Abraham Solomon Goldman who, as I used to laugh to myself, possessed the most Jewish name in America, was appropriately and devoutly religious. He prayed every morning and walked to temple every Saturday for the Sabbath. In keeping with the Jewish teachings, he never proselytized his beliefs to us -- except when it came to eating. To my grandfather, righteousness was determined by the kind of food a person ate. He never asked me to join him at synagogue, but he always encouraged me to keep kosher. If he caught me with a cheeseburger he would click his tongue and say, "It's not God's food."

At our seder -- which means "order" in Hebrew -- my grandfather had always been the banquet M.C. He wouldn't let us eat before blessing the matzo or raising a proper kiddush cup. Through his guidance, I learned to see the importance of tradition, the significance of retelling and remembering the Passover lore -- the exodus from Egypt, the Jewish story. So I decided that a year after his death, at our Passover dinner we would remember the story of my grandfather.

Like most narratives, a sound meal needs some structure. I followed the wheat-free rules of the holiday and I also made the meal completely vegetarian to ensure that it would have been kosher enough for my grandfather to enjoy had he still been with us. As I kneaded the matzo meal into a sticky paste to make dumplings for our soup, I remembered ancestral slaves turning mortar into the bricks that made the Pyramids. I served sweet potato gnocchi with roasted red pepper sauce -- the color of fire and strength. Grilled asparagus and radicchio represented spring, the season of freedom and renewal. Dessert was a crème caramel, my own Manna Flan -- because it tasted so sweet you could pretend it fell from heaven. I filled the food with my grandfather's faith, as if it could infuse the rest of the family.

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We all took turns reading the Passover story. We sang some Hebrew songs and we raised our glasses of wine to my grandfather and toasted, "L'Chaim," to his life. My own father, the agnostic scientist, winked and said, "Delicious." We sanctified life and legend with my supper. That night religion revealed itself as a background setting to the story of my life and a place setting at my table. My family felt connected to something bigger, back to a time even before my grandfather, back to a very old history and powerful beliefs. That night being Jewish wasn't marked by all the things that I was not. That seder was the finest meal I have ever prepared: It was a eulogy and a commencement all in one dish -- seasoned with nostalgia and savored like hope.

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