ICJudaism: A Teacher’s Guide to Judaism

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The contents of these pages represent the author’s personal views, experience and understanding.
There are bound to be some things here that some Jews would disagree with.

 

The Seder and the Haggadah

The seder (the word means order or sequence) is a celebratory family meal (ie it happens at home) which follows a strict ritual sequence. The seder has been performed for at least 2500 years and possibly longer. Traditionally a seder will be conducted on each of the first 2 nights of Pesach.

The instructions for the seder, and its liturgy, are set out in a book called the Haggadah (meaning The Telling) and it is the means through which we keep the commandment to "tell your children what the Lord God did for you when He took you out of the Land of Egypt." (Note that this is phrased in a way that implies our personal involvement in the escape to freedom, of it being something that God did for us and not only for our ancestors. This is an important concept in the Jewish approach to Pesach).The first documentary evidence of the Haggadah is in the Mishnah, edited in around 200 CE and the text has changed little since then.

Although the Haggadot used by different communities vary, they do not vary very much. My elder son was given a 15th century, hand-scribed Haggadah (a commercially produced copy, of course, not the real thing) as a bar mitzvah gift. It is a beautiful thing, the pages are covered in stains (spilt food and wine etc.) but the text is recognisably the same as that we use today. Like most Jewish families, mine has a variety of Haggadot and no two are identical. They vary in things like exactly when a particular prayer is said or a particular glass of wine is drunk. These discrepancies are grist to the mill of Jewish argumentativeness, as is the singing of songs at the end of the seder (families have their own variations on tunes - or even different tunes - nobody sings quite the same tune!).

The Seder - an outline

During the day leading up to the Seder the table will be prepared. Apart from the usual laying up of cutlery and crockery together with candlesticks and wine glasses, a number of symbolic foods will be set out on a Seder plate which has spaces for each type of food (See the diagram below - The Shankbone, originally a lamb bone, is usually substituted by a roasted chicken neck). 3 matzot are placed in a covered stack, on the table (most families will have a special matzo cover, which is a decorated cloth bag with three compartments).

The Hebrew text in the centre says Pesach; in the circular sections (starting at the top and reading clockwise:

Maror,

Zeroah,

Charoset,

Chazeret,

Karpas,

Beitzah.

(explanations below).

 

 

 

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As darkness falls the seder begins with Kiddush (blessing for wine and symbolic hand washing). The first symbolic food to be eaten is karpas (My family follow an Askenazi tradition of combining the parsley with a piece of boiled potato - it’s a long time until dinner!).

Next the middle one of the 3 matzot is broken in half. Half is returned to the stack, the other piece is put aside as the afikoman, which everyone must share as the final food of the evening. Many families have a game with the afikoman to help keep the children amused. Either, the children have to “steal” it and hide it away, returning it only on promise of a ransom being paid after the festival, or the person leading the Seder hides it and the child who finds it can claim a prize. Either way the seder cannot end without it!

Now the youngest present stands up and recites the Mah Nishtanah (Why is it different?), a series of 4 questions asking why this night of Pesach is different from all other nights. This prompts the telling of the story of the Exodus together with various explanatory asides about what the rabbis of old thought about it. When we get to the part about the 10 plagues, we spill a drop of wine as each plague is named, as a sign that we do not rejoice in others’ misfortune.

As the telling reaches its conclusion we eat the other symbolic foods:

• We say a blessing for bread and eat some of the remaining middle matzo;
• We say a blessing for maror, bitter herbs (some use lettuce others use horseradish). Before eating a small piece it is dipped in charoset, which is made from nuts, apple and wine. The maror symbolises the bitterness of slavery, the charoset, the mortar used in building (the work that the story tells us, the slaves were forced to do);
• We than eat a sandwich of chazeret (more bitter herb) between 2 small pieces of matzo (one from each of the top and bottom matzot). In this case the maror is likely to be in the form of grated horseradish, which can be extremely eye watering! This is to commemorate Rabbi Hillel‘s (who lived around 2000 years ago) interpretation that the paschal offering and the matzo should be eaten together.

We then reach the meal proper. There is no set menu but many families have their traditions. A common seder meal for a family like mine following Ashkenazi tradition would begin with boiled eggs served in a dish of salt water. Eggs are very symbolic, since they are both reminders of renewal in Spring, and are among the foods traditionally given to mourners on returning home from a funeral (here mourning the loss of the Temple). The salt water symbolises the tears of slavery.

Next would come chicken soup with small dumplings called kneidlach (the soup is clear, the kneidlach are made from matzo meal and are as light as feathers - at least the ones my father used to make were - mine are not quite so good).

The soup may be followed by gefilte fish. These are poached fish balls (gefilte is Yiddish for minced - the e on the end is pronounce as a short a), traditionally made from freshwater fish, but these days more often made from white fish. Gefilte fish is usually served in a little of its cooking liquid and accompanied by a little chrayne (grated horseradish and beetroot). The main course may be a roast, a casserole or even another fish dish - it depends what the “cook” fancies making; likewise the sweet. We complete the meal by sharing and eating the afikoman (assuming it has been redeemed from its captivity!)

Once the meal is finished the family will bentsch (say and sing a long grace after meals). After bentsching, a custom from the Ashkenazi tradition is to place a full glass of wine in the centre of the table (called Elijah’s Cup) and to open the house door for a few minutes to welcome the prophet (it’s often a children’s job to hold the door!). Elijah is supposed to herald the coming of Moshiach (the Messiah). Opening the house to an offering of wine is also a fulfilment of the Pesach commandment to offer hospitality to strangers in need. Historically, opening the door was a way of demonstrating to non-Jewish neighbours the untruth of the so-called “blood libel” (that Jews used the blood of Christian children in our ceremonies).

After benching we recite Hallel (Psalms 113-118) and conclude by expressing the wish that next year we will celebrate Pesach in Jerusalem (ie that Moshiach will have come).

The evening finishes with a sing-song.The Haggadah contains several songs which are traditionally sung at the end of the ceremony. There are often arguments and confusions about the tunes to these songs because a) they are sung only at the seder (ie once or twice a year) so many of us have trouble remembering the tunes, b) have a variety of traditional tunes depending on where a family originated and c) have suffered from transmission through generations of families some of whose members have obviously not been singers! The result (in our family, at least) can often be a song beginning with one tune and ending with another!

The Chabad-Lubavitch website has lots of information about Pesach, including, among many other things, a one page overview of the Seder and a full text of the Haggadah. There is also a good explanation of Pesach on Tracey Rich’s Judaism101 site.

[Note: Pesach is one of the 3 Pilgrim Festivals when, in temple times Jews were expected to bring their produce (Pesach had begun as the festival of the barley harvest). This was the reason why so many people were in Jerusalem at the time of the original Easter. The Last Supper was probably a Seder. The word paschal, used to describe both Pesach and Easter, is derived from Pascha, the Latinised form of the word Pesach].

 

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Passover (Pesach) (2)

Maror - a bitter tasting herb such as horseradish, symbolic of the bitterness of slavery. Small pieces are eaten together with Charoset (see below).

Zeroah - referred to as the shankbone (the word really means arm). It is a symbol of the lamb that was sacrificed in the homes of the Hebrews on the night before the exodus. It is usually represented by a roast chicken neck.

Charoset - A brownish pasty mixture of mashed fruit (especially apple), nuts and wine, that symbolises the building materials eg mud / mortar that was used by the Hebrew slaves in their work.

Chazeret - another portion of bitter herb, this time grated and eaten between 2 small pieces of matzo (like a mini-sandwich) - 2 symbols of the Pesach story combined.

Karpas - fresh green vegetable such as parsley or celery, dipped in salt water before eating it. The green vegetable is a symbol of renewal in the Spring.