Passover is a favorite time of year for many Jewish families—not only does it signal the start of spring, but it also encourages children to play, sing, ask a lot of questions, act like wild beasts (courtesy of the 10 plagues), leave the table to search for a prize (afikomen), and stuff their faces with everything from matzah balls to macaroons.

Most importantly, Passover means quality family time, especially for these St. Louis area moms who share their secrets for creating memorable traditions.

For the Chervitz family, who attend shul at Young Israel, the anticipation of Passover is as much fun as the seder itself.  

“For us, Pesach starts with cleaning the chometz (leavened products such as bread) from our house,” said Vicki Redler Chervitz, who lives with her husband Marc and three kids, Sammy, 15; Sophie, 10, and Nathaniel, 7, in University City. 

“Each child is responsible for their own room, and they usually go through toy boxes or drawers just to check out what they’ve thrown where, and then they vacuum the crumbs.  They also help vacuum cushions, couches, carpets, and floors around the house.  We stress that this isn’t ‘spring cleaning,’ it’s a search for the chometz,” said Redler Chervitz, whose kids go to Block Yeshiva High School and Epstein Hebrew Academy.

“They usually fight over who gets to clean out coat pockets in the hall closet because they’re allowed to keep any money that is found in pockets.  They also make ‘chometz’ signs which are hung on kitchen cabinets that are not used during Pesach.” 

Once the house is clean, decorating follows. 

“It’s always exciting to bring in the special Pesach boxes that contain all the kitchen necessities, such as the milk and meat plates, cooking utensils, and silverware, including our dairy silverware, which was my paternal grandparents, and the fleishig (meat) silverware, which belonged to a friend of ours who passed away,” said Redler Chervitz.    

“But we love to unpack the decorations the most,” she added.  “The kids have made numerous seder plates, matzah covers, wine glasses, afikomen bags and frog posters over the years. We laugh at the silly plastic plates and fun tablecloths that we have used. That box is also where all of the goodies are hidden that we use to ‘play with’ during the 10 plagues part of the seder, such as masks, balls, ‘lice,’ wild beasts, skeletons, and ‘blood.’  I try to buy new stuff every year to surprise the kids.  The dollar store usually has fun things that are useful.”  

As they work together to transform their home for the holiday, it becomes obvious why this night is different from all other nights. Getting ready for the seder is definitely a family affair. 

“The kids help make the charoses, clean the maror (romaine lettuce), fill the salt water holders, watch the egg roast in the oven, set out all of the matzah, prepare the seder plate, and make sure that we have enough wine and juice on the table.  We also make sure to light a long lasting flame so we can be prepared to light yom tov candles on both nights of the seder.”

Since the kids love to share their homemade haggadahs they make every year at school, the holiday is centered around questions and in-depth-discussions about the Passover story, which is why their seder lasts about three hours.

“We ask questions such as, ‘Who are examples of people like the four sons? Why do some rabbis say there were not 10 plagues, but others say 250?  Who made the plaques happen, God or an angel, and how do we know? Why and how did Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah grow a long white beard at age 18, so that people would believe him to be older and wiser?’ Then we sing blessings and songs. We go around the table taking turns reading the paragraphs in the haggadah, either in English or Hebrew. We also sing Hagadya and again we each take a line, but this time it’s the noise of the item or animal we sing about.”

For Kalanit Chappell, who describes herself as a “left-leaning, tea drinking, organic living, breastfeeding, cloth diapering, attached parenting, sling wearing, peace loving Jewish granola mommy” in her blog www.koshergranola.com, the seder is such a meaningful, sacred time for her family that creates different ones for different holidays, from Rosh Hashanah to Tu’Bshvat, and not just for Passover. 

Each has a fun, interesting theme, keeping the holiday exciting for this B’nai Amoona family who lives in Ballwin. She and her husband Rob Beattie have three children, Chandler, 17, who attends Parkway North High School; Alia , 10, a student at Saul Mirowitz Jewish Community School; and Neviyah, 4, who goes to preschool the B’nai Amoona. 

For example, one year at Passover they celebrated with an earthy seder. The table featured colorful, recyclable bento boxes with compartments as seder plates and recycled coffee cans and glass bottles with freshly plucked flowers as centerpieces. They also enjoyed a plant-based menu with vegetable soup, smoked eggplant salad, broccoli with lemon, potato/kale casserole, Moroccan carrots, and sweet potato dumplings in a tomato brazilnut sauce. 

“The kids loved the mashed potatoes and veggies, and they felt really grown up having their own seder plates,” said the vegan mom, who celebrates the holiday with a room full of family and friends in a casual, sometimes chaotic, atmosphere.

Besides the food, Chappell goes all out when it comes to reenacting the Passover seder.

“We don’t like to make it just a pediatric seder but also not just an adult one where the kids are bored. We work very hard every year to make sure there is something meaningful for everyone.” 

One year they created Legos characters to act out the parts of Moses, slaves, and Pharoah in the story of Exodus. They even had a silk scarf for the Red Sea. Another year, everyone took turns improvising the story in characters. 

“We all drew our parts from little strips of paper in a hat, so we didn’t have time to think about it and no one knew ahead of time. For example, Moses might be played as Harry Potter, or a rapper, or a librarian, or with an Australian accent. It was a free-flowing skit, and we just went with it,” said Chappell. 

“With Passover, we all know the story. But we got to reenact it very whimsically with fictional fantasy and modern characters, and so we experience it differently each year. I call it ‘experiential biblio drama’,” she said. 

For Chappell, writing her own haggadah is a personal journey into Judaism and something she loves to share with other people.

“I write haggadot all the time, and anytime I can turn something into a seder I do. For example, we go through the new species of fruits on TuBshvat. In the Sephardic community, there is a custom to have a seder on Rosh Hashanah. I held a ‘Happy Birthday To The World’ seder that included a game night afterwards for my teenage son and his friends.”

Most of all, the seder evolves and changes as her children grow.

“Some years the seder is spontaneous and fun, such as using a comic strip hagaddah and other years it’s more introspective and inspirational,” she explained. “When my husband’s sister died of color cancer at age 43, it was a sad year altogether. So we took parts out of a hagaddah that were very spiritually deep. I pulled a lot of personal reflection pieces out from the holistic haggadah and added it to our seder.”

For both families the best part about Passover is being together and learning from each other. 

“I’m a learning geek,” said Chappell, “that’s why I like to make a new Haggadah every year. I like to add new spices of learning to it, and I especially love learning with my children. There’s all sorts of moments in a seder that we can learn from, and we don’t always take those opportunities because our kids are getting crabby or hungry. But when you make your own haggadah and supplement with your own lessons, it’s amazing to hear their unique viewpoints and how they use their intellects and their hearts.”