Celebrations

Billy found Charlotte, Jolena and Mariah in the kitchen. The girls all had their hair tied back and had cloth napkins tied around their bodies, so he knew they were cooking.

"What are you cooking?" Billy asked.

"We're helping Charlotte fix food for the Passover Seder." Mariah said the word, "SAY-der." 

"We'll be having a special dinner tonight,"Jolena said.

"What's a Passover?" Billy asked.

The dolls looked at Charlotte, because she was the one who knew all about Passover.
"Passover is a very important holiday to Jewish people," Charlotte explained. "It starts tonight and lasts eight days. It celebrates the escape of our people from Egypt, where they were being kept and made to work for the people of Egypt."

Charlotte put the large cracker she was holding back on the plate.

"How did they escape?" Jolena asked. "I've never heard the story."

"It's a long story," Charlotte explained. "The important thing is that Pharaoh (FAY-row), that was what the king of Egypt was called, made the Jewish people work for him, and he was unkind to them. He wouldn't let them leave, but God helped a man named Moses talk Pharaoh into letting them go."

"So the dinner is sort of a party?" Mariah asked. 

"It's the first meal at the beginning of Passover, but it's more than a party," Charlotte explained. "It's a meal that reminds us of how our people escaped from Egypt. Each part of it is important in some way."

"For instance," Charlotte went on, "the people had to leave in a hurry. They didn't have time to make their bread slowly, using yeast to let it rise, to puff up, like the bread we use for sandwiches." She pointed to the loaf of bread Jolena had just taken out of the oven.

"That was long ago," Charlotte explained. "They didn't even have baking powder back then, so they had to wait a long time for yeast to make their bread puff up. When Moses told the Jewish people they had to go quickly, they had to bake their bread without waiting for it to rise. It turned out flat and hard."

Charlotte picked up the cracker again. "This cracker is called matzoh," Charlotte said. (She said it like "MAHT-zuh.") "This is what their bread was like when they left Egypt. This is the only kind of bread or flour I will have to pretend to eat during Passover." The dolls looked at the cracker, as Charlotte broke off a large piece and gave it to Mariah. "Pass it around," Charlotte said. "Have a taste." Each doll tasted it. They thought it was crunchy.

"It doesn't have any yeast in it," Charlotte explained, "It's just flour and water. It's the special bread for Passover."
"We're using it to make matzoh ball soup," Jolena told Billy.

"We make the matzoh balls by grinding up the matzoh," Charlotte explained.

"Here, I'll show you." She broke up one of the crackers and then ground it up."

"Then we will mix it with eggs, oil and some seasonings, like salt," she said. "We make it into balls."
"Like making a snowball?" Billy asked.

"Yes," Charlotte agreed. "Only we make the balls with the mixture instead of snow. Then we boil the balls in water for a while. We serve them in a soup with vegetables."

Billy thought snowballs wouldn't last long in boiling water. "What else are we having," he asked.

"I can answer that," Mariah said. "We're having fish dumplings and a potato casserole with a kind of cake for dessert. They all have special names, but the names don't say what's in them unless you know the recipes."

Billy nodded. "I always want to know what's in the stuff I'm pretending to eat," he said.

"We will tell you what's in each dish when we sit down to dinner, Billy," Charlotte explained. That made Billy happy.

"I'm learning a lot," Jolena said. "I've never cooked Jewish food before."

"There are a lot more dishes we could fix," Charlotte said, "but we don't want to make too much, because we are dolls. We can only pretend eat, and it isn't good to waste food"

"We still have to make the Easter eggs," Mariah said. "Billy, you can help with that, if you like, but we have to finish the food for dinner first. We don't need the Easter eggs until Sunday."

The girls went back to cooking. Jolena was watching the pot of water, so she could tell Charlotte when it was boiling.

Charlotte ground up the matzoh and Mariah finished cutting the vegetables for the soup.

Billy thought about the special food and the story Charlotte had told them. He thought about Passover and Easter and about what a busy weekend it was going to be. "I need to know the story behind Easter, too," said Billy to himself. "I'll ask Veronika."

Early on Sunday morning, Veronika will dress for church and then go out into the garden. It's her turn to hide Easter eggs.

Veronika wants to wish all our readers a happy Passover and happy Easter from the cast of "The Doll's Storybook." 

Cast--
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni

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Do you have questions or comments for us? Would you like to order an autographed copy of one of our books? You can email us at thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

Note: No dolls were harmed during production of this blog. All dolls shown are Götz Happy Kidz, Classic Kidz or Little Kidz. If you like these stories and are willing, please make a donation of any amount to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or any organization that supports pediatric cancer research and treatment. We are not affiliated with St. Jude in any way other than these donations.

"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.

Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook are available from BookBaby and other booksellers worldwide, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

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