past and present celebrations

er, just found out that the post-prandial pesach puking is actually an official holiday of sorts called Maimouna. tried to type link but my html is a bit poorly and the link is so long it wouldn't fit. what can i tell you about it? hang on a sec - let me do a bit of cut-and-paste ...

"Maimouna: A Post-Passover Celebration
An exuberant Sephardic custom whose origins are the subject of debate
By Lesli Koppelman Ross
(on mylearning.com)

The Moroccan Jews are known for Maimouna, the exuberant festival held on the evening and day after Pesach, and whose origins are unclear. According to one explanation, it is the yahrzeit (anniversary of the death) of Maimon ben Joseph, the father of the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, also known by his acronym Rambam), a scholar in his own right who lived in Fez (Morocco) and wrote on Jewish-Islamic relations. He died around 1170.

Others say Maimouna is derived from the Arabic word for wealth and good fortune (literally "protected by God," ma'amoun). Since Pesach is the beginning of the new agricultural year, when the world is judged for produce, it is a time to pray for plentiful crops, symbolic of general prosperity.

Still others connect Maimouna with the word emunah ("belief"), claiming it celebrates belief in Israel's redemption. Along the same lines, there is also support (said to be traced to Maimonides' explanation) for the word being an Arabic adaptation of the phrase Ani ma'amin (I believe), the classic expression of faith in the coming of the messiah (ana for ani, placed after the verb ma'amin, as is common in Arabic, yielding ma'amin ana, which becames maimouna in the local Judeo dialect). It may have been a greeting exchanged to bolster one another's disappointment that Passover had come and gone without the long-anticipated return to Jerusalem.

Dining tables were decorated with flowers, wheat stalks, and sometimes live fish in bowls (this time symbolizing birth and fertility). Golden rings were hidden in a bowl containing flour, suggesting hoped for wealth or blessings. A dairy meal of buttermilk, sweets, and special pancakes called muflita served with honey was accompanied by singing, dancing, and visiting with friends.

The Libyans made a challah-likeround loaf with a hard-boiled egg secured in the center with strips of dough. Single men and women received blessings that they would be married in the year ahead. Women wore their fanciest clothes, girls donned white, and children dressed in costumes like the Berbers (native North Africans) and Arabs who shared their celebration and provided flowers, milk, butter, honey, wheat, and other produce for the Jews."

i'm pretty sure we have sefardi roots ... those german ancestors that went east from spain in the fifteenth century. of course we cannot trace anyone back before 1815 ...

ah well - that was today (or yesterday really). now for tomorrow (or today). the queen has her actual 80th birthday. read some lovely tributes in the telegraph and the times. and - don't tell - i sent her a congratulatory e-mail via her web-site. got sent to a page which told me that she had told her web-site people to thank me on her behalf ;-) . hey - i may have been born in the usa, but my mother was born in england, so at least half of me can wish the queen well!