Celebrating Passover In Alaska!

Hi, Everyone:

Sorry for the delay in writing, but there hasn't been much to report . . . until now!  For those of you who don't know, this past week was Passover!

We went to two official seders.  The first was at one of the synagogue congregant's home.  It was beautiful and we really appreciated the invite.  The second was a community seder at the synagogue (note: Steve wants to keep writing Shul, but Tammy gets mad at him because she says it sounds too much like a disgusting word in hebrew).  Anyway, the seder was alright . . . although a bit less warm.  We ate and then pretty much booked it.

A number of Steve's co-clerks had mentioned that they had never been to a seder before and wanted to give it a go.  So we decided to try to fit everyone into our small 2-bedroom apartment for our own seder.  

Unbelievably, it worked amazingly.  We put tables together in an "L" shape and we were able to fit 20 people in for a great seder.  Here are some pictures of the set-up and everyone around the tables:

 We take particular pride in our finding "Pepsi Throwback" up here.  As you may imagine, the Jewish community is small in Alaska (although we do belong to a synagogue: frozenchosen.org).  With such a small community, there is not a lot of need for Passover food.  We were both raised in a highly-Jewish area with tons of passover-safe options, but here you have to sort of make do.  So we do the typical grocery shopping, making sure that everything we pick up is high-fructose corn syrup free (because we can't eat corn on passover).

Pepsi recently started making "Pepsi Throwback" which is sugar-based Pepsi.  It is delicious.  And, though not officially so, kosher for passover :)

We also did a full on afikomen hunt.  Our friend, Elena, found it and won the dollar.

To get into the festivities, Elena also made wine bottle covers.  I cannot describe how amazing these were, so we thought a picture was necessary.  These are simply incredible and Elena should go into crafts or event planning or something immediately.  We still cannot get over how cool these are:

Anyway, that's all for now!  Passover ends tomorrow night and then it's back to Mooses Tooth pizza and beer for us!  Although it's been difficult celebrating in Alaska, we did it and are proud to have made it through!  Next year in Jerusalem (but more likely Washington DC).