My family and I will be in Israel for Pesach this year, and one of the reasons – if not the main reason – is Cafe Hillel.

The first time we went to Israel for Pesach, a few years ago, my son was excited beyond all measure because he could have the most delicious chocolate cake that he had ever tasted in a cafe on the street – during Pesach!

He wasn’t used to being able to eat out on Pesach at all, but to have chocolate cake that tasted so good – so, in his words, “real” – outside our safe, kosher-for-Passover house? What a goldene medinah we had brought him to!

He talked about that cake for years afterward, and he still does. In fact, at every Seder, when we say, “Next year in Jerusalem” he adds, “At Cafe Hillel!” This year, we decided to go back. I hope Cafe Hillel still makes that chocolate cake.

I feel the reality of living in the Diaspora so much during Pesach. There’s no Cafe Hillel, and no people eating pesachdik chocolate cake under the sun at a sidewalk cafe.

Purim is OK in Toronto. We can see kids in costumes up and down Bathurst Street and not feel too weird delivering our mishloach manot down the street.

But Pesach? In Jerusalem, you go to a beautiful outdoor market, overflowing with colours and sounds, and the cheese seller looks at you quizzically when you ask which cheese is kosher l’Pesach.

“Lady,” he says with a laugh, “this is Israel! All my cheese is kosher for Passover!”

In Toronto, you drive up to Thornhill and hope that some kosher cheese is left the week before Pesach, because you haven’t kashered your kitchen yet and you didn’t buy it a month in advance.

In Jerusalem, Sephardi-style rice and chick peas are the norm, not the exception. The talk in shul is about the responsa suggesting that all Jews adopt these Sephardi Pesach leniencies for the sake of Klal Yisrael.

In Toronto, the talk is all about new strictures – what we can’t eat this year that we could last year, and what new matzah kugel we can invent with the same few outrageously expensive, chemically filled, canned, kosher-for-Passover ingredients.

In Jerusalem, you can hear the sounds of Chad Gadya in open windows on the night of the seder, and your office is closed the next day, even if you’re the most secular Jew around. You take the day off and relish the freedom of not being a slave in the modern world.

In Toronto, your phone still rings in the middle of the seder with telemarketers who don’t know its your holy day, and your kids have to take the day off school, hoping they haven’t missed a test.

In Israel, the flowers are blooming and the air is warm for Pesach. You can swim during chol hamoed and break out your sandals.

In Toronto, it might still be snowing.

In Jerusalem… well, it almost makes you want to live there.

At least for the week of Pesach.