semana santa
semana santa (holy week) - it is that time year again Easter (pasqua) for christians - pretty much all catholic here in argentina - and Pesach (passover) for jews. here in argentina it starts on thursday and mainly it is a long weekend of seeing family and relaxing. On Thursday night we were invited by a friend of ours. Florencia, to the home of her husbands (Atilio) family for what is known as Seder (in celebration of passover the 1st two nights of the holiday you usually have a traditional meal with family and friends).Atilio's family is Sephardic (meaning of spanish or middle eastern descent, as opposed to most jews in the u.s. who are ashkenazi/eastern european/russian descent). And so with Sephardim the food is completely different, one major difference is they eat rice while traditionally my family does not (on this holiday). It was a nice size group of about 20 people including his mother, grandparents, brother/sister, and brother/sisternlaw, cousin, uncle etc... of course as is traditional in foreign countries nowdays when you are introduced as being from the u.s. there is sure to be a few people who ask about our "friend" George (in case you dont get the reference think about our intelligent president). let's just say he has a lot of "admirers" worldwide:)
some of the conversation got pretty lively (all in good fun:) atilio's brothernlaw, Walter, made some interesting points about the bellicose nature of the u.s. historically using the example of in ww2 after the japanese attacked pearl harbor (and killed about 5k innocent people) we used that as justification to drop (the only time so far and hopefully forever) 2 atomic bombs on them killing instantly over 100,000 innocent people:( - for further reading American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer - anyway i thought it was an interesting point and he made the analogy to today, not sure i fully agree but its always nice to hear other perspectives. overall everyone was really nice and the evening went very late (2am) as is typical here in buenos aires, with espresso, wine, good conversation ahhhhhh porteno life...
the actual traditional part of the meal (meaning the prayers, story etc...) was essentially the same and that cultural/historical link is nice to feel even halfway around the world:) i really appreciate the warmth and hospitality that was shown to us by Atilio and his family and thank Florencia for thinking of us and inviting us. Hopefully one day we can show them the same in nyc...
Happy Holidays everyone!
posted by sethnem @ 8:36 AM
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