Tell me about your Seder(s)..then and now

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

When I was a boychik, my grandfather’s Seders were legendary marathons; his neighbors would stop by when they were finished…we were still at the halftime meal. If anyone complained that there was too much (widely inaccurate as we learned as we got better at following along) Hebrew, we would repeat most passages over again in English rather than alternating, always everyone reading in unison. Nothing was skipped - five-plus hours from start to finish was the norm. Both nights.

The horseradish was the most entertaining part of the evening…dished out on matzoh “sandwiches” in descending age order, with the amount of the freshly ground root (never jarred) jokingly dependent on how my grandfather felt you either treated him or behaved, so big spoonfuls with a sizeable amount taken off after pleading. Still, some years were comical displays of tears and coughing, and you were expected to finish whatever you were given. Grandpa always gave himself the most.

My grandfather was not a model Jew by any stretch of the imagination, but running a Seder was his time to shine. Cousins, friends, in-laws’ families, etc. who had the pleasure of attending only one of these were left with indelible memories. Deep down, I loved this holiday and I loved him for sticking to it, despite the hypocrisy.

Now that he’s gone? For years we’ve only attended or participated in one Seder night per year. Usually there is a Seder plate and Hagaddot, but only the 1st half highlights are touched on - The kiddish, The Four Questions, (maybe) Day-enu, hiding the afikomen, and the charoseth. Toss in a possible round or two of paragraph reading, the 10 plagues, and you’re done. The jarred horseradish was strictly for the gefilte fish. No one complains, though, so unless someone with more conviction steps in, we’re not headed back to the way it used to be done in anyone’s family.

So, this is really about me finding out how everyone else did/does the maror…everything else anyone posts here is (gefilte fish) gravy, but I’m still interested…thanks!

2

I’m Orthodox, so there’s no skipping or altering bits. Seder #1 was at the home of a couple I’m good friends with, seder #2 was by my very yeshivish rabbi and his family. Both were 5+ hours, but the second seder started an hour later because we had to wait for Shabbos to end and my rabbi keeps Rabbeinu Tam (so havdalah is at 72 minutes after sunset instead of 42). So we had to race through the meal in a quarter of an hour to get to the afikomen by chatzos. We finished around 2:30.

Maror was a big hunk of romaine lettuce both nights. Horseradish was available but not mandatory. I had one bite and decided to stick with the romaine.

3

Thanks, chizzuk…there’s no way my grandfather would have believed a seder conducted by a yeshivish rabbi would have romaine lettuce as the bitter herbs, and if he was attending such a seder, he most likely would have left the premises in a boisterous hullabaloo once he found out.

I also didn’t know there was a time limit for the afikomen…very enlightening.

4

I know there’s a dispute about it among authorities, but this rabbi is a very shtark Lakewood type who learned in elite chareidi yeshivos in Israel and is a real talmid chacham so I assume there’s a very solid halachic basis for whatever he does and I’d certainly never have the audacity to question such a person. Eilu v’eilu.

5

The difference between now and then is that it used to matter to me then, but not now. If I lived closer to my home town, it probably would matter more because I’d continue to spend the high holidays with my family.

However, despite the many years since I’ve bothered to mark the occasion, Passover still makes me crave gefilte fish and hot horseradish. That said, I still make a pretty mean chicken & matzo ball soup.

6

A little googling (Romaine Lettuce or Horseradish?) tells me that “*The Mishnah (Pesahim 2:6) lists five plants which may be used for maror: Hazeret (romaine lettuce), olshin (chicory), tamkha (no longer exists), harhavina (eryngo), and maror (sonchus oleracheus; Arabic: murar)”.
*
I’m not saying my grandfather would have been right (he typically never was)…he would raise a stink because the substitution would take all of the fun out of the family tradition.

The more you know…

7

As a Christian I’ve never yet been present at a Seder.

But I did have a Sabbath meal with an Orthodox family once. All I can say about the fish is that my mother’s training in being polite to one’s host stood me in good stead. I took the smallest portion I could and after tasting it kind of pushed a lot of it around on the plate. The rest of the meal was great though.

8

Once upon a time I visited a university to give a talk. My host was Jewish and it was Passover. He took me (and some other folk) out to dinner at a restaurant in the local Chinatown. He asked for the “full” menu (5 times the size they gave to non-Chinese guests), and ordered fairly uncommon dishes.

He did mention it was Passover, made some comments on it, that this sort of qualified as a Seder as far as he was concerned, etc.

Being non-Jewish, that’s the closest I ever came to a Seder.

9

Ever since I started teaching I was invited to a Seder but I couldn’t make it due to a prior commitment although I really wanted to go. So for the last 20 years I’ve been hinting to any of my Jewish friends (a lot harder not living in LA anymore) that I could go if I were invited. Maybe I’m being to subtle but it seems to me as being a Gentile, one does not just walk into a Seder.

10

I’ve only been having Seders for ten years now, but both of this year’s were a little shorter and more casual than when I started. Mostly this seems to be due to the presence of very young children. My wife’s generation are in their 30s and all having kids, so at the larger Seder on the second night there were 10 kids aged 0, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 6, 12, and 14. I don’t know how you are supposed to get 1-4 year-olds to sit through a 5 hour meal. We basically did a “first half highlights” version.

I’m still cleaning up from the smaller Seder I hosted at my house. None of the guests were able to help with clean up at all due to: hip surgery, being heavily pregnant, infection from a root canal, hand surgery, down syndrome, and being over 90 years old. That basically left 3 able bodied adults (including myself), who also had to care for and supervise kids and the less able bodied. My wife and I have been feeling very sandwich generation lately.

11

When I was a kid my grandfather would host a large Seder. Full ritual, multiple hand washing, took several hours, the whole thing. I grew up reform but my grandfather was reform leaning conservative. As I got older and my grandfather got older this got dialed back to a short 2 hours including the meal time. When my grandfather died we sort of stopped doing passover at all. My wife and I moved to the other side of the country and when my daughter was 3 we started doing our own small version of passover. First just a meal and a talk about what passover was and a screening of Prince of Egypt. The next year we got a little illustrated Haggadah which we used for the next two years and did a 45 minute version of the passover service. This year we went to a friends house and for the first time it was more than just the three of us. We may do something similar next year. It feels more like Passover with more people around.

I would like to get back to something that is more ceremonial, because I miss the ritual. We have joined a reconstructionist shul and I am starting to reconnect with the importance of ritual and ceremony. The super short passovers don’t feel right. But with little kids its tough to do a full service. So, next year maybe.

12

Then:

Never got past the meal. Quick pamphlet versions of the Haggadah. Like any other night Mom would remind us of our failings and warn that we were going to turn out no good just like someone else’s useless kids.

Now:

Good excuse to make Matza Brei and Harocet, and to cook a leg of lamb and tell stories of Seders past if any Jews are there.

13

Mine is with my dad, step-mom, siblings and their spouses and kids. Usually there is an additional guest or two. The extreme dysfunction of my family is on full display. I can’t fucking stand it. I’ve been kind of stressed lately so I called step-mom a couple weeks before and told her that I needed a year off. She wasn’t happy but accepted it.

14

Well, yeah, you wouldn’t just “walk in” any more than you would walk in to someone’s regular dinner, let alone a holiday dinner. But it’s not an exclusive event or anything.

It would be very appropriate for you to ask to be invited to someone’s Seder. In fact, it’s customary to invite guests, especially strangers, so don’t “hint”–just come out and say: “I’ve never been to a Seder. May I come to yours?”

And ask if you can bring something. The answer will probably be no, because there are all kinds of rules about the food and even the dishes/utensils, but you could bring flowers or some Passover candy from the grocery store. They’ve likely never invited you because they’re afraid you’ll die of utter boredom, especially if a lot of it is in Hebrew.

15

When I was a kid, we always went to my aunt’s for first seder. They kept kosher with separate dishes although no one else in the extended family did. I assume it was her husband who insisted. And it was he who conducted the seder. It was a full two hours before dinner and we kids were dying. Then came dinner and we kind of abbreviated the after dinner part, although I did enjoy the singing.

Now. My wife and I visited our daughter. We had arrived on the day before and spent the whole day (while my daughter and her non-Jewish husband were working) preparing chicken soup (that’s my department) and knaidlach and charoseth (my wife’s). She prepared a seder plate using a chicken drumstick instead of a lamb shank) and we went through a few of the motions. Including matzoh spread with a misture of charoseth and horseradish. We explained to our grandson the significance of the things on the seder plate. Dinner was just the soup, with cut up chicken and knaidlach in it. We drank one glass of wine. That was it.

When we are home, we usually join a moderately orthodox friend who happens to be a vegetarian. No lamb shank for him, IIRC he substitutes a celery stalk. Jarred gefilte fish (you can keep it for my money) and soup is veggie stock (hardly any flavor). He conducts it but generally keeps it to under and hour. He happens to be the youngest person present so he both asks and answers the four questions.

16

Our Seders were long and dull* until my uncle took over in my teens. Then they became the Marx Brothers version of a Seder – wisecracks, jokes, and a lot of fun.

This year, we rushed through the Haggadah in about 20 minutes.

*About all I remember was that my grandmother’s husband gave out silver dollars for finding the afikoman. My cousins, a year older, remembered that they were horrible.

17

Seders were always at my Aunt and Uncle’s house. My older brother and two cousins are all close in age and it was usually a great time. There were the relatives from NY who drove down to Philly, the grandparents and so on.

It was the only time in the year that the entire family gathered. When we were younger, the high point was ransoming the Afikomen. As we got older, the high points were cadging entire bottles of red wine to keep at our feet and getting slowly bombed during the Seder. In all, mostly good memories.

The bad parts? My uncle who conducted it is/was an enormous bombast. A brilliant guy but incapable of grace. Nothing was good unless he’d engaged someone in an aggressive argument ( “Discussion” ) and had verbally beaten them down. He would then engage someone else and do the same until they caved or walked away. So, there was that.

As an asthmatic, the cigarette smoke he spewed nonstop always made for a difficult evening. His home his rules. He didn’t care that it made me choke all night.

But…these are small potatoes. The overarching memory is of a feeling of silenced sadness. Of relatives missing and lost in the war. Yeah, that war. Most of my extended family didn’t get out of Germany. What should have been only a yearly celebration of a fabled Old Testament story was in reality a mute mourning that lasted into the night. It was always in the air. Very little talk was actually made on the topic but there were a lot of sad looks and deep sighs during various parts of the Seder. We all knew WHY the older folks were so sad.

The single best memory? My cousin had been forced to take violin lessons as a child and he detested them intensely. Eventually after years, he won out and stopped. Let’s say he was…15. Speed ahead more than 20 years. He is very involved in folk music and musicans and decides to pick up the violin again. Nobody in the family knew. He quietly left the room just before the first song of the Seder service was sung, and as we all started to sing, he started to play along from the hallway. Everyone stopped singing as he played the melody, and walked into the dining room. Many tears, as he played it through- on the violin owned by our grandfather that was taken out of Germany in 1937.

Even that joyous event, that amazing moment for him, his parents, our family… was tainted by the understanding of who was there to witness it and who was NOT.

ETA: We did go, when I was about 8, to the home of Orthodox friends of my Mom’s. It was numbing. My knowledge of Hebrew was non-existant. It went on forever. I choked on the solid hunks of horseradish. It was…well, a bit much ! :smiley:

18

I’m not Jewish so I don’t know anything about the traditions of seders, but many years ago, I attended one given by a friend, who was both Jewish and, in her role-playing and convention-attending persona, Klingon. I don’t remember if any of the other attendees were Jewish, but I don’t think so. Rather we were all members of the same Star Trek club who attended conventions together. Anyhow, she had translated the Hebrew readings into Klingon and she performed those readings for the rest of us. Again, I’m not Jewish so I’ve heard very little Hebrew in my life, but it was my impression that Hebrew and Klingon sounded quite similar. I’m not sure how traditional the rest of it was, but I do remember that a good time was had by all.

19

I’m not particularly a Star Trek enthusiast, but this sounds like it was an awesome time.

20

I am reform, and the non-dinner part of our Seders is typically about an hour before the meal, and maybe half an hour after. Our Seder is mostly in English, with a few Hebrew prayers scattered through, like the blessings for the candles, wine, matzo, … We sing, we chant. I enjoy it.

I have done two very abbreviated Seders. Once, I was traveling in South Africa, and wanted a Seder, and dragged in a bunch of non-Jews from the group. I went through the Maxwell coffee Haggadah, and highlighted what i thought were the most important parts. That was 20 minutes.

The other time my father was in the intensive care unit, and we did a Seder in his hospital room. The staff allowed us to bring in the family, more people than were ordinarily allowed to visit. I took our reform Haggadah and trimmed it aggressively. I think it took us less than 10 minutes to get through the highlights. Dad couldn’t speak (he had a tube and a machine breathing for him) but he was conscious, and could hold a piece of matzo and smile. (He could also write, although he didn’t during the service.) That may have been the best Seder I’ve been to.

When i was a kid i often went to my aunt’s house for Passover. She hosted an enormous Seder, and her husband’s father ran the service. That was conservative, and longer than ours, but not close to 5 hours, unless you count the cocktails before and the dinner. One year my uncle bought rubber frogs and secretly have them to the kids who the them all around the tables when we got to that plague. Good times.