Pesach (Passover) is my favorite holiday. We are hosting Seder tonight. One of the many great parts of the holiday is when non-Jewish guests join us. For example we have had some very religious Christian friends join us fascinated by the overlaps with Easter (The Last Supper was a Seder) and bring a different lens to the experience.
So any non-Jews who have been to a Seder or so? As people outside of the tradition what was your experience like? Impatiently waiting to get to eat?
I don’t know if I’m a “non-Jew” or not. My father was a secular Jew. My mother a secular non-Jew. We never did anything for Passover growing up. My first wife, however, was pretty much a strong secular Jew, and preserving Jewish traditions was important to her, since her family had been Holocaust survivors. Anyway, she decided we should host a Seder one year. I held my interest somewhat just for the novelty and “DEI” experience, but it is not something I ever felt the need to do again. Like most holidays, I felt the effort far exceeded the payoff. (I’m not trying to be disrespectful. I understand that such things are important to other people. But you asked “what was your experience like?” For me, boring mostly. Others are probably better sports about it.)
No it is a fair answer. But hosting it is not the same as being a guest to one, looking from the outside in. Even if that is your first Seder.
For a while now, I have had Seder at my beloved’s place. She is a germophobe. We had Seder at my first apartment a few times. I had to move due to toxic mold. Based on fears of lingering spores and the massive rodent problem, she refused to set foot in my second apartment. She will spend time in my current apartment, but will not eat here.
Tonight, I am heading to her place for Seder. I know that she enjoys spending tme with me, cooking for me (seriously. That is not an assumption. Preparing food is her love language) and sharing in my faith. I will have to ask her exactly what she gets out of it though.
That’s true. I didn’t hate the experience. Just didn’t do anything for me. For my ex, it was a meaningful connection to her childhood and her culture.
I’m a former altar boy who married into a Jewish family 13 years ago (2nd marriage for me). Passover is my wife’s primary expression of her culture and heritage, and a big deal…her cousin always hosts a seder for 16-18 or so, and I’m honored to be included.
It’s fun. I enjoy it; I get a role in reading from the haggadah, and I like singing Daiyenu. I certainly don’t come for the food (although it may not be fair to judge the entire holiday based on cousin’s cooking). Brisket is good; matzoh ball soup is fine; but I don’t like gefilte fish. And dessert feels like a culinary challenge: can we make something tasty without using flour?
And is the afikomen always another piece of matzoh? We’ve been nibbling on matzoh all evening…this is the reward? 
Chag Pesach Sameach, Y’all!
[non-practicing, but a Bar Mitzvah]
The tastiest dessert I make is served only for passover, because it’s a lot of work.
Lemon angel pie:
It’s a meringue crust, cooked enough to get a little brown and caramelized, with two layers of cream inside. The lower layer is lemon (basically lemon curd folded into whipped cream) and the upper layer is whipped cream with some vanilla and a bit of sugar. I’d be okay with no sugar, as the rest is sweet enough, but i bow to my guests. Assembly it the evening before, so the bottom of the crust gets soft and it can be served. But the “ridge” along the outside of the crust stays crispy.
This year i also made a flourless chocolate cake (chocolate oblivion truffle torte, from the cake Bible) which is also delicious, but i make it a lot more often because it’s fairly easy. A pound of excellent (and expensive) bittersweet chocolate, half a pound of butter, and six whole eggs.
My son is bringing friends, only one of whom is Jewish. I like to invite “strangers” to the Seder, but it’s usually Jews who don’t have a handy alternative.
When I was in Catholic grade school, we did a seder supper in our classroom one year. I don’t think that really counts, as there weren’t any Jewish people in attendance (much less hosting it), and I don’t think we did the entire thing (no singing, not much, if any, reading).
I’d like to experience an actual one someday.
Both of my desserts are dairy, though. A family that kept kosher wouldn’t serve them after a meat meal.
I’ve been to about six, all in the New York area, where I’ve lived in 1984. I like the combination of an old, preserved ritual and people sharing from current era experiences or weaving in modern takes on traditional content, including the food.
I’ve been to two, one at the home of one of my college roommates. The other was put on by a Reconstructionist congregation who shared space with our Unitarian Universalist congregation. Good times were had at both. I enjoyed the rituals. It made me viscerally feel a tradition stretching across 5 millennia.
“Women!”
Does it count if it was a Seder hosted by the Episcopalian Church on campus, and it was explicitly targeted at Christians, mostly grad students? We did have wine and plenty of food, and I ended up being the youngest person at my table, so I got to ask some of the children’s questions. It was fun. And a definite learning experience.
I’ve also been to one hosted at a United Methodist Church, but that one was comparatively meh. I didn’t mind the grape juice instead of wine, but I didn’t approve of the fact that the grape juice was fake grape juice. Also, they spent too much time talking about the symbolism, rather than performing the ceremony, if that makes sense.
I’ve never been to one hosted by Jews for Jews and guests.
One word: meringue.
I’ve been to a Seder in grad school. Kind of surprising, since I knew more Jewish students as an undergrad, but they generally went home to their families for the holidays.
I have not, and it sounds so cool. I don’t know any Jewish people in the area at all. Not a lot of them in a large town (small city) in Arkansas.
The closest I’ve done is some Messianic Jews (i.e. Christians) who kinda did one as a demonstration, but it was more an illustration than anything. It did mean I tasted the bitter herb and matzah, but that’s about it.\
I genuinely doubt the non-Jewish woman doing it at my church got it right. Especially after reading things here about the Seder. (Or rewatching that Rugrats Passover special)
We held a sedar every year growing up, and often attending a second when some families had the second night. I am mostly non-practicing nowadays, but have held a few as an adult.
Growing up we occasionally had a few non-Jewish friends attend. At the ones I hosted as an adult, the majority of the attendees were non-Jewish. They all reported having a good time, and I went all out cooking the meal, so that may have helped.
We had two non Jewish attendees this evening. One of my son’s friends (the other is Jewish) and my sister in law, who had never been to a Seder before.
(My brother hates religion, and has boycotted the family Seder for years. But my other brother and his reclusive-because-immunocompromised-partner were coming to our Seder. And when brother 1 realized that he didn’t have an opportunity to have the family over himself in this time frame, he called me and asked if he could come. Today. And he brought his wife, who has been wanting to join us for years, but felt weird coming without him.)
I think a good time was had by all.
It’s my wife’s least-favorite holiday.
As the child of a Sicilian mother, she finds the idea of sitting around a table for an hour or more and not eating to be ridiculous.
We have good friends who are Chabadnicks, and they do the whole megillah. We went to one of their Seders, and I thought she was going to pass out from hunger before his wife served the (fantastic) meal.