Pesach for the Rest of Us: Making the Passover Seder Your Own

Every year, poet and novelist Marge Piercy creates her own Passover seder with a group of family and friends. Babies have been born and grown up, friends have moved or divorced, but the principals continue to gather in her rustic Cape Cod home to participate in a seder that Piercy takes joy in tweaking each spring to make it more meaningful. In this journey through the ritual, Piercy coaxes us toward "a significant contemporary interpretation, rather than an emphasis on what is strictly 'correct' or traditional." She reminisces about her grandmother, who thought herself unworthy to lead a seder because of her limited Hebrew but presided "morally" at the table; she urges adding an orange to the seder plate; she even describes her heroic efforts to make her own gefilte fish (an experiment not to be repeated).
Piercy offers her distinct slant on each element of the feast and provides dozens of her own recipes, which she delivers in the same warm, commanding voice as is heard in her poems and prose.

Marge Piercy is the author of seventeen novels, including Gone to Soldiers; He, She and It; and, most recently, Sex Wars; seventeen volumes of poetry, including The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme and, most recently, The Crooked Inheritance; and a memoir, Sleeping with Cats. She lives on Cape Cod with her husband, the publisher and novelist Ira Wood.