Note: Obama is not at everyone's seder

So, your Jewish friend invited you home for his/her Passover Seder.

“Free meal!” you think to yourself.

But what is a Seder? And what exactly will you be eating? Who’s gonna be there? Do you get to eat Challah? Do you have to be able to pronounce it?

As your resident CollegeCandy Jew (OK, so there are quite a few of us), allow me to prepare you for tonight’s festivities. Below, what you need to know about a Passover Seder.

1. Eat a little before you go.
Passover food isn’t for everyone (no matter how creative that Jewish mother gets with her Passover rolls) and it may be hard to stomach for someone who hasn’t been choking it down for 18 years. And even if you do love yourself some matzoh ball soup (who doesn’t?), it might be awhile before you get some. First you gotta get through the actual seder service. Actually, first you gotta get all the Jewish women to stop talking, then you gotta get through the service.

2. Follow along.
You never know when the old guy (it’s always an old guy) leading this thing is going to call on you to read a passage. And trust me, as the guest, he is definitely going to call on you. Usually before Great Aunt Ethel reads in her strong Russian accent and after the family makes 12-year-old Rachel read in Hebrew to prove all that money spent on Monday Night School wasn’t wasted. Don’t worry if you don’t understand a word you just read; it may be in English but most of us don’t really get it.

3. Leave that wine glass in the middle of the table alone.
You’re going to have plenty of wine, trust me. 4 glasses, to be exact. And it’s going to be unlike any wine you’ve ever had before. Think “fermented Capri Sun.” Yeah, it’s that sweet. Anyways, don’t touch that glass in the middle – it’s for Elijah, the prophet. He’s like Santa Claus, except instead of circling the planet and dropping off presents to everyone, he circles the planet and drinks everyone’s wine. Yeah, I wish I had that job, too.

4. Try everything….but go easy on the bitter herb.
The weird thing about Passover is that the stuff that looks the grossest actually tastes the best. Like gelfite fish, matzoh kugal and charosset, which is meant to look like the cement they put between bricks (don’t worry, you’ll understand the significance later tonight), but tastes way better. It’s made with apples and nuts and wine; how can you not love it? Just don’t fall for the old “Oh, take a big hunk of this bitter herb stuff” trick we Jews like to play on the newbies. It’s not bitter, it’s HOT, and you don’t have to prove yourself by sweating and crying at the table.

5. Wear something loose.
Like most Jewish holiday meals, the theme of a Passover seder is “We fought, we won, let’s eat.” And eat a lot. Even if you aren’t a fan of gelfite fish (or that nasty snot stuff it comes in), there will be plenty of delicious food and candy (mmmm Ring Gels) to chow down on throughout the night. Avoid the skinny jeans and wear a loose dress for optimal comfort.

[This story was originally posted by Lauren - University of Michigan]

Get it? Got it? Good. Want some more? Don’t worry, there are plenty more faves where this came from.

Here are some tips to make your holidays away from home as enjoyable as possible. (This doesn’t just apply to Jewish students – every student can find the right balance between religion, relationships, classes, activities, and a part-time job.)

First and foremost, talk to your professors if you plan on missing a class because you are observing a religious holiday. My freshman year I had a foreign professor that refused to excuse me from his 1-credit seminar class because of Yom Kippur. I was intimidated but my parents (typical Jewish mother syndrome) convinced me to talk to my advisor right away. He was made aware of the situation from day 1 and it became a non-issue. Your university should have a policy stating religious discrimination is unacceptable. Do your research just in case a similar situation arises.

Seek out student organizations geared to your religious affiliation. Hillel and Chabad are great places to spend the High Holy Days if you are Jewish. Penn State Hillel, for instance, provides a home-cooked meal every Friday night after services – a big improvement over the dining hall food. The students involved in these groups have created a balance in their lives and they can advise you how to do the same. You already all have something in common. You can compare how many times a day your Mom has called or share stories about your yearly winter vacations to visit Grandma in Florida. Who knows… you will probably be able to find someone who went to the same sleepaway camp as you did (the Six Degrees of Jewish Separation is no joke).

Bring the holidays to you and your friends. If you live in a dorm, order chicken noodle soup from a local deli and share with your roommates. Plan your own festive meal. Teach your Gentile friends about the importance of rye bread and good bagels. You can be extremely adventurous if you have your own kitchen and make your own “Jew Food.”

By the time the High Holidays roll around, everyone’s going to be so sick of Ramen and late-night Easy Mac that they’ll think matzo balls are better than sliced bread. Which, as any Jew knows, they totally are. Unless that bread is challah. Yum.

Note: Obama is not at everyone's seder

So, your Jewish friend invited you home for his/her Passover Seder.

“Free meal!” you think to yourself.

But what is a Seder? And what exactly will you be eating? Who’s gonna be there? Do you get to eat Challah? Do you have to be able to pronounce it?

As your resident CollegeCandy Jew (OK, so there are quite a few of us), allow me to prepare you for tonight’s festivities. Below, what you need to know about a Passover Seder.

1. Eat a little before you go.
Passover food isn’t for everyone (no matter how creative that Jewish mother gets with her Passover rolls) and it may be hard to stomach for someone who hasn’t been choking it down for 18 years. And even if you do love yourself some matzoh ball soup (who doesn’t?), it might be awhile before you get some. First you gotta get through the actual seder service. Actually, first you gotta get all the Jewish women to stop talking, then you gotta get through the service.

2. Follow along.
You never know when the old guy (it’s always an old guy) leading this thing is going to call on you to read a passage. And trust me, as the guest, he is definitely going to call on you. Usually before Great Aunt Ethel reads in her strong Russian accent and after the family makes 12-year-old Rachel read in Hebrew to prove all that money spent on Monday Night School wasn’t wasted. Don’t worry if you don’t understand a word you just read; it may be in English but most of us don’t really get it.

3. Leave that wine glass in the middle of the table alone.
You’re going to have plenty of wine, trust me. 4 glasses, to be exact. And it’s going to be unlike any wine you’ve ever had before. Think “fermented Capri Sun.” Yeah, it’s that sweet. Anyways, don’t touch that glass in the middle – it’s for Elijah, the prophet. He’s like Santa Claus, except instead of circling the planet and dropping off presents to everyone, he circles the planet and drinks everyone’s wine. Yeah, I wish I had that job, too.

4. Try everything….but go easy on the bitter herb.
The weird thing about Passover is that the stuff that looks the grossest actually tastes the best. Like gelfite fish, matzoh kugal and charosset, which is meant to look like the cement they put between bricks (don’t worry, you’ll understand the significance later tonight), but tastes way better. It’s made with apples and nuts and wine; how can you not love it? Just don’t fall for the old “Oh, take a big hunk of this bitter herb stuff” trick we Jews like to play on the newbies. It’s not bitter, it’s HOT, and you don’t have to prove yourself by sweating and crying at the table.

5. Wear something loose.
Like most Jewish holiday meals, the theme of a Passover seder is “We fought, we won, let’s eat.” And eat a lot. Even if you aren’t a fan of gelfite fish (or that nasty snot stuff it comes in), there will be plenty of delicious food and candy (mmmm Ring Gels) to chow down on throughout the night. Avoid the skinny jeans and wear a loose dress for optimal comfort.

Or should I say, Trumpberg? Trumpstein? Schwartztrump?

Ivanka Trump has sought out a rabbi to take her on her journey to Judaism. Why does she want to be a Jew? Why not? We are wonderful people: kind, generous, family oriented, and we know how to eat. And, hello, have you ever had matzoh ball soup? Yeah, that’s all us.

Oh, and she is also in love with some Jewish guy who won’t marry her unless she too celebrates Hanukkah, Yom Kippur and all that jazz.

I think it is wonderful that Ivanka has found love (and a real estate empire) in Jared Kushner, but the whole thing makes me wonder just how far women should go to be with the guy they love. I used to get sh*t from my friends for changing my hair/music selection/weekend plans for the guys I was with, so I can only imagine how they’d feel if I changed my entire belief system.

I know that love is a wondeful thing, that it is hard to find, and that we should hold onto the one we got, but there has to be a line, right?

Would you convert for someone you love?

[Photo courtesy of Gawker.]

Yeah, yeah, it shouldn’t be that hard. But somehow nothing seems quite satisfying enough, quite interesting enough when I have to think so hard about my food.

I am not the kind of girl who diets. In fact, I’ve never been on a diet in my entire life (excluding this “Passover diet” that I go on every year for a week). And I’ll tell you, I don’t like it. If I had to be so careful about what I ate all the time, I would definitely be a much bigger bitch.

Which is really making me a better person. Because now when someone is rude to me on the train, I can think, “oh, they must be on a diet,” and let it go. Thanks, Passover!

In any event, the last couple of days were annoying. I missed out on free Beard Papa cream puffs, on free cookies, on going out to (not free, but still) pizza with friends, etc. etc.

I ate Pinkberry frozen yogurt for lunch one day when I was in a rush and couldn’t think of anything else that was fast.

I was not always nice to my boyfriend.

But he’s forgiven me and now Passover has, at last, passed.

So tonight I ate pizza and cake for dinner.

And now I feel sick.

But I’ve learned something: cutting out bread from your diet sucks. And, if you’re me, it causes you to eat more junk food out of desperation. So don’t do it! Eat bread! EAT BREAD!!!

And so ends my Passover Diet chronicles. Please hold for Yom Kippur fast (COMING SOON to a Jew near you!).

I wake up and I eat matzoh.

Then I go about my daily day (see?! I can’t even think of a better way to say this!) and find something I can eat for lunch (surprisingly difficult even in lower manhattan).

Then I’m cranky at people until dinner, at which point I am tired of trying to think of what to eat and end up having a fudgesicle.

Actually, I think I might be losing weight, but only because eating has become so calculated and joyless that it’s not even worth it.

I mean, this is not a big deal. I can’t have bread. To channel my grandmother for a moment, this should be the worst thing that happens to me.

But I have to admit, it’s really affecting my mood. I just feel empty all the time. I mean, not in an emo way. In a I-would-like-some-bread-in-my-tummy kind of way.

Today on the train I had an elaborate fantasy about a garlic knot.

I’m glad this thing is almost over.

Oh yeah, thanks for letting us escape from Egypt and whatnot, had gad ya.

Well, first of all, last night I went to my parents’ house for a Seder. We went through our Maxwell House Haggadahs like I go through a fresh, steaming cup of Maxwell House coffee.

…Anyway.

I asked my father what the correct pronunciation of “Haggadah” was, because a friend of mine says it “ha-GAH-dah” whereas I have always heard it as “huh-GUH-duh.” I was told that the first way is Hebrew, the second is Yiddish. Go fig. My fam-o is full of the Yiddish. The Hebrew, not so much.

Okay, this no bread thing is making me punchy. Let’s move on to today:

I wake up in my childhood bedroom thinking about French toast. Vey. Instead, I have half a piece of matzoh with butter (which, can I just say, spreads on matzoh really crappily. But that’s cool, whatever). I washed it down with one of those little Starbucks Frap things that comes in little bottles and has 3 grams of fat [which I know because I look at that kind of thing].

Still hungry, I held out till lunch, which was…matzoh brei. Now, matzoh brei is delicious (and it seriously is), but how much matzoh can I take?! Can we please acknowledge that our ancestors took it with them because they didn’t have time for bread to rise, not because it’s a tasty snack?? GIVE ME BREAD NOW.

For dinner I ate lox…sans bagel. And mushrooms. And Pirate Booty. Because it’s like, what can I eat? So I just eat a lot, trying to fill the void my yeasty love left. So I’m definitely not losing weight. Passover Diet, you suck.

But it’s not really that bad. I mean, after all, it’s only Day 2.

Kill me now.

The book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, claims that the author spent four years as a child wandering the European wilderness and being raised by wolves.

Would you believe that? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

The author, who has further admitted that her name is not actually Misha Defonseca but Monique De Wael, said that the book was “not actually reality, but my reality.”

I’m going to refrain from making fun of her because it’s clear that the woman needs professional help, but the point is that there’s no excuse for even disturbed people to make up stories about their lives and then market them as “memoirs.”

A memoir, as we all know thanks to James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces screw-up, is supposed to be nonfiction. True, no one’s going to disagree with the fact that an abandoned kid raised by wolves makes a great story—but the author could have chosen to write it as such, a fiction story, without lying and possibly causing distress to the thousands of people who read her book thinking it was true.

But wait—the plot thickens. The CNN article also mentions that De Wael had a ghostwriter, which means that she didn’t actually even write the book herself. In essence, she was feeding lies to another woman whose job it was to spin those lies into a gut-wrenching memoir. As much as I love books, this whole ordeal kind of makes me lose my faith in publishers. Seriously, who would market a book as nonfiction if they knew it had been filtered through years of disturbed memory and the pen of a ghostwriter? Not me.

The article doesn’t mention what’s going to happen to De Wael as a result of making up the book, if anything, but it sickens me that she’s getting rich off a collection of falsehoods that’s been translated into over a dozen languages and made into a feature film.

Future English teachers, listen up: the difference between fact and fiction clearly isn’t being hammered into heads very well, so take it upon yourselves to teach your students accordingly.

On the bright side, I guess this means I can now start proposing my own “memoir” about a childhood spent on stilts and in lions’ mouths as I made a life for myself in the traveling circus.