Himalayan Seder- Passover in Katmandu

By Sally Wndkos Olds

"What are you doing in Nepal?" the tall, handsome bald man with an Israeli accent asked me. "Have you been here before? How did you hear of it? Have you been to Israel?"

On the spacious grounds of what had been a palace of the Rana dynasty that now houses the Israeli Embassy in Katmandu, I was trying to gain admission to the Passover Seder to be held there the following day. When I had inquired at Pumpernickel's Bakery, the hangout for young Israelis, I was told that, as a non-Israeli, I would have to undergo a security check and say something to prove that I am Jewish.

Singing and getting ready for the Seder

"I've trekked in Nepal twice," I now replied. "I heard about the seder from my cousin in Israel. I visited her in 1969." "That's a long time ago- you should go back." My interviewer smiled, then asked sharply, "Where does your cousin live?" "Ramat Aviv," I answered.

"Why do you want to go to the Seder?" he asked. I smiled and shrugged: "It's Passover, I'm Jewish, I'm in Katmandu. I heard about the seder- I want to be there."

"Wait here," he said, and reappeared later with a photocopied front page of my passport, complete with the embassy's seal of approval. I had passed.

For others, the interview was more rigorous. Jack, a New York City board of Education executive, learned of the seder only after he had heard so much Hebrew on the streets of Katmandu that he finally asked someone what was going on. His interviewer asked, "In the Bible, whom did God open the gate to?" Jack shook his head: "I don't know. The only thing I remember from the seders I went to when I was a kid was 'Let's eat!'" "Okay, you're Jewish!" his questioner declared.

Ilan Maor, the second secretary with the embassy, later told me, "We have to restrict attendance only to Jews for security reasons. We assume that no Jew is going to do anything to hurt other Jews, and since we can't mount a major security check, this is the only way we can protect the people who come here." Simple as the system is, it seems to work.

Hinduism, Nepal's official religion, is practiced by about 90% of Nepal's 18 million citizens, and most of the other 10% are Buddhist or Islamic. You could probably count the number of permanent Jewish residents in Nepal on your digits, without having to take off your trekking boots. Still, the legend that has become almost as famous as tales of Everest ascents and Yeti sightings is the annual Passover seder that accommodates more than 1,000 Jews every year, mostly Israelis.

Israel and Nepal have been cooperating with each other since 1960, when Nepal became a democracy and Israel established an embassy here, leading to many programs involving interaction and training between the two countries. Today, young Israelis, especially after military service, often indulge their wanderlust with a few months of travel throughout Southeast Asia- and about 1,000 per year make it a point to be in Katmandu for the seder.

Getting ready to burn the Chometz on the eve of Passover.

The day of the seder, I arrived at the embassy and was greeted by Naftali, a member of Chabad, the Lubavitcher group that founded the seder in 1987. I paid 500 rupees ($10) and received my ticket of admission, a Haggadah.

After a few minutes of milling around, we were all admitted to the embassy compound. I took a seat in the second row of folding chairs, lined up auditorium-style under two immense tents that had been built by the Nepalese army. The geometric flower arrangements in the tent ceiling looked just like decorations I had seen in the Buddhist temple I had visited earlier in the day.

As people took their seats, a youth in a loose Indian shirt and a white yarmulke played a few notes on a trumpet. Nearby, a group burst into a popular Israeli song. Young kids with dark curly hair, blond dreadlocks, rings in ears and occasionally through noses, wearing embroidered vests, tie-dyed shirts, denim overalls or red velveteen Nepalese-style blouses, joined in.

Then a Chasid in a fedora raised his hands and boomed- without a microphone: "Can we have a little bit of peace and quiet? Although I know that's a lot to ask for in Katmandu!" Hebrew was translated by a nearby Israeli who had brought his son trekking in Nepal as a bar mitzvah present. After a barely perceptible drop in the decibel level, the Chasid told the crowd, "We're going to celebrate here the Israeli spirit- in Katmandu! Until 6:30, smoke, take photos, greet your friends. Do a mitzvah- light candles, up by the entrance to the tent. And then the service will begin."

Video cameras whirred, flashbulbs popped, young people greeted each other. Three energetic, enthusiastic Lubavitchers led the crowd in song. A dozen Israelis linked arms, danced, and burst into a merry refrain. One young man rushed up front and held up a sign that said in Hebrew, "I love you, will you marry me?" Dignitaries from the Nepalese government and the Israeli, American, Italian and German embassies took their seats at the long front table.

Burning the Chometz on the eve of Passover.

"What does Passover mean to us here in 1993, in Nepal, in Katmandu?" the Lubavitcher leader asked. "It symbolizes the idea of redemption. Redemption means freedom! What's happening in the Soviet Union, in Somalia, in Ethiopia, that's Galut! And that stands for personal redemption. So this is a time when everyone can overcome obstacles standing in their way!"

All the while there was considerable activity up front including brightly garbed young Israelis coming up to ask the Four Questions and reading parts of the service, black-suited Chasidim exhorting and reading Torah selections, smartly attired ambassadors speechifying and operatic soprano Lee Alison, the wife of a U.S. Embassy employee, delivering the strains of "Let My People Go."

Finally we ate. One ton of kosher food had been flown over from America with the wine, including 250 frozen chickens, countless jars of gefilte fish and scores of matzah. We were fed more like summer campers than temple-goers: Paper plates were passed along the rows, laden with hard-boiled eggs, coleslaw and cucumber and potato salads.

Orit, a 25-year-old Israeli I met the next day, told me how shamed she was by her compatriots who whistled, talked, laughed and smoked marijuana during what she wanted to observe as a holy ritual. But I took the clamor of the audience in stride. Was I romanticizing, seeing the gaiety of these tough young sabras who did not care about proving their Jewishness as proof that they do not need to? I thought about this a couple of weeks later as I sat in on a religious celebration in a remote hill village, populated by Nepalese of the Rai ethnic group. There, too, celebrants treated their rituals casually, with much coming and going, talking and laughing, even bawdy jokes. And I realized that when religion is so much a part of people's lives, they can feel at home in it, as in the nest of a loving family. They don't need formal, sober "church manners," whether they're observing in the desert or on a mountain top.

Ms. Olds, author of "The Working Parents' Survival Guide," lives in Port Washington, Long Island.