A Visit to the "Old City"

Okay, it wasn’t really the Old City of Jerusalem but it was as close as we could get without spending thousands of dollars on a trip to Israel. The Jewish Feast of Passover starts tonight. Our family likes to celebrate Passover. It has become a family tradition, even though we are Christians.

There are many reasons why I love to celebrate Passover, not the least of which is that my Lord Jesus Christ inaugurated the New Covenant at a Passover seder, saying “Do this in remembrance of Me”. So we celebrate Passover in remembrance of The Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ, who was slain for us.

Because I don’t have a family background in celebrating Passover, I’ve sort of put together our own family traditions through the years. I picked up a Seder plate when I visited the Holy Land many years ago, and an “Elijah cup” sometime later. But I thought this year it was time to upgrade our Passover equipment. I looked online for Judaica stores but you really have to see the stuff before purchasing it. So a trip to the Fairfax district of Los Angeles was in order.
Here are a few of the stores we visited:
Ufaratza Judaica Center
The Mitzvah Store
Shmulies Judaica
Solomon’s Bookstore

I haven’t been to the Fairfax district, where most of the Jewish stores in Los Angeles are located, since I was studying Hebrew at UCLA in the 1980s. I remember I picked up a pocket version of the Hebrew Scriptures, called the Tanakh, which I still have. Actually, I have been in the area since then, but for a different purpose. When I was driving my kids all over Los Angeles for auditions we visited W. Pico and Fairfax Blvd. many times. It’s a lot more fun to go there for the purpose of browsing in Jewish stores than rushing to get to an audition on time, finding the address and a parking spot and rushing back on the freeway to try to get kids back in time for sports, acting classes etc. Whew, I don’t miss that one bit.

On our trip we bought a Matzah tray, an afikomen bag, portion cups for the seder plate, silver (plate) candle sticks, and a wine fountain. The wine fountain (pictured above) is the coolest. It is certainly not required for the seder, but it looked so cool that Chuck and I both decided we had to have it. You pour the wine in using the top cup and it comes spurting out into eight little cups below. Since four cups of wine (or grape juice) are obligatory for the service, this will come in handy and did I say it’s really cool too.