The Seder
Why is this night different from all other nights?
Seder means ‘order’. It is the celebration/meal/tradition couched in ritual that we, Jewish people, undertake on the first and second nights of Passover or Pesach. The first night is tonight. There are some good explainers that I wouldn’t be able to beat, here, here and here.
I have been backwards and forwards thinking about how I would write about a Seder — from explainers (but I couldn’t do better than the ones already out there) to descriptions. I settled on looking at the night through the lens of meaning and memory. This is my world. These are my memories. This was my family. For others, those on the outside, it might be a glimpse into another world but for us, it was just.. what was. We grew up knowing this stuff, being this stuff. I grew up learning Hebrew alongside English, so I could follow the prayers and the services and later, the readings from the Bible. I grew up in a close knit community of Jewish people whose worlds reflected mine.
Pesach was a landmark festival. We did a lot of things differently. This was the time our family would gather from across the country. I have many memories of visiting my grandparents in Scotland for the Seders. We were a traditional orthodox family so before the Seder we’d visit local or not so local Jewish supermarkets to make sure we had what we needed – the shank bone of the lamb to represent the paschal lamb, the biscuits that were kosher for Pesach that you’d never eat any other time of the year, the handmade schmura matzo which was specially for the Seder nights alongside the boxes and boxes of regular matzo that would keep you going through the week.
The preparations were intense – especially (as is the case this year) if the first night followed Shabbat directly because, without being able to turn on or off cookers, they had to be planned well in advance.
While I can’t say I enjoyed Seders because they tended to be long, there was an excitement about some aspects. In my head, I divided the service into pre-meal and post-meal. Meals would invariably be either gefilte fish/fish balls or egg and spring onion (which was always my preferred option), chicken soup with matzo balls and roast chicken and – if we were at my grandmother’s, she’d make kugel or tzimmes. I knew, even at the time, that I was eating the meals of her Polish parents and grandparents. Although while we spoke long and often about Jewish history, we never spoke about family history — which I’ve only discovered following the deaths of my grandparents and parents — the impact of survivor guilt and intergenerational trauma that haunts us still. I never learnt from her if her parents ever spoke of their families’ journeys from the shtetls of north eastern Poland and if they ever mentioned the family left behind and what became of the once magnificent and culturally rich communities of Jewish people who lived there.
Back to the Seder, which is centred around retelling the exodus story and the theme is freedom from slavery. The meal itself is only one part of the evening – before you have the telling of the story of leaving Egypt. Afterwards you have psalms and songs of thankfulness.
Certain parts remain in my mind. For many years, I was the youngest child – and the youngest child at the Seder has a particular role to ask the ‘four questions’. It was our time to shine. While I won’t repeat them all (you can find the text here), the first one is the underlying one ‘why is this night different from all other nights?’ and the part of the responses form a good chunk of the evening. ‘Once, we were slaves in Egypt’ starts the response and the section of the seder around the ‘telling’ (or Magid, in Hebrew), goes through the story and the explanations of the stories and the commentaries on the explanations of the stories.
As well as four questions, there are the four representative sons (the wise, the wicked, the simple and the one who does not know how to ask). The Haggadah (which is the book we use to follow the Seder and of course there are many versions), explains the answers to the questions for each of the sons.
In my house (like many) all of us around the table would read parts of the Haggadah – some in Hebrew, some in English, some in both. We had our ‘bits’ as traditions developed. The retelling of the story is interspersed with both songs and contemporary arguments about politics, life and the Jewish community – from Corbyn to Brexit to Relative merits of veganism – they’d all be as heartily argued as the impact of the plagues on innocent Egyptians, how a Gd can allow bad things to happen, whether ‘Jewish’ should be on the census form — everything and anything. Discussed, challenged, debated. An argument in the philosophical sense of different views being represented. But this is missed when we are distant, as we are, this year for the second year.
Thinking back, it was something that marked the beginning of Spring and one of the ‘New Years’ in the Jewish tradition. It was a fresh start. We had spent weeks cleaning the house thoroughly so that all crumbs of chametz (what we aren’t allowed to eat on Pesach) is gone. We would get out different crockery, cutlery, pots and pans which would only be used on Pesach — coming down from the attic for one week a year. Orthodox households have four sets of cutlery, crockery and utensils — one for milk, one for meat, one for milk on Pesach, one for meat on Pesach. When we had less money, or when I was a student, we used paper plates and plastic cups for a week. This was important.
The songs sung around the table tell stories but also instil hope. I can still recite chunks of the Seder without even thinking and each time I do, it draws me back to the memories – people who no longer sit around a table – my parents and grandparents, my cousins, uncles and aunts. We don’t often know when the last times are. If we did, maybe we would value them more. We told stories that became traditions, we laughed at shared experienced, we got angry with each other, especially if the ‘Magid’ was taking too long and we were getting hungry.
There’s a part in the Seder when we open the door for Elijah to come into the house – we leave a glass of wine for him — the fifth cup, just like some might leave a whisky for Santa on Christmas Eve. For us though, the arrival of Elijah signifies the coming of the Messiah so its not an expectation that he will join us but a murmuring of hope that he might. I think about now, the thousands of years that Jewish people have opened the door to hope in the darkest times thinking and wondering if things can get any worse. For me, this is a hope. A need for hope amid despair. Perhaps a hope we have need of now, whatever we believe. Did we ever, even when we were at our youngest, actually think that Elijah was going to turn up? No, but we hope. We hope that the next year will be better.
Traditionally the Seder ends with the cry ‘Next year in Jerusalem’. What does this mean? Perhaps not a literal, as I could very well, travel to Jerusalem next year (and indeed, I hope to) but more the idealised messianic Jerusalem. The better world we hope for. To me, now, at this point in my life, it is about the preservation of hope and communal experiences.
There are memories I’ve missed and traditions I haven’t mentioned, the dipping of fingers in the wine to recall the ten plagues and the sadness that they brought to Egyptians being remembered.
But fundamentally the seder is about family, hope, freedom and gratitude. It is a practise that unites Jewish pepole wherever they are in the world and will continue to. I know it’s something I didn’t always value when we celebrated, as a family but I hope to retain and build more memories which allow me to retain some of the hope that next year, will indeed, be a different kind of Passover.
