This week looms large on the Jewish calendar. It is the week when Jews begin the celebration and observance of Passover — in Hebrew, Pesach. The holiday has an impressive opening act: the Passover Seder. It is very much an opening act; it is theater to be sure. It is a production that is meant to be living, breathing theater, designed to tell a story. The word seder, means order. There is an order of events that take place to guide us through all of the essential elements. But there are areas within each of these elements that are to be filled in by the individuals participating of the Seder. Each year, each seder, in each home is meant to take on the nature of it's participants and insure that meaning is conveyed to all who are present. For we are told in the Haggadah "bechol dor vador chayav adam lirot et atzmo k'ilu hu yatza mi'Mitzrayim," which is Hebrew for: "In every generation, each individual (not just each Jewish person) should feel as though he or she had actually been redeemed from Mitzrayim ("Egypt" in Hebrew)."
The Seder is abundant with symbols and rituals. The meanings of the symbols are not meant to be limited to what others have said. The proper performance of a seder, no matter how limited or extended the seder might be, occurs when the participants experience — through their actions and questions. The rituals are an empty vessel that we … each one of us must fill with meaning.(1)
All that has been created by those who have come before us and all that will be created, is guided by a book that we follow to guide us through the theatrical production know as "the seder". It's the basic script from which are to add our own improvisations. The Haggadah. The word Haggadah, roughly translated, means narration, the telling, or the recital. It is an instruction manual for the Seder and derives from the biblical commandment in Exodus 13:8 by G-d to Moses and the Hebrews: "You shall tell your son on that day: it is because of what the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt…" This is the purpose of the Passover Haggadah: to "tell" the story of Passover. In a sense, the Passover Haggadah both contains and is the Passover Seder. It describes how to conduct the Passover Seder from start to finish. The word "Seder" means "order" in Hebrew, and the Passover Haggadah "narrates" or "tells" or "recites" the 15-step "Seder" or order of events conducted at specific points during the Passover Seder.
The Talmudic rabbis encouraged the Jewish people to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt in as many ways as possible and as a result, there are Haggadahs that interpret the text based on political, social, and religious ideologies in Judaism. Interestingly, while the text of the Haggadah is encouraged to be told in as many ways as possible due to its importance to both the Jewish people and to humankind, the 15-step process used for conducting the Passover Seder that makes up the text of the Haggadah is in a highly structured format. This might seem to be a contradiction, it is not. The rabbis deemed it important to spread the messages and lessons of the Exodus from Egypt in as many ways as possible, but to do it in a way that does not dilute the method of telling the story. This method was originally used because the rabbis wanted people to easily recall the 15 steps, in case Haggadahs were not available to them where one was located. The method involved using a mnemonic system to create and organize the names for each of the 15 steps so that one could easily recall each of the names due to the rhyming, musical pattern of the names taken collectively. This helped one to easily remember the 15 steps and thus conduct the Passover Seder. (Kadesh — urchatz — karpas — yachatz) — (maggid — rachtzah — motzi — matzah) — (maror — korech — shulchan orech) — (tzafon — barech — hallel — nirtzah).
The Passover Haggadah is based on the Passover Seder as it is outlined in the Talmud. It is a description of a particular seder conducted in Bnai Berak (or Bnei Brak) during the time of the Roman occupation of Palestine where 4 prominent rabbis (Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon) were reclining and discussing the Exodus from Egypt. The order of this Seder was a Rabbinic version of 1st-century C.E. Greco-Roman ritualized meals called "Symposia". The original Rabbinic version of the Seder began with serving and eating the meal, followed by spontaneous questions among the Seder participants to prompt discussion, to be followed by the telling of the Exodus and various blessings. By 200 C.E., the Seder meal was postponed until after the liturgy was recited and set questions i.e. the "Ma Nishtanah" ("The Four Questions" in Hebrew) replaced the spontaneous questions. Over time, the narrative to the meal — the Haggadah — grew larger and more varied, reflecting different rabbinical streams of thought and cultural influences in the Jewish religion. However, the Passover Haggadah text of the Geonic period (7-800ish) in Babylonia, except for a few variations, was the standard Passover Haggadah text used by Jews from the 9th century up until radical political changes in Europe in the 19th century gave rise to new denominations such as Reform Judaism and others. These new denominations kept the Passover story intact but instituted changes in the form of reinterpreting the meaning of different rituals to fit their denominational philosophies. However, Orthodox Jews have continued to use the Passover Haggadah of Geonic times up to present times.
There are many ways of telling the Passover story that relate to the beliefs of a particular group. The passage from slavery to freedom can be related to the mission of any individual or group that seeks to rid themselves of oppression. To that end, it has been estimated that there are over 3,000 editions of the Passover Haggadah in print today, from feminist Passover Haggadahs that relate freedom from slavery to women being free from discrimination, to kibbutz Passover Haggadahs first printed in the 1920's in Palestine, which took out any references to prayers and religious statements and replaced them with the equivalent socialist messages. (A kibbutz is a collective farm in Israel whose members operate according to the ideals of socialist political philosophies.) , there are New Age haggadahs, wholistic zen Haggadahs … There are even special Passover Haggadah editions written for the U.S. and Israeli armies that are different for each army and of course, there are different Passover Haggadah editions depending on the denomination of Judaism: be it Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, or Humanistic.
The incentive for the Passover Seder is the biblical commandment to tell the story to our children. Until the time of the Rabbis, around 100-200 CE, we do not know much of what transpired on the eve of the observance of Passover, but at that time, the rabbis began to record an order of service and produce a haggadah to preserve that order. In fact, many of innovations of the past, have become the inviolate pieces of the seder over the centuries. What was once intended to encourage spontaneity became codified and belied its original intention.
When the seder began, it was filled with questions; spontaneous questions asked by the participants. It was the method by which they got the story to be told. In the Talmud, some of these questions were recorded and became the questions to be asked for all time. Those questions suggested in the Talmud were to be sample questions. And now, 2000 years later, many ask them as if they were the only questions that need asking. They are the first thing that a young Jewish child learns about the seder, for it is the child's role to ask the questions. Mah nishtana halaila hazeh mikol haleilot? Sheb'chol haleilot anu ochleen chametz u'matzah, halailah hazeh — kulo matzah. Why is this night different from all other nights? On all other nights we eat leavened bread or matzah — on this night, only matzah. It is a way for even the youngest to be engaged in the core of things and to be vital to the process. Originally these questions came near the end of the seder, but children got bored and were usually asleep by the time for their questions came around and so they were placed closer to the beginning of the seder. The questions asked during the seder are said to be asked by four types of children — the wise one, the simple one, the rebellious one and the one who doesn't know how to ask. These types are instructional in themselves and can lead to many other questions and discussion. The 4 questions have to do with the recalling of the Exodus, the redemption from Egypt … more to the point, liberation and freedom. At different times in history, the theme has been extended to include the ideal of being in Israel. In fact, the seder is ended with the words: Next Year in Jerusalem — L'shana haba-ah b'Yerushalayim. The questions lead, as most do, to more questions which lead to more questions … and eventually the story is told. The universal and timeless story of oppression and liberation is told. It is told through the story of a particular people of a particular time and place different than our own, but it is one that can be related to peoples throughout the ages. At different times throughout Jewish history the focus of the seder has focused on the issue of the day …. In the times of the rabbis, it was to be free to live in the Land (what is now Israel), in times of persecution — well, that was most of the time — the focus was directed to the particular distress of the times. There are many ways of telling the Passover story that relate to the beliefs of a group. The passage from slavery to freedom can be related to the mission of any individual or group that seeks to rid themselves of oppression in any form. Each group asks their own questions and thereby relates the story to their story. And each Jew must ask their own questions to make the seder, its symbols and its rituals relevant to them. Each year, we must do something that is different enough so that we illicit questions from others at the table, you know, to shake things up a bit. If we never ask questions, all we are left with are empty rituals and lifeless symbols. They may seem beautiful, but they can become relics, museum pieces that make the past personally irrelevant and the future of their existence doubtful. So the life-giving forces to the seder are innovation and questioning — together they lead to renewal of meaning.
Innovations — a few recent ones are adding an orange to the items on the seder plate. Why? Because several years ago a comment was made that woman belongs on the bimah, the pulpit, like an orange belongs on a seder plate. In addition to the cup of Elijah that has a prominent place on the table and in the ritual,which signals the potential coming of the messiah or messianic age — on many tables a cup of Miriam has also been added. Miriam — who symbolized all that women did to perpetuate the Israelites and lead to their liberation now receives honor at the table. Many seders now add a fifth question — it might be a reading in memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, or it might have a feminist perspective, or it might be on behalf of the oppressed who are not yet free, or even on behalf of the Jew who no longer chooses to sit at the Passover seder table. Two thousand years ago a rabbi picked up and held high the seder plate during the seder, hoping to initiate questions as to the reason for doing it … and that act has remained as an integral part of the seder to this day. Just last week I read an article about the feng shui of the seder plate by a Chassidic rabbi. Yet another discussion
Innovation and questioning … At the Passover seder, as in all of Judaism, no question should be out of bounds. The ability to ask questions in itself is a sign of freedom … exactly what we are celebrating in this season. Questions are meant to illicit and to challenge. In the Bible, when God asks Adam "Where are you?", it's not like God doesn't know where Adam is, but the point is for Adam to think about it. The answer is not always the point of a question; the point, is what happens to the mind and the soul while considering the question. Questioning is how we show that we care; that we care about our tradition, that we care about others and about ourselves. Where there are no questions there is no growth. Questions are not only the key to knowledge, but are also the key to continued relevance and perhaps even to Jewish existence.
— old joke: Why does a Jew always answer a question with another question? What are you asking me for? (Is that a problem for you?) —
Questions are a key to our inner wisdom as well. They make us stop and search for the answers that are not always so easy; they make us reveal a part of ourselves and help us to see others for who they are. My personal theory is that even the commandment to teach the story to our children may have begun with God asking a question of himself — How can I get these people to remember what happened here?
A couple of week ago I led a Women's Seder — also a fairly recent innovation — and posed some unexpected questions to the women. "Think back to where you were spiritually and emotionally a year ago. Where were you then, and where are you now? What has changed?" These can also be translated into Passover language, the language of metaphor: "Am I still in Egypt? Have I gotten to Mount Sinai? Am I still enslaved but ready to look for Moses? What is my personal mitzrayim? — mitzrayim is not only the word for Egypt, but it really means a tight, constricted place … the place that enslaves us — Where do I stand in the process of liberation? What will it be like on the other side of the Reed Sea once I cross over? Many of the women reported back to me that those questions were a poignant and important part of the seder for them, they were what made the story relevant in their lives and gave them something to chew on while waiting for the meal!
The topic of Pesach is vast and has great depth to be learned and discussed. The details can be read in books, or these days it can be found in online, but the guts of it is to be found at the seder table. For some, many, Passover has become not much more than a family reunion with only a perfunctory seder, and the main question asked is, "When do we eat?". But, they are still coming to the table, singing catchy tunes and telling the story. That is important. But the survival of a people and it's individuals depends on bringing life and liveliness to the table — bringing questions to the table and asking them out loud. It is more than OK to ask: Why are we here? Why are we doing this? What does all this have to do with me? Why do we go to so much trouble to come together for the seder and make all the preparations that we do? Why is it so important to continue this practice? How does the observance of Passover and its seder hold on when so many other observances of Judaism have fallen away?
The telling of the past is the key to our future …. If only we keep creative about the telling and make the telling our own.
(1) Steingroot, Ira (1995) "Keeping Passover", HarperSanFrancisco, p. 45.