Like everyone else, I have childhood memories of Seder Pesach. (In my grandmother’s cramped apartment in St. Paul, my great-uncle Al, who led the Seder, sitting at one end of the table in the bedroom; us kids squirming up against the living room radiator two rooms away at the other.) But when I think of Pesachs past, it is my adult memories of cooking for 400-600 in the kibbutz kitchen that immediately come to mind.

The arrangements for Pesach cooking in a kibbutz kitchen fall just short of planning a military campaign. Kashering and cleaning — which take several days– and cooking are going on simultaneously. In one part of the kitchen, long rolls of gefilte fish and hundreds of matzah balls are already being boiled, the matzah balls stacked in plastic wrap-lined egg cartons until the Seder; in another part, dishes are being dipped in boiling water in preparation for the next day’s cooking; and in a third part, bread is still being sliced and put out for meals.

At night, another team comes in to kasher all the dining room dishes, cups, silverware, etc. The industrial chemical cleaners have come out and shelves are stripped, machinery dismantled and ovens moved to clean every last corner of grease and dirt, not to mention bread crumbs. The counters are really shiny, but I’m not so sure I want to put food on them.

In the mean time, the meat-loving kibbutz members are beginning to grumble, because the meat section is already kasher l’Pesach, meaning meals the day or two before the holiday are milk. The kitchen staff is feeling the pressure, especially those of us who go home from cleaning the kibbutz kitchen to cleaning our own kitchens at home. In addition to the Pesach cooking, the regular three meals a day are still being served.

The preparation of everything from matzah ball soup to desert is finished by late morning. Salads, gefilte fish, and anything else that can be put on serving plates ahead of time is stacked on serving wagons in one of the walk-in fridges, awaiting the evening’s “toranim”– the kibbutz members unlucky enough to land extra work duty for this evening. The rest of the food must be reheated and kept warm, hopefully to be served hot at the proper time.

Cooking veggie food for the Seder is a special challenge. It must be both kasher l’Pesach and parve, easy to reheat and serve, and yet somehow festive, filling and last but not least, tasty to at least some of the vegetarians. (We vegetarians can be a pretty picky lot, and it’s well nigh impossible to cook something that all of us will love.) I have spent hours stuffing artichokes with nut and vegetable filling, only to hear someone at the next table grouch that she wanted the Passover popovers with mushrooms from last year. (The reason we aren’t serving popovers this year is that the toranim last year complained about having to fill the popovers at the last minute. Like I said, you can’t please everyone.)

Do I miss it? Not really. There’s definitely something to be said for a small, family-style seder where everyone pitches in.