Seder Stories: Passover Thoughts on Food, Family, and Freedom »

Nancy Rips is a long-time bookseller who has always loved Passover and has hosted first- and second-day Seders for years. She began collecting Passover stories during her volunteer visits to residents at an Omaha senior center. An enthusiastic advocate for books, reading, and libraries, she has hosted numerous book review segments for radio, including Radio Disney, and has hosted a regular live book segment on Omaha's CBS affiliate for over 13 years. She was raised in Omaha, Nebraska and lives there still.

Passover is the Festival of Freedom in the Jewish community worldwide. More than any other holiday, it symbolizes what it means to be Jewish: family, food, and fun coupled with an obligation to pass on their story to future generations.

Seder Stories contains the memories of childhood Seders from 101 Jewish people. Some of them are famous, like Rabbi Harold Kushner and attorney Alan Dershowitz. Others are famous only within their circle of friends and family. Some of the stories are funny, some poignant, some thought provoking and worth reading. All of them are charming.

Seder Stories is a gift book filled with delightful anecdotes of cleaning house, eating hard matzo balls, and milking kosher cows. Following an introduction that gently (and briefly) reviews the background and importance of the major Passover traditions, the eight chapters that follow are filled with as many as a dozen stories revolving around a central theme. Each story is told in the first person and retains the storyteller's voice. Stories come from folks of all ages, many professions, and all parts of the United States.

"What I remember about Seders when I was a child is the never-ending food-the brisket, the matzo balls, the killer horseradish," writes Rips. "What my children remember about their Seders is Elijah, in person, striding in the door, loudly playing 'Eliyahu' on the trumpet, dressed head to toe in trend-setting dark brown polyester with a rope belt to accentuate the ensemble. Over the top? Maybe. But Passover is one time of the year when it seems appropriate to go all out."

Graham Christian Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - School Library Journal

A notable feature of modern Judaism, especially in America, is its inventiveness-its many variations within its long-standing traditions. As Passover approaches, some families will bring out a variety of Haggadahs; others will revise the old or write new ones for the events of this year. These two books illustrate different facets of that ongoing ingenuity in Jewish American life-neither of them, shockingly enough, a true Haggadah.

Kurshan takes the traditional "Four Questions" that drive the retelling of the story of the Exodus into 23 languages and gives a short account of the fate of the Jews in the country where each of these languages is spoken. This touchingly illustrated book is ideal for demonstrating the global reach of the Jewish Diaspora. Rips, a bookseller and longtime Seder host, collects anecdotes, observations, memories, and jokes-many of them irreverently hilarious-from the likes of Rita Rudner and Rabbi Harold Kushner. The book underscores the humor, the unpredictability, and the love that have shaped so many Seders for so many generations and includes a helpful glossary of terms for the Passover-unenlightened. For most collections.