Looking Ahead to Passover

Are you having a vegan seder this Passover? I'd love to compile accounts of vegan seders across the country and hear how they went. Did you have nonvegan guests who really learned from the experience? Did you supplement the typical hagaddah readings with your own commentary? Did you come up with the ultimate vegan alternative to the shankbone on your seder plate? After you have your seder, send an e-mail to mcroland@gmail.com with just a few sentences telling me how things went, and I'll compile the best ones in a blog post.

Here are some tips for Passover:
* Click here to read vegan Passover recipes from PETA and here for vegetarian Passover recipes from Jewish Vegetarians of North America.
* If you're going to a seder where you expect to be the only vegetarian or vegan there, talk to the host in advance and offer to bring a vegan dish with you. You'll guarantee that you'll have enough to eat, and you'll also get to expose people to meat-free eating.
* Read Deborah Wasserman's No Cholesterol Passover Recipes or Roberta Kalechofsky's The Vegetarian Pesach Cookbook.
* Take the opportunity to embrace raw foods.
* Be consistent with your meat-free ways 365 days a year: Find out why we are NOT compelled to eat meat at the seder.
* Use quinoa instead of other grains on Passover. According to Kashrut.com, "Quinoa seed (i.e. not flour, and not flakes) under the certification of Kosher Overseers is acceptable kfp without further checking. These products are sold under the brand names of Ancient Harvest and Trader Joe's. ed. note: Quinoa must be in closed boxes."
* Eat legumes and rice on Passover. (Note: This one's controversial, and I invite everyone to research this on their own before reaching the conclusion that I did.) Legumes and rice have historically been viewed as forbidden by Ashkenazis but kosher-for-Passover by Sephardim. In November 1997, Rabbi David Golinkin of the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel addressed the Ashkenazi tradition of avoiding legumes and rice on Passover and said, "In our opinion, it is permitted (and perhaps even obligatory) to eliminate this custom. It is in direct contradiction to an explicit decision in the Babylonian Talmud (Pesachim 114b) and is also in contradiction to the opinion of all the sages of the Mishna and Talmud except one ...." Traditional Jews will want to steer clear of processed legume-based foods (e.g., soy-based mock meats) that aren't certified kosher-for-Passover because they very well might contain wheat or other chametz ingredients.
* Check out this article about the connections between vegetarianism and Passover by Richard Schwartz (author of Judaism and Vegetarianism), and integrate some of its messages in your seder.
* Use Roberta Kalechofsky's Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb (or its abbreviated version, Haggadah for the Vegetarian Family) at your seder. Kalechofsky has also written the book Journey of the Liberated Lamb: Reflections on a Vegetarian Seder, which is suitable for young audiences.