This file photo shows Rabbi Larry Kaplan sitting down to a family dinner in June 2017, when the Times Leader published a story about him in honor of Father’s Day. The photo shows most but not all of the couple’s 12 children, who include adopted as well as biological children. People can log on to Temple Israel’s Facebook page to virtually take part in the Kaplans’ seder dinner at 6 tonight. (April 8)
                                 Times Leader file photo

This file photo shows Rabbi Larry Kaplan sitting down to a family dinner in June 2017, when the Times Leader published a story about him in honor of Father’s Day. The photo shows most but not all of the couple’s 12 children, who include adopted as well as biological children. People can log on to Temple Israel’s Facebook page to virtually take part in the Kaplans’ seder dinner at 6 tonight. (April 8)

Times Leader file photo

Holiday is a joyous celebration of freedom

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If you’ve been logging on to Temple Israel’s Facebook page, you know that Rabbi Larry Kaplan and his wife, Gerri, are ready to welcome you — virtually — into their Kingston home tonight at 6 to celebrate the first seder dinner of Passover with their family.

“Especially if you’re feeling lonely and don’t have a lot of people around,” the rabbi suggests you’ll enjoy logging on and sharing the ritual meal with a family of 12 kids — enough to represent the 12 tribes of Israel.

“We’re like the 12 tribes of Kaplan,” he said with a chuckle during a telephone interview.

The family, which includes biological and adopted children, will be enjoying a meal that Gerri Kaplan prepared with help from the kids.

“We’ll have matzoh ball soup, beef brisket, lemon chicken, green beans, sweet and sour meatballs, carrots, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, stuffing that I make in a metal pan and desserts that contain matzoh meal that was made into a cake meal,” Gerri Kaplan said.

The ritual seder plate that will be on the table will contain such items as homemade charoset, a blend of apples, nuts and cinnamon that is blended into a paste to represent the mortar the Jewish people used to help build the pyramids when they were enslaved in Egypt.

Horseradish and parsley represent bitter herbs to symbolize the bitterness of slavery, and celery dipped into salt waters commemorates the tears enslaved ancestors would have shed.

An egg represents new life and a shank bone represents the lambs that were eaten as the Jewish people awaited a signal to quickly follow Moses out of Egypt after the Pharaoh agreed to let them go.

The ritual meal includes children asking such questions as “How is this night different from other nights”and “Why do we have matzoh instead of bread?”

And the answers tell the story of God delivering his people from slavery and leading them through the waters of the Red Sea. Part of the ritual includes a “Song of the Sea” which commemorates a song of rejoicing after the sea was crossed.

“I don’t know how many men are cooking a Passover Seder,” Rabbi Larry Kaplan said. “It’s usually the women. And it was also the women, led by Moses’ sister Miriam, who began the singing. We’ll have a wine cup on the table that’s filled ‘for Miriam’ and there’s another cup ‘for Elijah the prophet, ‘who comes to every Passover table as a harbinger of Messianic times still to come.”

Temple Israel in Wilkes-Barre, where Larry Kaplan is the rabbi, is one of many temples that are streaming services through Facebook. This morning (Wednesday April 8) at 9 on Temple Israel’s Facebook page and at 8:30 a.m. on Temple Ohav Zedek’s Facebook page, there will be a Siyum service for the firstborn children who have taken part in a traditional fast.

“Siyum means ‘to finish,’ ” Rabbi Kaplan said. “If we finish studying a section of Talmud or Torah or Bible, you say a prayer and then you have a little meal to signify that you finished. In ordinary years we would have a service for parents and their firstborn and serve bagels afterward.”

Coronavirus concerns are keeping people apart physically, and that is making life difficult for many, Kaplan said.

“So many folks in our congregation are elderly and so much of what brought them joy was being able to come together, maybe at the JCC to play cards or go to fitness class. The saddest thing, I think, is when people are dying, not necessarily from the coronavirus, and they’re families cannot surround them in the ICU. People are saying their last good-byes through a cell phone,” he said.

But despite the hardships, Kaplan said, Passover is a time of joy. “It’s the Festival of Freedom, and just knowing that even though circumstances have constrained us and kept us in these narrow places we’re still free, free to celebrate the freedom.”