Synagogue of the Hills Community Passover Seder 2008 – A Seder To Savor
Submitted by Sheri Bard

Tables set for the seder

This year’s Community Passover Seder which we celebrated in our splendid little synagogue nestled in the heart of Rapid City, was by all accounts, quite simply the best!

Once again this wonderful and successful event was envisioned through the creative talent and expert guidance of Barb Ames. Barb enlisted a top-notch team of caterers to bring in a menu featuring an entr饠of honey-balsamic salmon, a cheese-potato bake, and a sampling of many other delights for the group of thirty attendees to enjoy. From the beautifully-laid tables to the Seder plate assembly and on to the cleanup details, Barb’s team of motivated volunteers (Dan Ames, Ann Stanton, and Sheri Bard) helped put together the finishing touches for this most festive of all occasions.

Stan Adelstein came prepared with envelopes with the names of participant readers, and brilliantly led the group in our collective recounting of the liberation of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. With Haggadah in hand we read, as we celebrated the freedom of our people with prayer, ritual, and song. In fact, Stan urged us on to yet a second rendition of “”Eliyahu”, which all readily agreed to and then delivered with gusto!

The afikomen, hidden in a most unique place, was vigorously sought and triumphantly discovered by both Gabe and Josh Oleinik. Josh and Gabe also recited the four questions with an astonishing eloquence which touched the hearts of all who heard. Confirmation of Gabe’s preparedness for his upcoming Bar Mitzvah was apparent in his beautiful and flawless expression in chanting the Hebrew words.

On toward the end of our celebration and well into dessert, the little decorated boxes that had served as centerpieces were discovered. They were opened and found to be full of the “plagues” – plastic lice, rubbery frogs, and red-dot stick-on boils…stickers which ended up on kid’s faces and (admittedly) a few “big kid’s” faces sported boils as well.

Our Seders seem to just get better every year and this year’s Community Passover Seder resonated with a particularly exuberant spirit and a cozy intimacy unmatched in recent memory—it was indeed…a Seder to savor.