This evening, as my roommates and I were finishing up an exhausting round of stripping the dirt and chametz from our kitchen, I found it unfortunate that I had to throw several jars of salsa and tupperware of chiles down the garbage disposal. I wondered if the disposal could handle this amount of “hotness,” as an American garbage disposal would presumably not be accustomed to such intensity. On Passover, probably spurred on by the choice of packaged foods available and promoted by the local supermarket’s “Passover Aisle,” American Ashkenazi Jews traditionally retreat into the deepest recesses of Jewish culinary tradition; to me, it seems completely unnecessary to eat cold fish jelly or kishke for 8 days straight.

One of my best Passover experiences ever was completely opposite of this and possibly my most profound. I was studying abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico in spring of 2004 and Pesach fell during the week my peers and I were “studying” on the Oaxaca coast (for real– we toured an eco-cosmetics factory and several other program-related excursions), on a beach called Zipolite. Given the fact that rural Oaxaca does not have any Jewish population, as someone who traditionally observes Kasher L’Pesach strictly, I didn’t know how I would survive on my own, so had a package sent to me in advance by my family containing all hechshered non-perishable items such as the ever-delectable canned boiled potatoes. Somehow, my program of15 college students from around the country had 6 Jews that semester, so we had spent a couple weeks planning a Seder held on the beach for all of the students, our teachers and van drivers who traveled with us around Southern Mexico. We had to improvise on the Seder Plate items– replacing the traditional maror with chiles, the parsley with nopal (cactus), the charoset with guacamole, the roasted egg with a round fruit (kiwi or maracuya perhaps?) , the shankbone with a can of Manischewitz beets I had with me; the ultimate substitution was tortillas for matza for those of us who were not actually keeping the holiday strictly (everyone except me). Since we were a bunch of idealists studying social movements and NGOs, we used sections of the Love & Justice in Times of War Haggadah, created by Micah Bazant and Dara Silverman and tried to translate most of it into Spanish for our drivers and one of our teachers.

Unfortunately, that attempt was a failure and they were so bored that they headed back to their rooms to sleep after our Seder’s highlight: dunking in the Pacific to re-enact the crossing of the Red Sea. My colleagues from that semester often refer to the Seder in vivid detail despite the volume of wine that we imbibed. I have to say that it was one of the proudest and scariest moments of my life- amazed at the incredible relevance retelling of the escape from slavery in Mitzrayim had for our studies of the Zapatistas and other indigenous movements, unsure of how my traditions would be perceived by my peers and my Mexican hosts.

Although the seder was definitely the highlight of Pesach that year, the entire week spent on the beach subsisting off of matza, avocados, coconut milk (drunk from a straw stuck in

the coconut) and odd cold canned items from my survival package, was probably the closest I’ll ever come to understanding both the freedom from bondage [stress] and the hardships simultaneously experienced by the Israelites on their journey from Egypt.

I was in an utterly different world from my New York childhood, and while I loved it, the combination of fear and exhilaration I tasted still seems like such a visceral reminder of the themes of the Exodus story. While Chagim celebrated in comfort, creating family memories are certainly wonderful, I wish everyone the opportunity to celebrate human freedom and the blooming of the natural world in a unique, experiential way; it is humbling, awe-inspiring, challenging and fun. To another Seder con Salsa!