west to Appomattox stopping along the trail of defeat. Joined I hope by a friend during the week and then to the mountains west for the end.

The route of Lee's retreat and the battles between Richmond and Appomattox

Joined, or course, by thousands of others on the same journey. One month to go.

Richmond vignettes

Before the second of three classes on Appomattox campaign, I stop to pick up a library book called
Five Days in 1865, The Fall of Richmond. It is a series of historical/fictionalized vignettes taken from journals and memoirs that begins on the morning of  April 2.

The book opens with a bucolic description of a Sunday morning in Richmond as people attend church in their usual manner. But this would not be a normal day, as Jefferson Davis, receiving Episcopal communion for the first time, then  receives a note from Lees' messenger telling him to leave Richmond.

All around the city, soldiers receiving the news, get up from their pews and prepare to join their regiments. Throughout the afternoon, each short story highlights the drama of the day as people of all stations and walks of life make decisions about what to take with them, how to hide their valuables, or how to steal valuables from untended stores.
Whiskey barrels roll down the road, breaking into shards, with liquor spilling out onto the streets.

After all, nothing of what they have should go to the invading forces.

And then the order to burn, burn burn the remaining supplies and armaments. Dry tobacco goes up in flames, ships off shore are blown up, creating tremors throughout the town.

 Soon the city will be ablaze.

Yankee Doodle revisited

From a book of southern poetry and song.

Oh! say has the star spangled banner become
The flag of the Tory and vile Northern scum?

and

Yankee Doodle had a mind
To whip the Southern Traitors
Because they didn't choose to live
On codfish and potatoes
Yankee doodle doodle doo
Yankee doodle dandy
And so to keep his courage up
He took a  sip of brandy