This year’s pre-Passover program went beyond the wine department. Yes, we partnered with Toni deLuca at Julio’s Liquors again, bringing back some favorites from the past couple of years and adding in some new selections. But this year was made extra-special by the incredible foodie contributions of Rabbi Sharon Sobel and her brother Ari, along with our very own in-house chef Rabbi Joe, who contributed to the wonderful dessert options. In the space of less than 2 hours, a number of menu items were showcased to bring fresh ideas and deliciousness to your Passover Seder. And everyone present got to taste everything! Thank you to Temple Beth Am of Framingham for partnering with Congregation B’nai Shalom for this special evening.
At the bottom of this post is the livestream archive of the whole evening for your viewing pleasure. But first, my reviews of this year’s wine tastings. Wine Reviews
Notte Italiano Prosecco – Italy $16.99
Joseph Mellot Sancerre – France $31.99
Terra Vega Rose – Chile $7.99
Louis Blanc Cotes du Rhone Rouge – France $14.99
Terra Vega Pinot Noir – Chile $7.99
La Citadelle de Diamant Caesar Red Blend – Israel $29.99
Bartenura Brachetto – Italian sweet red, lightly sparkling
We’ve enjoyed several of these wines in previous years’ tastings but we brought them back as some of the best of the batch.
The light Prosecco is a lovely way to kick of Passover – we served it as an aperitif as people arrived and tasted charoset and appetizers before the main program began. It has light notes of pear and is medium dry.
The Sancerre is the priciest wine on the list but it is the most complex and well-balanced wines on the list that we served. It remains one of my favorites.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve enjoyed the Terra Vega offerings. A couple of years ago we had their Carmenere, which is more often a grape that is used in smaller quantities in a blended wine. But it stands out on its own in a very easy-drinking wine. Their Rose is bright and fruity, fun to drink and an unbeatable value like the rest of their line.
I had tasted the Louis Blanc Cotes du Rhone prior to our evening but we didn’t actually serve it on the night as the distributor wasn’t able to get it to us for orders for Passover. It is smooth on the palate, low in tanins, with dark blackcurrant fruit notes. Instead we served the Terra Vega Pinot Noir at our tasting. Like the rest of the Terra Vega range, it is very easy-drinking and an excellent value. It did not have the character that the Carmenere or the Rose had, in my opinion, and was a little light for a Pinot Noir. It might be a nice red option if you are serving a chicken dish with a richer sauce but could easily be overwhelmed by brisket or meat stew.
The Citadelle de Diamant Caesar Red Blend was the fullest bodied red of the night. Some tanins and big flavors in the mouth, it will pair well with beef dishes.
The final taste of the night was a substitute for what we originally had on the tasting menu – Vino Sweet Red (Italy). The Vino had been a big hit last year for those who actually enjoy Manischewitz and are looking for a slightly more sophisticated and lighter sweet wine for Seder. Our batch arrived ‘corked’ – a number of the corks had come into contact with something that damaged the cork and, therefore, damaged the wine. We did a last minute switch to the Bartenura Brachetto. I, personally, am not a big fan of these sweet options (I’d prefer to go for a Muscat dessert wine, of which we’ve had the Butcher’s Daughter Muscat from France in previous years). However, the Bartenura doesn’t have the syrupy sweetness of the Vino and was a light, fun wine for those who enjoy the sweeter experience for their Passover Seder.
We are four weeks into the Counting of the Omer, the period of seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot. Once a time of waiting as grain grew in fields, ready for harvesting at Shavuot, this period of time later became interpreted as a time of personal growth. We move not only from the experience but also the mindset of slavery, to the moment of Revelation at Mount Sinai, understood as a God-encounter where we can be at our most spiritually expansive; exhibited through a refinement of character traits and behaviors that see our actions most aligned with our values and beliefs.
The tradition of Counting the Omer is a practice of counting each day as we reach sundown. But while each day brings us closer to the festival, the ritual asks that we count up and not count down. Perhaps this is purely pragmatic. Shavuot is the only biblically-ordained festival that is not provided with a specific date on a specific month but, rather, is described as seven weeks after Passover. So we count up until we hit seven. Perhaps the counting is also symbolic – the sense of moving upward as in a spiritual ascent, just as Moses ascended Mt. Sinai for the Revelation encounter. But perhaps, also, the upward counting is a way of reminding us to keep moving forward. Sometimes our life experiences see us looking back, trying to hold on to something that is gone. We experience the pain of loss, as we should when we lose something, but sometimes the pain stays with us so much longer because of our inability to notice what is right in front of us today. When we count the Omer, before reciting the formula for announcing this day, we number the previous day. So, when announcing the arrival of the third day, we would say aloud ‘yesterday was the second day’ and then, after the blessing for counting the Omer, we announce ‘today is the third day of the Omer’. We recognize that we are formed by our past experiences, but then we affirm the newness of this day – we will not be defined or limited by our past. We face today as a new opportunity, with new potential for growth and spiritual expression.
This year, as I count the Omer, I am aware of my own journeying, and the tendencies to look back or look forward, but sometimes forgetting to treasure this very day. Not long after Shavuot I will be journeying, from Congregation B’nai Israel in Bridgeport CT to Congregation B’nai Shalom in Westborough, MA. It is a bitter-sweet time. Looking back, I find myself trying not to count or notice that there is one day less left at B’nai Israel. It has been such a wonderful spiritual home these past six years, and it is not easy to leave. And yet, I am thrilled to have been given the opportunity to serve Congregation B’nai Shalom, and each time I return for another visit and meet more people, my enthusiasm grows. I begin to imagine the work we will do there together.
Looking back… and looking forward… and sometimes forgetting to notice this moment and this day. Hayom shloshim yom, sh’hem arba’ah shavuot u-shnei yamim la’omer. Today is the thirtieth day, making four weeks and two days of the Omer.
As we sit down at our Seder tables this year we repeat, as we do every year, the words that remind us that it is important for us to remember the exodus from Egypt as if we, ourselves, experienced it. If we engage in the ritual of the Passover Seder as more than just another family meal, we find a whole toolbox laid out in the manual we call the Haggadah, that can help us to do this. There are tastes, there are words and stories, there are questions and (sometimes) there are answers (but it is the search that is more important than the answers themselves). There are songs and, if we choose, there is storytelling through acting, reminiscing, the young asking the old, and the old asking the young.
The haggadah tells us that we have to find a way to make the experience of gaining freedom from slavery come alive for each and every generation. This is not only to ensure that we don’t forget our heritage and our story; it is also because some of the early generations of Rabbis who crafted this ritual understood that the way Jews related to this story in one generation or in one era would be different to the ways that it worked for Jews of another time.
The meaning and the purpose of Passover has changed over the centuries – it fulfilled a different need for us at different times. Once it was an agricultural celebration. At other times it was a story of hope when we were oppressed and discriminated against. In the last generation in the USA it became a vehicle for Jews now living freely to speak about their obligations to help free others from their shackles, giving birth to Haggadot that focused on civil rights, women’s rights, the environment, and more.
What will Passover mean for the next generation? What ‘job’ will it do that adds significant meaning to their lives? It might have something to do with autonomy or the ability to feel like they can still make a difference in an era of powerful corporations and the undue influence of money. It might be the freedom to make different kinds of lifestyle choices. It might mean a psycho-spiritual kind of freedom that comes from within. It might inspire them to engage in local or worldwide social justice actions to help free others. We don’t know what the next generation will dream.
But, while the Passover has traditionally always been a time when the youngest ask the adults the questions so that they will understand where they come from and the inheritance that is theirs, it is essential that we adults ask our children questions too. If we want them to imagine that it is they, themselves who are leaving the slavery of Egypt, we need to ask them what that means to them.
You can do this with children of any age, but I especially encourage those with teenagers or young adults at their Passover table this year to ask the question, as I will be doing this year at my Seder. I am confident that your Seder will be transformed into an interesting and important conversation, and I’d love to hear what you learn from our next generations.
I’ve missed a few days of #BlogExodus blogging, but the great thing about a project that involves many people, is that you can read lots of other great blogs on each and every day of this month of Nisan/lead-up to Pesach project. You can track them all on Twitter by searching for #BlogExodus, but here are just a small selection from the past few days: On ‘Cleaning’ check out this procrastinator’s musings. On ‘Slavery’, a reminder that it is still real today, and not just a symbolic matter. On ‘Freedom’, check out The Huffington Post. The 7th of Nisan focused on ‘Redemption’ – take a look at a more personal reflection here. The 8th of Nisan turned to themes of ‘Courage and Faith’ – here is a thoughtful reflection on bullying
And so now we’ve reached the 9th of Nisan and our theme today is ‘Spring’. The following is my Passover message for our local weekly newspaper consortium, Hersam-Acorn, in print in several local towns this coming week:
Is it mere coincidence that the Jewish festival of Passover, beginning this Friday eve, April 6th, falls in the early weeks of Springtime? The answer is ‘no’, both from a historical perspective but also from a symbolic perspective.Historically, several scholars suggest that there was a pre-existing Springtime celebration before the Jewish people assigned Passover and the re-telling of the exodus from Egypt to this time in the calendar.In fact, we see hints of this earlier celebration embedded in the Exodus story itself.Exodus, chapter five begins: ‘And afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said to Pharaoh: ‘Thus says the Eternal, the God of Israel: Let My people go, that they may hold a feast for Me in the wilderness.’ Spring is the season of new flowers and buds appearing in nature, and it is the lambing season. The centrality of the sacrifice of a lamb just before the tenth and final plague that led to the Hebrew slaves being allowed to go free may well have been related to an earlier celebration where a first-born of the new flock was offered up in thanksgiving.
Today we do not sacrifice animals as part of the Passover celebration; instead a shankbone is placed as one of the symbols on a Seder plate that takes center stage in the home-based ceremony held in Jewish homes all over the world to mark the beginning of the holiday.Another symbol of fertility and new life is also found on this plate – an egg (a Spring time symbol shared by our Christian neighbors at Easter).
But Spring time remains deeply symbolic as a time not only of new birth, but struggles for freedom from oppression over the centuries, new hope and new possibilities.We may be most familiar with the recent waves of unrest and uprisings against dictatorial leaders in the Middle East, dubbed ‘the Arab Spring’.These movements did not literally begin during Springtime, but commentators quickly adopted the phrase that can be traced back to the 1800s.Ben Zimmer, author of www.visualthesaurus.com, finds the earliest usage with a German philosopher, Ludwig Borne, in 1818.Referring to several European revolutions in the mid-1800s, in French the phrase used was printemps des peuples (springtime of the peoples) and, in English, ‘The People’s Springtime’.
What is common to both the current socio-political changes, the European revolutions, and the Biblical Exodus is that the journey from slavery to freedom is never straightforward.We are much more certain about what we are seeking freedom from but it usually takes a lot longer to know what we will do with our freedom.For the Hebrews it took forty years of wandering in the wilderness but, along the journey they created a covenant with God that provided them with laws and structures for creating a new society in a new land, where time and again they were reminded not to oppress others, because they had once been slaves in Egypt.This is a message that we all need to hear, year after year, precisely because it is so easy to forget the greater purpose of freedom once we have the power to choose our own path.
This Springtime, in the weeks following Passover, the Jewish community is joining together with Christian, Muslim, and Hindu brothers and sisters for an ‘Interfaith Spring’ on Sunday, April 29th.Together we will both celebrate and remember our obligation to care for our natural world, joining to clean up the Greater Bridgeport area.We begin with a BBQ at Rodeph Shalom at 1 p.m., taking interfaith groups to work in cleaning up the city for the afternoon, and returning at 4.30 for more music and celebration.To join us, please email rabbivictor@rodephsholom.com
As we sit down at our Seder tables this year we repeat, as we do every year, the words that remind us that it is important for us to remember the exodus from Egypt as if we, ourselves, experienced it.
The haggadah tells us that we have to find a way to make the experience of gaining freedom from slavery come alive for each and every generation. This is not only to ensure that we don’t forget our heritage and our story; it is also because some of the early generations of Rabbis who crafted this ritual understood that the way Jews related to this story in one generation or in one era would be different to the ways that it worked for Jews of another time.
So, when we think about the Seder as an opportunity for learning and teaching, I’d like to suggest that we set aside some of our normative assumptions. As we think about how to conduct our Seder, we might usually assume that it is any children or youth at the table that are doing the learning, and it is the adults doing the teaching. In families that still conduct the Seder with a ‘head of the family’ running things, the flow of information is more likely to be one-way. But we need to make space for younger generations to teach as well as to learn; to not only ask questions but also to provide answers. Doing so provides an opportunity for them to relate to the deeper learning that comes from re-experiencing the journey from slavery to freedom in ways that work for today’s generation.
The meaning and the purpose of Passover has changed over the centuries – it fulfilled a different need for us at different times. Once it was an agricultural celebration. At other times it was a story of hope when we were oppressed and discriminated against. In the last generation in the USA it became a vehicle for Jews now living freely to speak about their obligations to help free others from their shackles, giving birth to Haggadot that focused on civil rights, women’s rights, the environment, and more.
What will Passover mean for the next generation? What ‘job’ will it do that adds significant meaning to their lives? It might have something to do with autonomy or the ability to feel like they can still make a difference in an era of powerful corporations and the undue influence of money. It might be the freedom to make different kinds of lifestyle choices. It might mean a psycho-spiritual kind of freedom that comes from within. We don’t know what the next generation will dream. If we want them to imagine that it is they, themselves who are leaving the slavery of Egypt, we need to ask them what that means to them.
You can do this with children of any age, but I especially encourage those with teenagers or young adults at their Passover table this year to ask the question, as I will doing this year at my Seder. I am confident that your Seder will be transformed into an interesting and important conversation, and I’d love to hear what you learn from our next generations.
This is day 2 of #BlogExodus, and our theme is Chametz – the term that refers to leavened foods – the opposite of matzah (unleavened bread). The Torah commands that, as part of our observance of Passover, we remove all chametz from our homes and refrain from eating it for the duration of the festival.
As is the case with so many of our Jewish rituals, we have many layers of interpretation that we can delve into from across the centuries to explore the practical and symbolic meaning of chametz and the importance of its absence during this holiday.
In the symbolic arena, many have referred to chametz as a sign of puffed-up ego, or yetzer hara more generally. Yetzer hara is usually translated as ‘evil inclination’, but that gives a strong impression of something negative that we must rid ourselves of. The problem is, we are allowed to eat chametz for the other 358 days of the year. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense, even symbolically, to assign chametz a meaning that is ‘bad.’ In some of the earliest collections of rabbinic midrashim we find acknowledgments that yetzer hara is better understood as will or desire. We all need it in healthy doses – without it we would not create anything, make love, enjoy food etc. But, as with all things in life, we need balance – too much yetzer hara isn’t good for us or for our society. Just as too much leavening makes for a sour taste when we bake bread, so too much yetzer hara turns everything we do sour.
Nevertheless, why do we have to rid ourselves of it completely for Pesach? On a less symbolic level, some have suggested that, like the unleavened cakes that were part of the Temple offerings in ancient times, each of us turn our homes into mini-Temples. We don’t do the Pascal lamb sacrifice at the Temple any more, but our homes have become the new location for the rituals that we do to celebrate the holiday. So our homes are now sanctuaries for increasing our awareness of God’s presence, just as the Temple that once stood in Jerusalem was where everyone was expected to go for the major holidays, because the intensity of God-awareness was greatest when everyone focused on one special place.
Back to the symbolic level again, I recognize that full freedom comes not only from the social and political environment we might live in, but from an inner state that requires trust and faith, and which I am more aware of when I participate in rituals or actions that make me more God-conscious. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught that it was not that the unleavened bread was holy and the leavened bread was absent of holiness; rather that the puffed-up nature of leavened bread represented a world where the inner essential holy sparks of all things can be disguised by the complexities of the material world. That is the world that we live in. But perhaps we become more adept at navigating our way through that material world if we can take a week to strip away some of the extraneous things, simplify our subsistence, and look for the inner essence within ourselves and others.
In today’s world, we often lose sight of the opportunity that Pesach gives us to simplify – we go overboard with seeking out ‘kosher for Pesach’ foods that we truly do not need to sustain us for 1 week. How ironic that we have symbolically turned an entire category of ‘appropriate for Pesach’ foods into a kind of spiritual chametz – it gets in the way of the task that Pesach is designed to help us do spiritually.
So this year, perhaps take more time to think of the symbolic and spiritual meaning of chametz and use this as a guide to figure out what to throw out and what to buy in preparing for the Passover holiday. Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
Tonight is Rosh Hodesh Nisan, the beginning of the first month of the year. Yes, I know, its confusing – isn’t Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year that usually falls sometime in September – the start of the year? Well, yes, that is the Jewish New Year, but Rosh Hashanah actually falls on the 1st day of the 7th month. Because Jewish holy days were tied to the seasons long before our people superimposed historical and mythical layers to add to their meaning, it also makes sense that we would arrive at the beginning of the 1st month right after we announced the 1st day of Spring. New life, new buds, new flowers appearing on earth – the sense of a new cycle beginning again.
This month I’m joining Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, along with many others, in #BlogExodus (that’s how you’ll search for others on Twitter who might have posted blogs as part of the project). Together, we’ll cover the days between the 1st and 14th of Nisan, leading up to Pesach.
Today’s theme is the narrow places of Mitzrayim (Egypt). As part of the Hallel (selection of psalms we sing on holidays and as part of the Passover Seder) we find the lines, min hameitzar karati Yah, anani va-merchav Yah. From the narrow places I called out to God; God answered me expansively. (Ps. 118)
The first time I heard and learned the melody to these verses was with Debbie Friedman, z’l, at a Healing service in Westchester. I don’t quite recall, but it may well have been only the second time that I attended one of these services, and it was the month leading up to Pesach. You can hear an excerpt of Debbie singing Min Hameitzar from ‘The Journey Continues’ album here.
I remember back to that time in my life. I was not sick, but I had recently left the UK for a nine month stay at Elat Chayyim the transdenominational Jewish retreat center. I was a bit home-sick, but it was also one of the most important periods of my life, in my mid-20s. Looking back, I see that it was my soul that was aching – I was struggling internally with my sense of who I was and how to live my life. I guess its the kind of angst familiar to many at that stage of life. But it was a kind of spiritual mitzrayim – a narrow strait. Debbie sang that song with a yearning in her voice – perhaps calling out from her own mitzrayim – and i felt some of the restraints that were holding me back start to break apart. It was the beginning of my own journey through the wilderness to my Promised Land.
When I introduce the Mi Shebeirach prayer for healing during a service, I always invite my congregation to think of those in need of healing, ‘whether healing of body or healing of spirit.’ I know that most people’s minds turn immediately to those that they know who are physically ailing. But Debbie taught us that we all need healing of spirit. There is not one of us in this world who is so complete that we have no rough edges, no broken shards, or tender hearts, from some emotional or spiritual aching. Each one of us can identify the mitzrayim that we live in, or have experienced at some time in our lives.
We begin the journey by calling out from that place – the narrow straits. The ability to perceive expansiveness, to see that there is a path forward that can release us from the places we feel stuck in our lives, in our sense of self, in our sense of possibility … the miracle is that the mere act of calling out can create the opening. Just as the Hebrews in slavery had to call out before God heard and responded to their suffering.
Last week, we welcomed approx. 130 women, men and youth at our Women’s Seder, dedicated to Debbie’s memory, and led by the incredibly gifted and soulful Julie Silver. It was a real honor to lead the Seder with Julie, accompanied by Carole Rivel, who accompanied Debbie in so many of the healing services and Women’s Seders that she led for many years. We all carry Debbie in our hearts, and her legacy lives on when we teach in her name, inspired by what she taught us. She will forever remain as one of my greatest teachers. Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
This year we tried something a little different at our Seder. We were so pleased with the result that I wanted to share it here – an idea to store away for next year. It won’t work for everyone – certainly not for Jews who do not use additional power or technology on the festivals – but that still leaves a lot of Jews who might want to try something new.
We began our Seder fairly conventionally, following our Haggadah through the festival candle-lighting, first cup of wine, and so on, through to Yachatz – the breaking of the matzah. But when we arrived at the heart of the haggadah (and the longest section) – Maggid – telling the story, we put down the haggadah. First, we performed what has become a family ritual over the years – the Passover story in rap, with costumes and movement. That story in its entirety, from Moses’ birth to the crossing of the Sea, is rather difficult to find in a traditional haggadah, but we like to cover the basics.
What we do find in the haggadah is a confusing mix of conversations from generations ago – Rabbis talking all through the night, fantasies about multiplications of plagues, four questions (some of which are never answered in the text of the haggadah), four children who respond to the whole Seder experience in different ways, and so on. Its a rather strange hodge-podge if you think about it. I’ve always regarded it as something of a ‘teacher’s manual’ – it gives you ideas of how to engage in the storytelling, but it doesn’t work so well as the storytelling itself.
If it is the case that, ‘in every generation’ we must have an experience that gets us back in touch with what it means to experience slavery and what it means to seek and gain freedom, then how might we tell that story today? This year, we used visuals and video to help us access that story in ways that deeply tapped into our own experiences and understanding, challenging us, moving us, and inspiring us. We began with a video of a new song out of Israel, entitled ‘Out of Egypt’, by Alma Zohar. She reminds us: Chorus: Don’t you know that each day and in every age, one and all must see himself as though having escaped Egypt So he won’t forget how he fled, how he was beaten, bled, left dead How he called out to the heavens
The song concludes: There’s always war in Africa What luck that it’s so far away We don’t have to see or hear the screams
The video can be viewed here.
This was how we began to think about Avadim Hayinu – we were slaves, but now we are free. If the spiritual message here is to remember in order to empathize, in order to be moved to action when we remember what slavery was like, we cannot simply ritually recite the words, but must look at the world we live in today. Zohar’s video powerfully engages us. The words at the end of the youtube tell us:
Since 2003, an estimated 10,000 immigrants from various African countries have crossed into Israel. Some 600 refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan have been granted temporary resident status to be renewed every year, though not official refugee status. Another 2000 refugees from the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia have been granted temporary resident status on humanitarian grounds. In 2007, Israel deported 48 refugees back to Egypt after they succeeded in crossing the border, of which twenty were deported back to Sudan by Egyptian authorities.
An Israeli looking for something more from her people and her country.
From here, we looked at the ‘Pharaohs of today’. These are included in the video of the powerpoint presentation below. As we followed the slides, the storytelling took us from reflecting on some of the worst dictators and their oppression of their people, to a call on each of us to reflect and discuss how we use our power. The image of the scallion and the staff represent enslavement and freedom-fighting – that which we do to others, and that which we do to ourselves. Why the scallion? Because it is a Sephardi Jewish tradition to take a scallion and beat the person next to you with it when telling the story of enslavement and hard labor in the Pesach story.
Just as each of us has the ability to use our power to oppress or to free, so each of us contains something of each of the four children. A small selection of the images used to illustrate these children in haggadot over the ages gave us an entree to discussing what these had to teach us.
Then we moved to the moment of freedom. With several artist’s renderings of the crossing of the Sea, we pondered whether the experience was one that was awesome, fantastical, celebratory… its not so easy to leave behind the known for the unknown, however bad it might have been. The emotions that accompany us are complex.
Finally, many of our guests brought their own image of freedom. The range was diverse – abstract, specific, political, inspiring, peaceful, spiritual… each image birthed a story or description – just a minute or two each, to enable us to engage with the deeper meaning and experience of freedom.
All of these sections are reflected in the video below:
One contribution was in the form of a video:
In truth, time did not allow us to discuss each section equally fully – we could easily have been like the Rabbis of old, up all night, to really do justice to this much material. But we certainly had one of the more meaningful experiences of engaging with the Passover story that I can remember.
We closed out the section with a couple of videos that have done the rounds this year and in past years – The Fountainheads ‘Dayenu’, and Michelle Citrin’s wonderful ’20 things to do with Matzah’.
Our Seder is conducted in our living room space and not seated at tables, so the logistics of this way of doing Maggid were relatively simple – a laptop plugged into a projector pointing at the wall. It might easily have been done by plugging into a flat-screen TV.
But even a ‘low-tech’ version of this mode – photocopies or photos of images passed around a table – would achieve a similar result; like the chalk pictures on the pavement in the movie ‘Mary Poppins’, they provide a portal and, when we jump right in, these images offer a different way of accessing the journey from slavery to freedom. Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
I’ve led or co-led several workshops or conversations with parents over this past week on ways of engaging children and adults alike in the Passover Seder experience. The following is not a comprehensive list; rather, a sharing of some of the top tips that I have found excite parents and children when we introduce these possibilities to Seder night. Keeping with the Passover format, here are 4 suggestions:
1) Involving children in the preparations. Building the anticipation by having our children prepare some things for Seder night is key. This can include more traditional tasks, like helping to make the charoset, and searching for the last pieces of chametz (bread, cake, etc.) that a parent has hidden on the last morning before Seder with a feather (bedikat chametz). But it can also include preparing some acting of the story, songs, decorating pillow covers (thanks Rabbi Nicole Wilson-Spiro, who runs our Young Families Chavurah, for this one), matzah covers, place settings etc. If you clean out your kitchen but don’t empty every cupboard, have the kids design the ‘Chametz – Keep Out!’ and ‘Kosher for Pesach’ signs to put on the cupboard doors.
2) Logistics and lay-out. This is one of the most overlooked elements of the Seder but one that I have come to appreciate as crucial. While not every home has the space to accommodate some creativity in this department, we have found that sitting on sofas, cushions and chairs in concentric circles around a coffee table in a living room to be much more conducive, at least for the pre-meal part of the Seder, than sitting still around a formally-laid table. Young children can get up and move around more easily without being a distraction, and the atmosphere engenders more conversation and interaction between the adults too. At our Seder we often hang colorful fabrics in the room to create the feeling of sitting under a tent. In previous years, we’ve moved to tables in another room for the meal, but this year we’ll be using our dining room table as the buffet table, and will continue the informal feel as we eat in this more informal setting too.
3) While some observe the tradition of reading from the beginning to the end of the Haggadah, I regard it as more of a teacher’s manual. There are steps – 15 of them to be precise, listed at the beginning of most haggadot, which make up the Seder – the order – of the service. Most of these steps are short (washing hands, dipping karpas into salt water, breaking the matzah and hiding the afikoman, etc.) The largest section is Maggid – telling the story. In this section we find the debates and conversations of several generations of Rabbis recorded. But for the story to come alive for us so that, as we are commanded, we experience the Exodus as if we ourselves left Egypt, we have to find our own way to tell and respond to the story. – That might mean acting it out (have the children walk around the room with sacks over their shoulders while you sing; when the music stops, ask them a question: Who are you? Where are you going? What are you carrying? What will you eat? etc.). – You might use songs to tell the story. – You might have the children ask questions (not just recite the Ma Nishtanah, which are just your starters for 4, not meant to be the totality of questions for the whole night!) – You might ask guests to bring their symbols of Freedom for a second Seder plate, to be shared during the course of the evening (thank you to Rabbi Phyllis Berman, from whom I learned this one). – When it comes to the praises we sing to celebrate our freedom, you might get up and dance! With fabric, you might ‘split the sea’ for people to pass through as they sing and celebrate. – For an adult crowd, you might seek out challenging contemporary readings on themes of freedom to discuss around the table (see haggadot.com for an amazing selection of potential readings).
4) Finally, I really recommend doing some of the Seder after the meal. Traditionally there is still the Grace after Meals, more praises, two cups of wine, and Elijah’s cup to go, plus some closing songs. I know that many families skip the post-meal Seder, but there is something powerful and pleasureable about taking even 15 minutes to offer thanks and close with some fun songs (the traditional ones like Chad Gad Ya, or some contemporary fun songs set to familiar tunes – see here, for example).
If Purim is over then it must be the season for the Women’s Seder! The pre-Passover timing allows for women who have, traditionally, had their hands rather busy doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes work at the family Passover Seder, to enjoy creating and leading the ritual aspects of the Seder. A pre-Passover Seder has also enabled some of the wonderful creativity – prayers, writings, stories, and music – that have emerged from the Women’s Seder ritual over the decades to make their way into family and other communal Seders.
The first Women’s Seder took place in Haifa, Israel and Manhattan, NY in the USA in 1975. The story of the early years and the text of the first haggadah written for the Women’s Seder can be found in ‘The Telling’, by E.M. Broner. These early Seder gatherings represented the coming together of second wave feminism with Judaism as women who had previously felt excluded from a Judaism that was perceived to be patriarchal and exclusionary began to reclaim their heritage and Jewish women’s spirituality. Sally Priesand had been the first US woman to be ordained as a rabbi in 1972, and Jackie Tabick was the first to be ordained in the UK in 1975. The times they were a’changin’.
Since those early years, the tradition of a Women’s Seder has spread far and wide and has evolved considerably. Many local communities have created their own haggadah, weaving together borrowed poems, stories, and songs with their own new liturgical writing and composing. One organization based in New York City, Ma’yan, was instrumental in the spread of the Women’s Seder internationally, with the music of the greatly missed Debbie Friedman, z’l, creating a phenomenon where, for a number of years, over 500 women a night would fill a room for 2-3 nights in a row for the Ma’yan Seder.
While a traditional haggadah makes no mention of the women who were so important to the unfolding of our people’s story of the journey from slavery to freedom, a Women’s Seder haggadah tells of the midwives, Shifra and Puah, Yocheved and Miriam. While a traditional haggadah only retells the discussions and interpretations offered by male rabbis and scholars through the centuries, a Women’s Seder haggadah weaves together the words of women, and returns our voice to our people’s history and heritage. Women have always passed on their wisdom and Jewish practices from generation to generation, and the Women’s Seder at Congregation B’nai Israel always includes structured sharing of stories, questions and answers, where our bat mitzvah students share their stories with older generations and vice versa; its a multi-generational gathering.
This year’s Seder is different from all of our previous Women’s Seders at Congregation B’nai Israel; this year we welcome our Christian and Muslim sisters in faith to join us for a Seder ritual that celebrates the themes of Freedom and Peace, weaving together the inspirational sources from our three faith traditions. This Seder is inspired by the pioneering work of Rabbi Arthur Waskow and The Shalom Center who formulated the first Seder for the Children of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar in 1999. Our Rosh Hodesh group has spent the year in a series of interfaith interactions with women from local churches and Muslim communities, and we look forward to welcoming them all to our Passover Seder. The goal is not to provide a ‘model Seder’ for the benefit of our sisters-in-faith, but to use the Passover Seder model and message to weave together lessons, songs and inspiration from all three faiths to inspire us to think and engage more deeply with the Passover message.
The Seder takes place at Congregation B’nai Israel, Bridgeport, Thursday, March 31st, 7:30 p.m. It is free and open to all women from the local community. RSVP to reserve a seat with lynn@congregationbnaiisrael.org
