The Yankee at the Seder Hardcover - 2009

Excerpt

It was all over.

On the day before Passover, with Mother busy supervising the cook, with potatoes boiling and apples stewing and beef bubbling in carrot-studded gravy, General Robert E. Lee surrendered. There were still some troops fighting outside Virginia, but my father said it didn’t matter. The war was really over.

The War of Northern Aggression had started when I was seven. Now I was already ten and the Rebel Confederates had lost to the Union. I was never going to be a Rebel general. I’d never capture a whole unit of Yankees single-handed.

But war or no war, Passover is still Passover. My mother had been getting ready for months. The whole house had been scrubbed clean from the attic to the cellar, just to make sure we didn’t own a single bit of bread. If a stray crumb did somehow find its way into our house, it would just die of loneliness.

Grandpapa took down the leather-bound Haggadahs from the highest shelf in the parlor. The Haggadahs, which explain the whole order of the seder, the festive Passover meal, were in large Hebrew letters, splotched with wine stains from years past. Every year at this time, we remember how the Jewish people were slaves in the land of Egypt long ago, and how we were led out of slavery and into freedom. We sing songs and eat special foods to remind us how bad it was to be slaves, and how good it is to be free. Of course, with the war these last four years, we’ve been talking about slavery for as long as I can remember.

Yesterday morning, when Father and I went to pick up our matzoh, I heard talk of rioting in Richmond and whispered worries of worthless Confederate money. No one knew whether the Union would treat us well, now that they’d beaten us. But word had spread that at least our soldiers would be allowed to take home their own horses to work their farms.

Yankee soldiers patrolled the streets, walking around as though they owned Virginia. To be fair, I guess they did own Virginia now.

Media reviews

Starred Review, Publishers Weekly:
"Sensitively written and beautifully illustrated."

Review, Kirkus Reviews:
"The handsome design features decoratively framed text boxes opposite Gustavson’ s expressive, realistic oil paintings. Should spark discussion around the seder table and in classrooms of history."

Review, Book Review Digest:
"The book offers any number of promising uses: it’s a fascinating Civil War story with a difference, it’s an American counterpart to the World War I Christmas in the trenches story, and it’s a rich tale of people finding connections through faith in a difficult time. Weber provides a glossary before the story and concludes with a compact, personal explanation of the festival of Passover, so even those unfamiliar with the holiday will have no difficulty in understanding its import in the story."

Review, Social Edication, June 1, 2010:
"...an engaging discussion about freedom as Jewish traditions are celebrated."