Please ask: "What does this service mean to you, anyways?"

[rhu]

I love the seder, and it saddens me that so many Jews, not having learned why the seder was assembled the way it was, go through the motions but come away feeling that they've done their duty, dry and off-putting as it may be.

For a few years, I've wanted to write a hagadah to address this: no mystical commentary, no midrashic exegesis, just some simple answers to the disaffected child's question: "What does this service mean to you, anyway?" Somehow, I've never gotten the time.

But if I can't do the whole thing from soup to nuts -- er, from wine to wine? -- then I can at least open up a discussion thread here on my blog. What part(s) of the seder do you find alienating or do you wonder about? I'll do my best to answer.

[Feel free to share this link if you wish.]

Comments

[fauxklore]

For what it's worth, the seders I've been to that I haven't enjoyed have been the "just follow the book" ones. I like opportunities to discuss (what are slavery and liberation all about at a personal level) and include stories. Because my father and grandfather were holocaust survivors, that was easy when I was growing up, but it seems harder at big community seder type events.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

i agree 100% that the hagadah is a jumping-off point. It is not my intention to put out a dry, boring, comet-less "just the facts" hagadah; it's just to give the context so that we know where we're jumping from.

[bourbon-cowboy.livejournal.com]

I had the good fortune to be part of a seder last year in Allentown, and I have to say, I kind of loved that it was boring and long and everyone in this group of basically secular Jews (yep, we had an orange) was quietly complaining the whole time. Because the traditional thing (I suppose) in any religion is to do the ritual, pretend you're enjoying it, and quietly kick yourself later for not really engaging with it. This was the first religious ritual I'd ever seen where there was no such hypocrisy. Sarcastic commentary was expressed openly and without shame, practically PART of the ritual, and the joking ABOUT the bitter herbs and the so-many-verses-to-chant actually brought everyone together! Shared suffering will do that. :)

And you TOTALLY need to write that haggadah! it would not only be a huge hit, but would be (to my mind) a perfect melding of one person's particular obsession and particular talent, directed straight toward helping to fill a deep need that no one else is doing anything about.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the words of encouragement. And I'll admit that even knowing where things come from, we still kvetch --- just about other things. :-)

[jadelennox (from livejournal.com)]

the first thing I started changing when I started changing things in my own was:

שפך חמתך על־הגוים אשר לא־ידעוך

Keeping in mind that even as a child during my observant upbringing, there were almost never only Jews at our family Seder. My father liked having people he could explain the story to at the seder. Which was awesome, but always made that passage stand out really unpleasantly for me.

I was reading this commentary explaining why that part belongs in there (it means we trust h' to do the vengeance for us instead of us, which I find even less compelling), when I saw this snippet:

In a Haggadah that dates back to 1521 from Worms and attributed to a grandson of Rashi, we find the following inclusion:
שפוך אהבתך על הגויים אשר ידעוך
ועל הממלכות אשר בשמך קוראים
בגלל חסדים שהם עושים אם זרע יעקב
ומגינים על עמך ישראל מפי אכליהם
יזכו לראות בטובת בחירך
ולשמח בשמחת חגיך
Pour out your love on the nations who know You
And on kingdoms who call Your name.
For the good which they do for the seed of Jacob
And they shield Your people Israel from their enemies.
May they merit to see the good of Your chosen
And to rejoice in the joy of Your nation.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

That passage is certainly troubling, although I think the key part there is "for they have devoured Jacob." It's not invoking Divine Wrath on non-Jews in general, it's invoking Divine Wrath on the kind of person who'd hold an eight-year-old girl by the hair so he can change guns before blowing her brains out on camera.

Why do we open the door at that point? It probably doesn't have anything to do with Elijah; it's because that's the point in the Passover evening when our ancestors would check to see if the local Christians had murdered one of their own babies and left it at the Jew's door to frame us for the blood libel. So we might have enough time to run for it before they came by to charge us with the infanticide they themselves had committed, so they could torture and slay us.

I, for one, have no difficulty with asking God to utterly destroy people like that. They certainly still exist, and we don't seem to be doing a good job of getting rid of them ourselves.

[jadelennox (from livejournal.com)]

*nod*

One of the things about having the privilege of living in a time and place which, while hardly free of anti-Semitism, is relatively free of that kind of thing (compare the relative infrequency of horrors like the one in France a month ago to the relative frequency horrors like the one in Florida a month ago), is that it gives me the space to want mercy instead of vengeance. I totally understand that's a privileged position, but I also think it's important place (for me, at least).

In my household's (totally modified, hot halachically acceptable by any means) Haggadah, we use the prayer from http://www.seekpeace.org/passoverprayers.shtml, by Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York, which was disseminated by Americans for Peace Now (cf. what I said above about acknowledging my relative privilege -- APN being a prime example of that).

Mekor HaHayyim, Oseh HaShalom,
O God Source of Life, Creator of Peace,
In this hour of horror and destruction,
Of panic and fear,
Send Your consolation to the mourners,
Your healing to the wounded,
And Your courage and patience to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples
So that they may withstand these dreadful moments.

Help Your creatures, anguished and confused,
To understand the futility of hatred and violence
And grant them the ability to stretch across political, religious, and national boundaries
So they may resume the search for justice, peace and truth.

On this Festival of our Liberation,
Help us to free ourselves from the straits of narrow-mindedness,
From the prejudices and patterns of behavior
That keep us chained in an endless circle of victims and victimizers.
Help us to free ourselves,
By freeing each other from the need to inflict suffering and pain.

May all Your creatures be guided by the vision of Your prophets:
"Venatati shalom ba-aretz ushekhavtem ve-ein mahrid
I will bring peace to the land and you shall lie down and no one shall terrify you."
"Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream
Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea."

With every fiber of our being we beg You, O God,
To help us not to fail nor falter in the path of peace.

Amen

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

And I should also add: thanks for the Worms haggadah excerpt. I may add that to our own seder as a counterpoint to shfoch chamatcha.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Or I should say the "alleged" Worms haggdah excerpt. It appears to be a 20c fraud; see my response to Michael Carasik, infra

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I don't wonder about much, or find the seder alienating, but I always get hopeful when we open the door for Eliyahu.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Then don't read my reply to the preceding comment.

Actually, I shouldn't snark. Each year, I do hope that this is the year that things turn around and we get things ready for the Messiah. As I get older, and that hope gets harder to find in my own heart, I rely on my children to fashion that hope on my behalf.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I already know that possible reason for opening the door at that point.

[introverte.livejournal.com]

Wow, it's like being a Red Sox fan.

[magid.livejournal.com]

A lot of the songs at the end have nothing to do with Passover per se; how did they end up at the end of the seder particularly?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent question... and one that I'll have to research!

[jeffurrynpl.livejournal.com]

Forced family togetherness, a boring story told poorly, the same story every year, no bread, bad singing voices, mispronunciation of words (though "the nuisance of Passover" instead of "the nuance of Passover" remains a highlight), hunger, the fact there is no re-enactment of the smiting of the first-born...what's to like?

[sethg]

A college professor of mine said that the reason the Sages ordained drinking four cups of wine at the Seder was because you were spending the whole night with your relatives.

[jeffurrynpl.livejournal.com]

Terrific. I didn't even know people drank an entire glass of wine, let along four, until I went to a seder in someone else's home.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I'm always annoyed by the addiitional songs at the end, after the seder has concluded. If they're supposed to be part of the seder, they should be earlier. If they're not part of the seder, then we shouldn't have to stay up yet later to sing them. (Sorry for the surliness, but I'm usually pretty tired by that point.)

[autotruezone.livejournal.com]

AFAIK, you don't have to sing them. At our seders, we make it clear that the seder is over, that those who want to sing some more are welcome to, and say our goodbyes and/or good nights to those who leave / go to bed at that point.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

We sing them while washing the dishes.

We make animal noises for Chad Gadya, and they get awfully silly by the end. "Here, Oxy-oxy!"

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The majority of seders I've been to have talked about Pour Out Your Wrath.

One of the more interesting discussion was in 2002.

[michael carasik (from livejournal.com)]

About שפוך חמתך --

(1) I'm not going to be convinced that שפוך אהבתך is real just from someone's blog post; and

(2) The original biblical context: Jer 10:24 "O LORD, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing. 25 Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not on thy name: for they have eaten up Jacob, and devoured him, and consumed him, and have made his habitation desolate."

In other words, "Pour out your wrath on THEM, not on US."

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

It's not just from someone's blog post, apparently. But neither is it authentic.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Passover/The_Seder/Conducting_a_Seder/After_the_Meal/Elijah.shtml

This prayer was first published by the bibliographer Naftali Ben-Menahem in 1963. It was supposedly discovered by Rabbi Hayyim Bloch (1881-ca. 1970) in a beautiful manuscript on parchment from the estate of Rabbi Shimshon Wertheimer (1658-1724).

The Haggadah was supposed to have been edited in Worms in 1521 by "Yehudah b"r Yekutiel, the grandson of Rashi", but the manuscript was lost during the Holocaust.

However, a number of scholars have pointed our that this prayer was probably invented by Hayyim Bloch himself, who was born in Galicia and later moved to Vienna (ca. 1917) and New York (1939). He was one of the rabbis who published the Kherson letters attributed to the Besht and his disciples, which later turned out to be forgeries. He also published a letter from the Maharal of Prague, whose authenticity was already disproved by Gershom Scholem.

Finally, from 1959-1965 he published three volumes containing over 300 letters of great rabbis opposed to Zionism, but Rabbi Shemuel Hacohen Weingarten has proved that these "letters" were invented by Rabbi Bloch himself. Therefore, we may assume that "Shefokh Ahavatkha" was not composed in Worms in 1521, but rather by Rabbi Hayyim Bloch ca. 1963.

[jadelennox (from livejournal.com)]

I can't decide if I'm really sad that it's a forgery or really pleased that he bothered to forge something so optimistic and hopeful. Now I want to read the rest of the forgeries, see where else he went with that.