For the third year in a row, Elyse Heise, a member of my congregation, Congregation B’nai Shalom in Westborough, Massachusetts, has written and produced a Passover parody music video that involves a cross-section of our community along with several of her very talented friends (in particular our returning vocalists, Ashley Harmon and Rachel Barril, and this year’s video editor, Spencer Caddigan). This year the inspiration was Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood,” with a new chorus line, ‘… now we got Matzah… oy!’
There are a lot of these doing the rounds at this time of year. Ours is home-grown and completely put together by volunteers. We put out a general call to anyone in the congregation who can give us a few hours on one afternoon to be part of the filming, and you’ll see it draws in folk of all ages. Aside from the sheer cuteness of watching Elyse’s 1-year-old son exploring matzah for the first time, the other peak moment was calling “action” on a group of our congregation’s kids digging into a huge chocolate cake with their bare hands!
What happens when a congregation becomes the venue for one of these parody videos? It helps build up anticipation for an upcoming holiday, we see young adults, long-time members, and young children all working together on something fun and innovative, and there’s a great feel-good and buzz in the larger congregation who love to hear that someone on the other side of the USA (or the other side of the world!) has seen our little video.
We hope you enjoy. If you do we’d love for you to share it with your friends and family – Chag Sameach!
Below are the congregation’s previous Passover parody videos:
