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rhuI 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.]
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.]
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 12:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 01:14 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 01:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 01:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 02:23 pm (UTC)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:
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 02:30 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 02:32 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 02:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 02:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 03:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 04:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 04:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 04:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 05:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 05:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 05:05 pm (UTC)We make animal noises for Chad Gadya, and they get awfully silly by the end. "Here, Oxy-oxy!"
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 05:10 pm (UTC)One of the more interesting discussion was in 2002.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 06:47 pm (UTC)(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."
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 06:54 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 06:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-30 06:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-02 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-02 02:12 pm (UTC)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).
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-04 01:26 am (UTC)