Passover Seder Survival Kit (Archive Style)

Planning a Seder? Bogged down by pre-Passover procrastination? Some resources and conversation starters from the JTA Archive:
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TIMELINE: Select Passover stories from the JTA Archive

• 1924 – Jew kicked out of communist party for providing matzah to his family.
   
• 1926 – During Prohibition, the Jewish Morning Journal tries to take a census based on the amount of wine purchased before Passover.
• 1929 – A skin disease researcher claims that the Hebrews escaped Egypt because Pharaoh was fat.

• 1930 – Matzah in November? The Passover bread of affliction fly off shelves in Detroit during a bread boycott.

• 1931– At the end of the year, Manischewitz strikes a deal with the Soviet Union enabling the company to deliver 200,000 11-lb. boxes of matzah the following Passover.

• 1934 – Mordechai Grossmark — "the Jewish Betsy Ross" — claims that the Manischewitz matzo company owns the largest "Jewish flag," measuring 18×12 feet. 
• 1935 – JTA writer S. Ephraim describes customs of Yemenite and Bukharan Jews during the Passover Seder.

• 1945 – Jewish servicemen hold Passover Services in Nazi meeting hall on Adolph Hitler Street

• 1947 – The first T.V. Seder is broadcast from St. Louis. 
• 1950 – 35,000 Jewish DPs observe first Passover in U.S.

• 1953 – Jewish servicemen on duty at the atomic test manuevers site in Nevada observe the first seder there.
   
• 1962 – President Kennedy allows import of flour from Israel for shmura matzah.

• 1970 – Due to unforseen circumstances, President Nixon announces the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam on the first night of Passover.
   
• 1977 – President and Mrs. Carter participate in their friends’ Passover Seder. (And another in 1979.)
   
• 1978 – First Seder held in China since 1949.
   
• 1980 – The Jewish Welfare Board sends "solo seder" meals to U.S. hostages held in Teheran, uncertain if they will be delivered.
   
• 1996 – Quebec’s French Language Office caused an uproar when it temporarily banned Passover products that weren’t translated into French.
• 1998 – The Batsheva Dance Company withdrew from a 50th anniversary performance attended by Vice President Al Gore in JErusalem after being asked not to strip down to their underwear during the Passover song "Echod Mi Yodea."
• 2000 – Two Israeli planes offering food to famine-stricken areas of Ethiopia dropped matzoh instead of flour.

More Passover items:

Discussion: Is the Passover Seder a time for family and fun? That might be missing the point, suggested Eugene Lyons in 1935. Read this essay — especially the Hitler parable at the end — and ask your Seder participants, how should we feel tonight?

Photos: 23 Passover photos from Israel (1935-1985). Courtesy the Israel National Photo Archives. Click this link, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "open all at once." To see an enlarged version of a photo, click the thumbnail the right click "open image in new tab."

10 plagues, 20th century: The parallels are inexact, but references to the Biblical ten plagues can be seen in the 20th century.