Seating ancient and new at the same table

My column on OU's website, Shabbat Shalom includes recipes for My Chicken Marbella from "Cooking Jewish," Orange Beets with Almonds from "The Healthy Jewish Cookbook by Michael van Straten and Apricot Jelly Roll from Joan Kekst's "Passover Cookery"

Passover is the most observed Jewish holiday of the year. Even those who never step inside a synagogue pull out all the stops for this one. With our celebratory meal, the Seder, we retell the 3500-year-old story of our ancestors' flight to freedom from the land of Egypt. And everything on the table is laden with meaning.

The centerpiece is the Seder plate, holding the traditional symbols. On every Seder plate sits karpas (a green vegetable), the symbol of spring, which we dip into salt water as we remember the tears shed by our ancestors. Actually for Jews in the shtetls (little villages) in Eastern Europe, spring arrived late, and greens were rare at Passover time. "My father's family always used potato," suggested my friend Yiddish songstress Lori Cahan-Simon, "but added parsley as karpas in the new country, so we have, in effect, parsley potatoes!" Read the whole story.