For those who read this blog – Hello? Hello? Knock knock, anyone there? – well, anyway, and for those who know Ellen and I well, you will realize as we come up on Passover that we do our own version of a Seder. While based on a standard Haggadah based approach, we typically add some kind of theme which leads to the readings we select to accompany the regular material. In addition, I have gotten in the habit of putting quotes on 3 x 5 cards associated with our theme. As we go around the room during the seder, each participant reads from their quote as well as their reading.
Over the years we have moved us made adjustments because of the size of the crowd, this year at 25. I used to sit at the end of one table, now both Ellen and I sit in the middle. Also when we started doing seder’s at our house we would have participants selected one after another around the table(s). When we recognized that this meant that the readings would tend to be in only part of the group for a period of time, we changed it to have the assigned participant/reader selected sort-of-randomly moving the conversation back and forth.
We have two areas of focus this year. First we will spend more time on the structure of the seder itself and provide explanations for some of the choices that were made to create the standard flow. Second our theme is to look at the importance of belief versus behavior, talking about which leads to which and perhaps which is more important.
As with some years past I am posting the script we are using, the quotes we are using, and the source material referenced in the script (this year there are a lot in this last category). Most of the quotes are new to this year, focused on the behavior/belief theme.
Many thanks once again to Ellen who does so much more of the work than I do to make our annual Seder a success.
Seder script: seder 2014
Quotes: 2014 behavior quotes
Source material: A Dvar by Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus Arami Oved Avi Commentary Magazine continued Commentary Magazine Ha Lachma Anya kadesh Karpas Last Passover in the Warsaw Ghetto Maror Korech miriam’s cup Passover on the Battlefields of the Civil War rav and shmuel The Passover Seder Yachatz Zipporah Porath