Making A Memorable Seder
The seder need not--should not--stick to the script. Innovation is key for
a memorable and fun educational experience.
By Dr. Ron Wolfson
Reprinted with permission from The United Synagogue Review.
I don't know what the tradition is in your family, but in
ours, seder night is a dress-up affair. Suits and ties, dresses, new clothes
for the kids--"Shabbes" clothes we call them. Imagine our surprise
when one year we arrived for seder at the door of our friends David and Shira
Milgrom-Elcott in our dressy clothes and they greeted us wearing the long,
flowing robes of Bedouins!
"Welcome to our seder!" they exclaimed.
"Please take off your shoes before you come in."
We dutifully took off our shoes and entered their home. On
the right, we saw the formal dining room, the table set with fine china and
crystal, seemingly ready for the seder guests. David and Shira, however, led us
right past the dining room, down the hall and into their large family room. We
should have known what to expect from the desert garb worn by our hosts, but we
were hardly prepared for the sight of that room.
Draped from the beams if the vaulted ceiling were large
white bedsheets, forming a tent-like structure encompassing the center of the
room. All the furniture had been taken out, except for some beanbag chairs and
overstuffed pillows scattered around the floor, in the center of the
"tent," on a low coffee table, was the seder plate.
"Welcome to our home in the desert," David and
Shira explained. "The seder ceremony is a simulation of what really
happened on that first night of the Exodus from Egypt, so we've decided to
conduct our seder in this tent. Please make yourselves comfortable--take off
your ties and jackets--and recline with your kids on the floor."
Well, you can imagine what followed next! In a
masterfully-led, fun-filled experience, the families in attendance enjoyed a
delightful, relaxed telling of the Passover story. Once we completed the Maggid
[narration] section of the Haggadah, we moved into the dining room for the
seder meal. After opening the door for Elijah, we returned to the tent to
complete the seder ceremony.
It was a seder we'll always remember.
And that, in a word, is what the seder is designed to help
us do--remember--remember the story of the Exodus and, more importantly, our
place in it. After all, the most important words of the Haggadah are, "B'khol
dor va-dor hayav adam lirot et atzmo k'ilu hu yatzah mi-Mitzrayim"--"All
people, in every generation, should see themselves as having experienced the
Exodus from Egypt." The seder is much more than a history lesson; it is
our yearly re-enactment of the liberation and continuity of the Jewish people.
Thus, seder night is the family education experience par
excellence. The rabbis who created its structure and content were brilliant
family educators, filling the ceremony with an array of multisensory methods of
transmitting the messages of the evening. The seder is filled with symbolic
foods, elaborate rituals, words and song, and most importantly, questions
designed to keep even the youngest of children interested.
Although the seder is the single most observed Jewish
celebration of the year in North American Jewish families, many of us base our
conduct of the seder on a model we knew as children--each person takes turns
reading a paragraph out of the Haggadah. In some families, that is considered a
"participatory" experience. It might be, but it's hardly engaging.
When I interviewed families for The Art of Jewish Living:
The Passover Seder, I learned that the search for creative ideas for seder
celebration is never-ending. So, here are ten tips on how you might enliven
your family's seder experience this year.
1) Give homework. When the Weber family invites the
Wolfson family for seder, we are asked to prepare a presentation on some aspect
of the seder ceremony. The presentation could be a d'rash--an
explanation of what the Haggadah is trying to say. But, over the years, our
presentations have also been given as a play, a song, and a take-off on a game
show. Not everyone in your family may be able to do this, but there is no
better way to encourage participation in the seder than by asking people to
prepare something in advance to bring to the table.
2) Buy time. The seder ceremony of my youth never
lasted more than 20 minutes. That's how long it took to say Kiddush, do
Karpas [the spring vegetable], break the matzah, and fight over who was the
youngest grandchild who could say the "Mah nishtanah" [the
Four Questions]. After a few minutes of everyone-take-turns-reading-a-paragraph,
my Uncle Morton would ask the infamous "Fifth Question," "When
do we eat?" End of ceremony.
One way to buy time to spend on the telling of the story is
to offer your guests something to nibble on between the vegetables of Karpas
and the meal. My very creative wife Susie often prepares an edible centerpiece.
She and the kids slice jicama very thin and with "Jewish"
cookie-cutters, stamp out jicama Stars of David, Torah scrolls, and Kiddush
cups. She places the shapes on the end of bamboo "sheshkabob" skewers
and inserts them into a head of red cabbage placed in a wicker basket. She adds
color to the display by cutting flowerettes of green and red pepper, carrots,
celery, and other vegetables and placing them on skewers and into the cabbage. The
result is a spectacular vegetable bouquet which we use as a centerpiece on the
seder table.
After Karpas, we invite our guests to "set the
centerpiece" by taking the skewers out of the cabbage and dipping the
vegetables into saucers of Pesahdik salad dressings placed around the table.
Our friends Gail and Shelly Dorph buy time by using artichokes for Karpas
instead of parsley. They then dip the artichoke leaves into dressings for
nibbling until the meal is served.
3) Tell the story. The core of the seder experience
is the telling of the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The traditional text of
the Haggadah contains four different tellings of the story, each one beginning
with a question (Mah Nishtanah, the questions of the Four Children, "Tzei
u-l'mad," and Rabban Gamliel's questions), a response, and praise for
God. Think of ways to tell the story that supplement the Haggadah. One year, we
were invited to a seder where the host family put on a skit. Stan Beiner's
Sedra Scenes is a good source. Another family we know of uses puppets and story
books. The most unusual telling, however, had to be the family who presented a
magical version of the Ten plagues in costume. The father played the Pharoah
who, after complaining about how thirsty he was, asked one of the kids to fetch
him some cool, clear water from the Nile. The child left the dining room and
returned with a pitcher of water and an empty glass. As the "Pharoah"
poured the clear water into the glass, it turned red! It turns out the father
was an amateur magician who incorporated a variety of magic tricks into their
telling of the story. It was amazing--and unforgettable!
4) Ask questions. The Haggadah invites questions.
Encourage your guests to liberate themselves from the book and discuss what it
is the Haggadah is trying to tell us. A favorite point to do this is after the
recitation of the Ten Plagues. "What are ten things that plague us
today?" is a question anyone, no matter what their Judaic knowledge level,
can answer. When the Haggadah tells us that we should feel as if we were
redeemed from Egypt, what does that mean? What are we doing about Jewish
continuity in our family, in our community? The discussion resulting from these
questions can be the highlight of your seder.
5) Have fun. Having family fun is serious business,
especially at the seder table. The seder was never meant to be dull. Quite the
contrary, it is to be a relaxed, informal educational experience. Some families
and favorite songs children learn in religious school: "Go Down Moses,"
"One Day When Pharoah Awoke in His Bed," and others. A favorite
parody is "The Ballad of the Four Sons." We read "Only Nine
Chairs" by Deborah Uchill Miller (Kar-Ben Copies), a hilarious account of
a family seder.
6) Be inclusive. Scratch the surface of most Jewish
adults and you'll find a child who was upset at not finding the afikoman.
We created a way to include everyone in the afikoman search. We make a chart
with the order of the seder (Kadesh, Urhatz, etc.) and select one letter from
each word. We put these 14 letters on 3 x 5 cards and then hide them around the
house. We tell the kids that each of them must find at least one of the cards
for us to find the real afikoman. When the kids find all the cards, they bring
them to the table. Then, we ask the adults to figure out a jumble-word-search
two-word clue from the letters. The letters spell "at refrigerator."
Once the clue is deciphered, everyone runs to the refrigerator and finds the
real afikoman! Then, of course, everyone who participated in the search gets a
prize.
7) Use materials. One of the problems in keeping
young children interested in the seder is that most Haggadot are not designed
for them. When our kids were in nursery school, Susie created a "Pat the
Bunny"-type Haggadah using the coloring sheets sent home from class. She
added tactile materials to the sheets where appropriate: cotton balls on
pictures of sheep, sandpaper on pictures of the bricks of the pyramids, grape
scratch-and-sniff stickers on pictures of the Kiddush cups. She put these in a
loose-leave notebook and made copies for the kids at the seder. They were
immediately engrossed in the book, following along and participating at their
own level in their own very special way. Susie also gave each child a
"goodie bag" filled with Passover symbols, frog stickers, a bookmark,
even moist towellettes for the inevitable spills of wine!
8) Hiddushim (innovations). Each year, experienced
seder leaders look for new ideas to incorporate into the ceremony. Here are a
few of my favorites. Instead of filling Elijah's Cup with wine at the beginning
of the seder, wait until just before opening the door and pass Elijah's cup to
each participant who pours some of her/his wine into it. This is a
demonstration of the need to act to bring the Messianic era. The Sephardim
[Jews of Spanish and Mediterranean descent] pick up the seder plate and place
it over every person's head during the recitation of Ha Lahma Anya, the
invitation to participate in the seder. Another Sephardic custom is to beat the
leader with green onions during the singing of Dayyenu as a reminder of the
plagues. Save your lulav and use it instead of a feather to collect the last
vestiges of hametz during the annual Bedikat Hametz search on the night before
the seder. Ask a set of modern "Four Questions" to discuss at the
ceremony. Challenge your guests to sing all the verses to "Had Gadya"
[the song "One Kid"] in one breath. Sing Had Gadya with sound
effects: choose a person to create the sound of a goat, a cat, a dog, a stick,
fire, etc., which they make after the words are sung. (The most interesting
sounds will be for the "Angel of Death" and "Ha-Kadosh Barukh
Hu")!
9) Choose a good Haggadah. There are 3,000 editions
of the Haggadah catalogued in the great library of the Jewish Theological
Seminary, and every year more versions appear. Jews have always felt
comfortable in putting together Haggadot that reflect their particular slant on
experience of the seder. So, we have "The Haggadah for the Liberated
Lamb" (a vegetarian Haggadah) and "The San Diego Women's
Haggadah" (a feminist Haggadah). We have traditional unedited texts and
greatly abbreviated liberal texts. We have new "family" Haggadot and
that old standby, the Maxwell House Haggadah.
In the Conservative Movement, we have the excellent
Rabbinical Assembly Haggadah, The Feast of Freedom. Choose a Haggadah that fits
your family's needs. Since the cost of multiple copies is often quite
substantial, pick one that will last a number of years in style, substance, and
construction. Remember, the book itself should stand up to extensive use.
10) Prepare. Of course, the ultimate Haggadah may be
one you yourself put together. With inexpensive printing widely available, it
is not difficult to edit your own Haggadah text. You can easily combine
traditional texts with modern interpretations and readings, songs, and
information. By studying the Haggadah text with the help of guidebooks like The
Art of Jewish Living: The Passover seder, you can develop a text that
reflects your understanding of the seder story and that fits the needs of your
family. This will take some time, but the reward will be a seder experience
that is meaningful and memorable.
Ron Wolfson is a Jewish educator who is author of the Art
of Jewish Living series of books and many other works on Jewish practice and
education.
