The Seder Experience

A seder is a type of ceremony or ritual with a meal inserted about two-thirds of the way through. Yes, that's right -- there's quite a bit of seder after the meal, though there is a certain segment of the population who never get that far. Speaking from personal experience -- it's worth the extra effort. A great book for learning more about how a seder is constructed and what each of the parts entails is Dr. Ron Wolfson's The Art of Jewish Living: The Passover Seder.

As usual, since living here in the Galut, we hosted two seders (sedarim) at our home. What was a bit unusual was that we had pretty much the same people here both nights. In past years, we have been asked to invite various Jewish strays (in or around town at the right time, far from home) and/or have invited people we knew to join us for at least one night. The second night is usually a smaller group and often just our immediate family. This year, we had the same two families join us both nights, with a few extra people on the first night only.

We had to scramble a bit to make the second night different yet enjoyable. I did some online searching and came away with bunches of ideas, but only two that we tried to implement.

First of all, we decided to scramble the seder. Seder means "order" and there is a list of 15 steps that are generally agreed upon (as you can see, the meal is #11).

1. Kiddush & first cup of wine
2. Urchatz - wash hands w/o blessing
3. Karpas - eat green vegetable
4. Yahatz - break middle matzoh
5. Maggid - The telling of the Exodus story
6. Rachatz -- wash hands w/blessing
7. Motzi -- blessing over bread/the meal
8. Matzah -- blessing for eating matah
9. Maror -- eat bitter herb
10. Korech -- Hillel sandwich
11. Shulchan Orech -- the meal
12. Tzafun -- Afikomen, end of the meal
13. Barech -- Birkat Hamazon
14. Hallel -- songs of praise
15. Nirtzah - conclusion of seder

The step that generally takes the longest for religious Jews is #5, or Maggid, the telling of the story of the Exodus -- along with a lot of digressions. So in addition to treating each of the 15 steps as individual pieces of the seder, I also broke down the Maggid portion into a bunch of individual pieces. Here's the list I had:

Kadesh-Urchatz (mnemonic listing the steps of the seder)
Kiddush & first cup of wine
Urchatz - wash hands w/o blessing
Karpas - eat green vegetable
Yahatz - break middle matzoh
Maggid - Ha Lachma Anya
Maggid - Mah Nishtana
Maggid - Avadim Hayinu
Maggid -- Rabbis talking until dawn
Maggid - Four children
Maggid - How Jacob went to Egypt
Maggid -- Vehi She'amda
Maggid -- Torah and midrash
Maggid -- Wonders and signs
Maggid -- Ten plagues
Maggid -- Rabinnical math
Maggid - Dayenu
Maggid -- Pesach, Matzah, Maror
Maggid -- L'fichach and Hallelujah
Maggid -- Second cup
Rachatz -- wash hands w/blessing
Motzi, Matzah -- blessings and eat matzah
Maror -- eat bitter herb
Korech -- Hillel sandwich

Shulchan Orech

Tzafun -- Afikomen, the end of the meal
Barech -- Birkat Hamazon, blessings after the meal
Third cup of wine
Fill fourth cup and welcome Elijah the prophet
Hallel, songs of praise
Fourth cup of wine
Nirtzah - conclusion of seder
Songs - L'shanah Haba'ah B'Yerushalayim
Songs - dir Hu
Songs - Echad Mi Yodea
Songs - Chad Gadya

I printed out the list and cut it up into individual segments. I decided to leave Shulchan Orech -- the festive meal -- in its usual place, so I put the slips from before the meal in one cup and the slips for after the meal in a second cup. I also made a chart with ALL the pieces so that we could fill things in as we pulled them out and completed them.

There were a few glitches, and we refined things a bit in a discussion after the fact so that, if we ever do this again, the "big" kiddush will come before the first cup of wine and certain blessings will be said in an appropriate order. But all in all, the scrambled seder was a big success. We had lots of conversation and discussion. Encountering familiar things in a different order helped me, at least, to think about them in a new way.

The second idea I had gleaned from my online searches was really for the kids in attendance -- something for them to do if they needed a break from the seder. I found kosher-for-Passover sugar cubes and set them up on a table in a separate room so that the kids could build pyramids. They destroyed their Great Pyramid before I could get a picture, but here are some of their other efforts. First, the Great Sphinx:

The Sphinx and some pyramids:

A cat (they were sacred in Egypt, after all):

A few sugar cubes got eaten before the evening ended, but everyone had a great time building things. Even a few adults, who shall remain nameless, got into the act.