Folke and Noomi Flam, both physicians from Stockholm, Sweden, joined us on our February 2019 tour. We asked them for their thoughts about the tour.
 
Q: Why did you choose a tour of India? Why a Jewish tour?
A: For several years we have wanted to go to India. In school we learned about faraway India with all its religions and old culture. Today India is emerging as a powerful democratic nation. Virtually all people who have visited India and have told us about their experiences are enthusiastic. Thus we wanted to see this with our own eyes. We have been on Jewish heritage tours to Ethiopia as well as Peru/Bolivia and we find it interesting to learn about Jewish history in faraway countries. It is amazing how Jews have kept their identity for thousands of years in India.

Q: How did you find out about our tour?
A: A non-Jewish friend who has visited India many times found your tour on the Internet and thought it would be perfect for us. It didn´t take long after reviewing the program for us to sign up!
 
Q: What was surprising or eye-opening about India?
A:  We were astonished by the warm and generous attitude of the Indian people. It was interesting to learn about the coexistence of all religions and that anti-Semitism never existed. We were astonished to see what people could accomplish in building beautiful palaces and worship places many hundreds of years ago.
 
Q: What memories will you cherish?
A: We will always remember the people we met: the lovely family in Mumbai whose daughter wants to become a doctor; Mrs. Silliman and her daughter in Calcutta; the home hospitality in Jaipur. We will remember the marvelous teamwork and knowledge provided by our two guides… not to mention Rahel’s singing.

Sometimes there are objects in our lives that we take for granted. We don’t know much about their history but they seem to have always been part of our customs, rituals or celebrations.
 
In my family we use a large cotton scarf to tie up the afikoman. The light, white cotton is splayed with large pinkish-purple flowers and green leaves, appropriate for Pesah, the festival of spring.  It’s obvious the scarf is old and well-worn, with several spots browned with age. Maybe they are wine spills or remnants of halek, the date syrup we use for haroset. We create a makeshift knapsack by knotting the diagonal corners of the scarf together, two at a time.
 
This scarf has always been in my family.  But I had no idea where it came from or to whom It belonged. When I asked my father I found out that it was probably my great-grandmother's. Her picture is below. Can you imagine her at the age of 12, when she was married to my grandfather (he was 18)?  Obviously, it was an arranged marriage!

The scarf was always used for this purpose. My father remembers from when he was the youngest child, whose job it is to slip it over his or her shoulder. Presto, it’s as if he or she is leaving Egypt with matza in a knapsack. We do this to manifest the words of the Torah and the haggadah that describe how the children of Israel left Egypt: mish’arotam tzerurot b’simlotam al shichmam. Their kneading bowls were wrapped and bundled into their clothes and carried on their shoulders. 
 
Then, the leader of the seder asks the child three questions in Hebrew and the same questions in Judeo-Arabic.
Q: From where have you come?  (A: Mitzrayim.Egypt)
Q: Where are you going? (A: Yerushalayim, Jerusalem)
Q: What are your provisions? What are you carrying with you? (The child points to the sack with the afikoman)
 
The answer to the first question is not Calcutta or Bombay or Brooklyn, but Egypt. We have all emerged from the same narrow place and no matter where we are going in our lives today, hopefully we are all headed to a space of spiritual peace. Our provisions are the heritage we carry with us.

You can still see the special tandoor, the clay oven in the courtyard of the Beth El Synagogue. The tandoor was only used once a year for baking matza on Pesah.

Tizkoo l’shanim rabot!
Happy Pesah!