One of my favorite parts of the Seder is the Four Questions.
This year, I've been working hard with Sam to help him learn them so he can have his big moment. I had to convince Yael that she could wait until next year and then she would have her turn.
We've added the following section to our seder before the Four Questions. I no longer have the source, but I didn't write this.
The eldest reads:
Nobel
Prize winning physicist Isador Isaac Rabi's mother did not ask him: “What did
you learn in school today?” each day. She asked him: “Did you ask a good question
today?”
The oldest teenager reads:
Why do
the same questions get asked each year? I probably have more questions than the
youngest, why does a child ask the questions? How come we ask these questions,
but you rarely give a straight answer?
The leader reads:
Questioning
is a sign of freedom, and so we begin with questions.
To
ritualize only one answer would be to deny that there can be many, often
conflicting answers. To think that life is only black and white, or wine and
Maror, bitter or sweet, or even that the cup is half empty or half full is to
be enslaved to simplicity.
Each of
us feels the challenge to search or our own answers. The ability to question is
only the first stage of freedom. The search for answers is the next.
Does
every question have an answer? Is the ability to function without having all
the answers one more stage of liberation? Can we be enslaved to an obsessive
search for the answer?
Do you
have the answer?
What do you think about the Four Questions? Who asks them in your family? It's hard when there aren't any kids present, but someone has to ask the questions no matter how old the participants, since they are the basis for the whole Seder!
I think that those of us who follow the Jewish calendar must suffer it less.
Consider, how many of our holidays revolve around the outdoors, around nature, around the earth and greenery?
We eat apples on Rosh haShanah, and we go to an outdoor, flowing body of water for Tashlich.
Sukkot, of course, we embrace the outdoors.
Even Chanukah, which we spend indoors usually because of the weather, requires us to display our chanukiyot to the outside.
Tu BiShvat, the Birthday of the Trees, can't help but draw our attention outside.
On Purim we traipse outside to deliver mishloach manot...
On Shavuot, we embrace the sunrise after a long night of study.
And of course....Pesach. The green springtime that we celebrate has sprung so beautifully around my home, with blossoms on the trees, gorgeous daffodils, and that soft sweet green of new leaf growth. To breathe the spring air, one can truly understand how a freedom festival must be in the springtime. Freed from the bonds of winter, we step forth into the freedom of springtime! We place the karpas, the green parsley leaves, on our seder table, to bring that beauty inside, to fill us with the newness and the glory of springtime.
For many years, my family used the Maxwell House Haggadah. Yes, the same one that it is used at the Obama family seder. And we, for the most part, loved it. The flowery old-fashioned language, the tiny print, the long-winded explanations...and we read almost everything out loud, round-robin around the table. As I got older, there were some personal attempts to re-read the text with gender neutral language, an issue that had begun to weave its way to the forefront of my mind as I came into my teen years.
Then one year, I felt particularly put upon by the language. I don't really recall what triggered it, but I'm sure it was a crack about the four sons, and how if we were going to neutralize it, then we should probably make the wicked one a daughter...either way, I came home from the first seder in a terrible state, and that night and the whole next day, I typed and copied and pasted and created....a whole new Haggadah.
Yep, that's right. In one day. Most of it was the Maxwell House language, just neutralized. But I managed to change a few things by searching, in the early days of the internet, for creative stuff.
And I showed up at second seder, slipped into the dining room, and quietly replaced all the Maxwell House Haggadot with "Phyl's Haggadah: A Seder for the 90s."
Do you want to know something? My family handled it with grace and respect, and ever since, we have used Phyl's Haggadah...well, now a very-updated-oh-I-wrote-my-rabbinic-thesis-on-the-Haggadah-so-I-know-a-lot-more version.
With that, I felt redeemed. Out of the narrow place of the Haggadah that no longer spoke to me, I found redemption in new and different language, in words that followed the ancient text but were no longer bound to it.
The Passover Seder is all about learning and teaching. It's a whole lesson plan, repeated yearly and adapted and adopted for generations. It's the ultimate inter-generational family learning program.
Which is what makes it so much fun to start anew each year, and to add something, anything, new into the Seder each time we do it.
"Why do we dip at the Seder?" asked my 6 year old today.
And I think about the dipping that he did at dinner tonight - french fries into ketchup, carrots into hummus, and I realized that dipping twice is actually a regular part of his life.
So what to do?
Thankfully, we don't dip into saltwater or charoset every day. So I'm safe there. But the very foundation of the question...oy.
"In every generation it should feel as though we went forth from Egypt."
And so we have to find ways, each year, to reinvigorate the teaching, to meet our families, our children, our guests, right where they are.
So what will be your innovation at this year's Seder table? How will you be creative and how will you enable the learning to add on, to grow for the next generation and the next? To me, this isn't just about finding ways to make the Seder interesting for kids (although that certainly is a focus for me!), but it's about helping all the Seder participants to find meaning and value in the ancient rituals.
Share your ideas in the comments, please!
Have you checked out these creativePinterestboards for Pesach? More than just recipes, there are games, ideas, etc.
Bang bang bang hold your hammer low Bang bang bang give a heavy blow for it's work work work every day and every night for it's work work work when it's dark and when it's light.
Dig dig dig dig your shovel deep. Dig dig dig there's no time to sleep. for it's work work work every day and every night for it's work work work when it's dark and when it's light.
This is the song that my children love to sing at the Pesach Seder. We weave it into the Maggid section, telling the story of the Exodus. What was it like to be a slave? I ask them.
It was hard work, they reply. It wasn't any fun.
And I know that for them, this is the ultimate in punishment - no fun.
And I imagine for myself what that slavery might have been like. It was hard work, of course. But we also know that it had a benign feeling for a long time. It crept up on the Israelites, they didn't quite realize what was coming, perhaps. Little by little, their freedom slipped away...until they were at the complete mercy of their masters.
We talk of Mitzrayim as a narrow place...the narrowness of being a slave. What it must have felt like to have only one choice, and to know that, ultimately, it wasn't really a choice at all. I try to imagine my life without choices, and I know how truly blessed I am.
That's perhaps why I love Passover.
Because for one week, even though I know we're celebrating freedom, I have the freedom to, just a little bit, understand slavery. My choices become limited. My options are held in check. I can't do what I might usually do. Is Passover slavery? Absolutely not. Does it help me to feel, just a teeny bit, what it's like to have limited choices in a world where, truly, I have unlimited ones? Yes.
And it all reminds me that I am ever so grateful for the blessing of that freedom.
Want to play along? We're sharing #BlogExodus for the next 2 weeks. All you have to do is use the hashtag and there are suggested prompts on the graphic above (feel free to grab it). Maybe you just want to post on your Facebook or Twitter about these topics...or maybe you want to try #Exodusgram, a new idea to post photos related to these themes? I'll be posting my #blogExodus posts here, at this blog, my #Exodusgram pictures on my tumblr site, imabima.tumblr.com, and other miscellaneous Passover posts over at imabima.blogspot.com. It's going to be a busy fortnight!
I'm doing is enjoying this post about the Four Questions by Hadassah. She is looking for the Mah Nishtanah in multiple languages, which is such a fun activity. There's a wonderful book of 300 Ways to Say the Four Questions, which are an integral part of the Passover Seder. My favorite one in there is Pig Latin, which I think is perfect on so many levels for a Jewish event!!!
What I am doing right now, and this is key to any good modern rabbi's life, is browsing through YouTube for all the funny new Pesach videos so that I can be the first to share them with you.
Like this one:
or this
or this one...
Have you found anything great on YouTube lately?
How's your Pesach Prep going? The cold winter-like weather is not putting me quite the right mood yet!
Ack! Passover is almost here. A whole bunch of last-minute Pesach tips, tricks, and interesting things...perhaps for Seder conversation....
1. Are you worried about feeding your goldfish this year? In case you are, here is some information on how to make sure that even your fish's diet is appropriately chametz-free.
2. Passover can be, um, binding. One good way to ensure that you stay, um, regular, is to eat dried fruit, or even better -- fruit compote. A yummy recipe: 4 lbs mixed dried fruits, 1 1/2 cups orange juice, 1 1/2 cups water, 1/2 cup sugar, one piece of cinnamon stick or cinnamon powder to taste, peel of one lemon, left in one or more large pieces. Remove the sulfates in the dried fruit first: pour boiling water over the fruit and let stand for at least 1 hour. Drain thoroughly. Put the fruit in a large pot, with all of the ingredients. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently for 30-45 minutes until tender. Cool in the saucepan, remove the lemon peel, and store it in the fridge, covered tightly. It will keep for a long long time. Unless you eat it all.
3. Don't screw up and buy the wrong kind of matzah. FrumeSarah, I'm embarrassed to say that this is what I fell for. Here's how the story goes. This year, Manishewitz isn't making Tam Tams. For those of you who don't know, Tam Tams are wonderful, yummy, not-low-cal crackers made Kosher for Passover each year. They are my family's favorite Pesach food. What I didn't realize was that they were also not making any cracker-shaped matzah stuff this year. I had no idea. I'm a little slow. I thought to myself, maybe I'm just late to the party and it's all been bought at my local stores (did anyone get any???). So I went online to Amazon. I got really excited to find this. I bought it. Late at night, I suddenly realized that this was NOT the Kosher for Passover stuff. Why do they make chametz-dik matzah? Please explain this to me, Manishewitz! I knew this -- I always check my matzah in the store. But online...I got so excited by the matzah cracker shape that I bought ...get this... 12 boxes. Yep, that's how it's sold on Amazon. By the case. My husband got a good laugh that I had just spent hours cleaning my pantry of all the chametz and I went and bought 12 boxes of the stuff. Lovely. Food pantry?
6. Looking for a new Haggadah? Want some games or stories or ideas for the Seder? They're all over, people.
7. Passover isn't always the most "Green" of holidays - we throw out stuff, we clean frantically, we might use a lot of disposables or papergoods. So here is Hazon's take on sustainable Passover resources.
8. Why put an orange or other innovation on your seder plate? There are a couple of explanations for this - although it's typically thought of as a feminist statement - I like to think of it as inclusive and adding something new to the seder to keep it lively, interesting, and modern. Here are two different opinions and ideas about this, both of which are thought-provoking and interesting. What do you do to make your seder new each year?
9. A video for you:
Plus this very cool ASL version of the Four Questions.
10. Even though the Passover seder talks about our redemption from Egypt, the need for freedom in our world is still ongoing. Here is a wonderful Seder addition from American Jewish World Service, imploring us to remember those in Darfur who are not free from fear and terror.
11. My favorite Passover joke: As Moses was leading the Children of Israel through the parted walls of the Red Sea, some complained of thirst after walking so far, so fast. Unfortunately, they weren't able to drink from the walls of salt water on each side of them. Then a fish from the wall of water stuck his head out and spoke to Moses. He told him his family had heard the complaint, and that they could, thru their own gills, remove the salt from the water, and then force it out of their mouths like a fresh water fountain for the Israelites to drink from! But, said the fish, before his family began to help, they had one demand. They wanted to be a part of history, and wanted to always be a part of the Seder meal to commemorate the Exodus. Moses readily agreed to this, and gave them their name which remains to this very day. He said to them ... "Go, Filter Fish." (you have to say it out loud to get it. trust me. you'll laugh.)
12. My second favorite Passover joke: (these are great for the Seder, I promise!) The queen was going to knight a prominent Jew in England. He was welcomed to the palace along with all the other knights-to-be. They were instructed to go before the Queen, kneel down, and recite a phrase in Latin. All the other candidates nodded. The Jewish almost-knight said it over and over to himself, trying to remember it. When it was his turn to stand before the Queen, the phrase simply flew out of his head and he said the first non-English phrase that came to mind: "Mah nishtanah halaila hazeh mikol ha-laylot?" And the Queen turned to her advisors nearby and said, "Why is this knight different from all other knights?" (it gets 'em every year!)
13. Make sure you look up on Seder night. Hopefully the sky will be clear and you can see the beautiful full moon. The beautiful fullness represents, I believe, the beautiful fullness of Jewish life, especially on this night, the night that so many Jews and friends around the world are sharing in the Feast of Freedom. What an amazing moment for us all to know that we are all telling the same story, we are all re-living the dramatic moment in which we celebrated the understanding of the true meaning of freedom.
May this holiday bring joy and peace. Chag sameach!
