Passover is Over: Now What?

While Jewish rye and bagels replace matzah after the week-long
Passover ban on leavened bread, social scientists might want to chew
on a fifth question: What is it about this particular holiday that
makes otherwise unaffiliated and non-observant Jews care—enough to go
out of their way to honor the holiday?

They often don't know anything about kosher or Shabbat, but when
Passover comes around, something kicks in, and whether they call
themselves agnostics or secular or just plain uninvolved, many find
themselves gravitating to other Jews, to a Seder table, and often even
to the strictures of a weeklong diet that forbids consumption of pizza
and pasta.

It's a peculiarity that Chabad-Lubavitch representatives around the
world have come to recognize, and, in the interests of Jewish
education and Jewish continuity, to capitalize on in a big way. Not
only in terms of the numbers--though it wouldn't be hard to
extrapolate a figure of more than half a million Jews who were at a
Chabad Seder on April 12th--the impact itself is substantive. Whether
it's the 120 Jews in Guatemala City who sang the Dayenu with Rabbi
Sholom Pelman, the 600 in Rostov-on-Don with Rabbi Chaim Fridman, or
the 2,000-plus in Nepal with Rabbi Chezy Lifshitz, the effect of a
spirited, content-rich Seder experience with Chabad has a long
half-life that opens a path for many who make their way, gingerly,
slowly, perhaps, but steadily, towards becoming more involved and
educated about their heritage.