When Mandy Patinkin was growing up, getting him to eat was one of his mother's biggest projects. But to hear the star of the new Broadway show "The Wild Party," the television series "Chicago Hope" and the film "Yentl" tell it, he'd wait impatiently at the Passover table for her Chocolate Sponge Cake topped with Raspberry Sauce.
He says he'd sneak sugar cookies and brownies from the dessert trays as they lay cooling for the family Chanukah celebration, and his mouth still waters when he remembers Ma's Kosher Hot Dogs and Baked Beans ("Don't forget the sugar," he counsels) and her amazing Hot Cream Cheese Puffs ("You have to use Philadelphia cream cheese," he warns). For someone his mother thought couldn't care less, Mandy knows an awful lot about the subject.As the accomplished actor and singer got older, his culinary tastes spread to McDonald's, which horrified his aunts and grandma, who repeatedly asked his mother, "How can you let him eat that junk?" But Doralee Patinkin, a cook so skilled she would author two Jewish cookbooks, was pragmatic. "He's so skinny. Finally he likes something. I'm not going to let him eat it!?"
The exchange is telling. Because Mandy's eating habits -- and the eating habits of the 14 other Patinkin grandchildren, for that matter -- were "everybody's business." And "everybody" in the family were practically neighbors.
Not only did two of Doralee's sisters-in-law, Ida and Lillian, live in the same building, but the rest of the Patinkin mishpocheh (family), as well as all the Sintons -- Doralee's side of the family -- live in and around Hyde Park, a stone's throw from the University of Chicago and a few blocks from Rabbi Ralph Simon's synagogue, where they all went to worship.
"It was like a shtetl," (a Jewish village) says Mandy Patinkin's wife, Kathryn Grody Patinkin, who's listened with appreciation to her husband's endless anecdotes about his childhood.
Whether it was the family's proximity, or that everyone looked out for each other, Mandy could be called the prototypical poster boy for the warm, extended Jewish family -- grandsons and granddaughters of Eastern European immigrants who came to this country in the teens and '20s to seek their fortunes and raise their families. Not that life was always rosy.
On the first night of Passover, the family flocked to Auntie Ida's for the Seder -- the setting chosen because Ida kept kosher and Grandma Celia insisted. There was a minimum of 25 people at the annual event, sitting at tables spread around the apartment, eating fabulous food off her red glass Passover plates. There were laughing, singing and the retelling of their ancestors' flight for freedom from Pharaoh's Egypt.
After the service was concluded, the to-die-for desserts devoured and the extra place setting and glass of wine for the prophet Elijah acknowledged, there was teenage Mandy, barefoot, draped in a white sheet, carrying a staff and singing Eliahu Hanovi. Just as some Christians simulate Santa Claus, Mandy was the self-appointed ghost of Passovers past.
This should have been a clue that one day Mandy would become an actor.
Mandy lost his dad when he was 19 and both he and his mother fondly remember the nakhes (joy) Lester Patinkin felt in leading the Passover service and especially in tzafun, (hiding the afikoman).
"One year Dad thought he'd fool the kids by hiding the cloth-covered matzo in his sock. Dad wore these long black stockings that came up to his knees," Mandy recalls. "So dad sat at the table, grinning, as the kids traipsed through the house, poking around all the usual places. Finally, someone spotted the cloth-covered piece of matzo sticking out of his sock.
"But in order to claim the prize, the broken piece had to be matched up with its original half. (As the story goes, the hidden portion of the afikoman represents Jews who have become lost. Putting the pieces back together is symbolic for the reunion of the Jewish people). The wayward matzo was nowhere in sight. And then, Grandma Celia shrieked. She'd eaten it. She was so embarrassed. We still laugh about it," says Patinkin.
Today Mandy and Kathryn host a Seder for family and friends at their house in New York. "We try to make it very 'kid friendly' and casual-- sometimes we sit on the floor," says Mandy. "We invite an army of people and we encourage everyone to participate. Sons Isaac, 17, and Gideon,13, don the white sheets to emulate Elijah. They even spill a cup of wine to make bare footprints on the floor so everyone will know Elijah is for real. Sometimes we do a snake dance through the house singing Eliahu Hanovi."
"It's an exciting event in our house, just as it was in my parents'," says Mandy. But Kathryn and I are our own kind of Jews. We wrote our own Haggadah (the book which guides us through the Passover service) and made up our own prayers."
So intent was Kathryn that their service be accessible, she pored over all the Haggadahs at Westside Judaica in Manhattan, took 10 of them home, and proceeded to glean the best of each one. To that she added poetry by Marge Piercy, sonnets by Shakespeare, and the writings of Martin Luther King and Anne Frank.
The result is a Haggadah with these words: "Until no child in this world goes hungry," "Until every Israeli accepts every Arab as his brother, and until every Arab accepts every Israeli as his brother," "We're grateful for arms that move and hug each other and legs that walk and bring us toward each other" and "Until there's no slavery for anyone."
"We tried to combine the traditional story with what's relevant today," Kathryn explains.
Judaism remains an integral part of Mandy's life. "I say prayers every day; every Shabbat (Friday night) we have a wonderful dinner in our house. Being Jewish -- singing the songs, saying the prayers -- it gives me a wonderful feeling."