I’ve just been introduced to your Website, blogs, Newsletters and I’m loving it. This Seder edition was great and reminded me of my past Seders, especially the ones that were celebrated with the people who are no longer on this earth.

My dad and grandmother were holocaust survivors and were probably 2 of the most gracious people I have ever known. How they could be so gracious and accepting of of all people regardless of race, religion or age always amazed me, especially with the hardships they had to go through. My grandmother was 1 of 7 children, her whole family was wiped out. Her Husband, my father’s, father was killed by Nazi Soldiers who after promising the men of the town he lived in that their lives would be spared if they helped build a bridge between 2 small towns. The men were lined up thanked for their hard work and gunned down. My father was deaf. He was born a normal hearing boy, but at the age of 5, sick with fever and in arms of my grandmother, as they were trying to flee Poland to Austria they were caught between villages after curfew by a Nazi soldier. My grandmother with a fake passport and my father dressed as a girl (which prevented any soldiers pulling down a boys pants, trying to detect a circumcision and a Jew) were stopped by the solider. My father was crying and the soldier asked my grandmother to quiet the girl (boy), she pleaded for mercy and told the soldier she was on her way to her sister’s house the next town over. The soldier asked for her to quiet the Girl (boy) again and as she was clutching him in her arms, he just reared up with rifle in his hands and hit my father in the head with the butt of the rifle. It quieted him right up. Knocked him out cold. When I was a child my father used to have me feel the dent in his skull that eventually closed off and damaged the nerves in his brain that controlled his hearing. He never once had any hatred for anything or anyone. he married a deaf woman who grew up on a farm in West Virginia, protestant girl who agreed to convert to Judaism.

My grandmother was always the center of our family, matriarch if you will, because she valued every single minute of her life, especially Passover Seders. When doing the prayer to let The Angel Elijah into our home, My Grandfather would say the prayer in Hebrew, my grandmother would go over to the door and hold it open to let the Angel in, unbeknownst to me at the time, she would pull feathers out of her pillow and hold them in her hand and as she opened the door she would let the feathers fly into the house, then my grandfather would tap the table so that the Wine Cup for Elijah would vibrate and My grandmother would announce, "The Angel is here with us again see the feathers, see the cup as he drinks"

These days we talk about those wonderful times and the wonderful people and we say a special prayer for the people who are no longer with us. My son is 18 and no longer the youngest, but since the youngest is only 2 he says the 4 questions.

Thanks Bob, for sharing your traditions of past and new traditions that you seem to have embraced into your family now. Lechaim! To Life!.

Frank Teger