INTRODUCTION

The long history of our people is one of contrasts — freedom and slavery, joy and pain, power and helplessness. Passover reflects these contrasts. Tonight as we celebrate our freedom, we remember the slavery of our ancestors and realize that many people are not yet free.

Each generation changes — our ideas, our needs, our dreams, even our celebrations. So has Passover changed over many centuries into our present

holiday. Our nomadic ancestors gathered for a spring celebration when the sheep gave birth to their lambs. Theirs was a celebration of the continuity of life. Later, when our ancestors became farmers, they celebrated the arrival of spring in their own fashion. Eventually these ancient spring festivals merged with the story of the Exodus from Egypt and became a new celebration of life and freedom.

As each generation gathered around the table to retell the old stories, the symbols took on new meanings. New stories of slavery and liberation, oppression and triumph were added, taking their place next to the old. Tonight we add our own special chapter as we recall our people’s past and we dream of the future.

For Jews, our enslavement by the Egyptians is now remote, a symbol of communal remembrance. As we sit here in the comfort of our modern world, we think of the millions who still suffer the brutality of the existence that we escaped thousands of years ago.

Haggadah Introduction

            We have a seder every year around the time of Pesach. We have this seder each year because it is a mitzvah to tell the story of the miracles and wonders that happened to our ancestors in Egypt. We know this is a holiday because the same language used to describe Shabbat, the most important holiday of the year, is used to describe Pesach. In order to have this seder, we need to get rid of all of the chametz in the house and go through a ritual chametz burning ceremony to rid the possibility of any possible sins. These sins include eating chametz, eating a mixture of chametz, looking for chametz, and finding chametz.

            At your seder, you should have your spouse and your children present to have someone to tell the story to and to drink with. If you do not have either a wife or a child, you must tell the story to yourself and drink by yourself. In order to have your seder, you need pesach, matzah, marror, wine and charoset.

The pesach used to be the remnants of the sacrifice, but now that we don’t sacrifice anymore, a shank bone or an egg can be used to represent the sacrafice. In order to have the proper amount of Matzah, you need an olives size for each person at the seder. The matzah represents redemption. Raw lettuce and horse raddish can be used as marror. The marror represents the bitterness and tears of the Jewish people as they went through hard labor in Israel. At least four cups of wine are needed at your seder, but you may not drink between the third and fourth cup.  Though eating the charoset is not a commandment, we still do it. The ingredients needed to make charoset are dates, dried figs, raisins and stuff like that. You mix all these ingredients with spices and vinegar and bring it all to the seder.

Like almost every Jewish holiday and ritual, we begin the Passover Seder by saying a blessing over grape juice, otherwise known as "Kadesh."  While we only recite a blessing over one cup of grape juice at this point in the seder, we actually recite blessings over four cups of grape juice throughout the entire seder.   These four cups represent the four promises made by God to Moses during the Book of Exodus, for God promised Moses and the Israelites that he would (1) Take them out of Egypt, (2) Free them from slavery, (3) Redeem them as a people, and (4) Take them into the land of Israel.   Each time we recite a blessing over grape juice, we are recalling the promises that God made to the Israelites, while our thanking God for giving these special days on the Jewish calendar for us to celebrate.

Urchatz- (Washing of the hands) According to the Jewish law we are obligated to wash our hands before we partake in the Karpas or dipping the vegetables in salt water. We do not say a blessing at this point in the service while washing our hands.

Urchatz ― "Why do we wash our hands at this point in this Seder?" the Talmud asks. "Because it is an unusual activity which prompts the children to ask questions." The very name Haggadah means "telling," for the goal of the Seder is to arouse curious questions, and provide satisfying answers. (aish.com)

Eric’s tradition- instead of getting up and washing hands one person comes around with a bowl and water to wash hands

Karpas is the dipping of the vegetables in the salt water.

Each person takes a piece of the parsley and dips it in the salt water, and proclaims that this serves as a reminder of my enslaved ancestors in Egypt’s tears.We need to re-taste the breaking labor of Egypt to liberate ourselves from it once again. It was this labor that prepared us for freedom. It was this labor that gave us a humble spirit to accept wisdom.

The reason we use parsley is because it represents the grass of spring. Some people believe that we should use roots that come from the ground.

Annie's tradition- Instead of using parsley, my family also uses potatoes.

The blessing that goes along with this ritual is: 

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָאֲדָמָה

 Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, King of the universe, Who creates the fruit of the land.

Baruch atah A-donay, Elo-heinu Melech Ha’Olam borei pri ha-adamah.

Discussion Question:
What other vegetables can we use for this ritual?

Yachatz is the breaking of the matzah. It is the fourth step in the seder. Three pieces of matzah are taken out of a white bag and the middle one is broken. The bigger one is hidden somewhere in the room. You will be looking for it later in the seder. It is called the afikomen. The smaller piece is kept in the matzah bag. The word yachatz means dividing. There are three matzahs to symbolize Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The middle piece is broken to symbolize the binding of Isaac. The binding of Isaac is when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a test to see if Abraham would listen to him. God told Abraham to stop just as Abraham was about to sacrifice him.

Maggid means retelling the story of the exodus from Egypt.

In every generation, we must see ourselves as if we personally were liberated from Egypt. We gather tonight to tell the ancient story of a people's liberation from Egyptian slavery. This is the story of our origins as a people. It is from these events that we gain our ethics, our vision of history, our dreams for the future. We gather tonight, as two hundred generations of Jewish families have before us, to retell the timeless tale.

Yet our tradition requires that on Seder night, we do more than just tell the story. We must live the story. Tonight, we will re-experience the liberation from Egypt. We will remember how our family suffered as slaves; we will feel the exhilaration of redemption. We must re-taste the bitterness of slavery and must rejoice over our newfound freedom. We annually return to Egypt in order to be freed. We remember slavery in order to deepen our commitment to end all suffering; we recreate our liberation in order to reinforce our commitment to universal freedom.

Raise the tray with the matzot and say:

This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year [we are] here; next year in the land of Israel. This year [we are] slaves; next year [we will be] free people.

The tray with the matzot is moved aside, and the second cup is poured.

(Do not drink it yet).

K'neged arba banim dibra Torah--the Torah speaks of four children. We might be forgiven for thinking that this section of the Haggadah is a quote from the Torah, and indeed, the familiar story of the four children asking questions about Pesach does include many quotations from the Torah. But the passage itself is an adaptation of texts found not in the Torah, but rather in the Mekhilta, a midrash from the time of the Tannaim (first and second centuries C.E.), and in the Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi).

Reversing the Answers

Interestingly, the version in the Yerushalmi contains some significant differences from the version we find in our Haggadot. (Though we might think that our Haggadah would be closer to the later Yerushalmi version, instead it more closely resembles the earlier Mekhilta version).

From the Yerushalmi: "The Torah speaks of four children. One is wise, one is wicked, one is foolish (tipesh), and one does not know how to ask questions. The wise child asks: What are the testimonies, statutes, and ordinances which the Lord our God has commanded us to do? And you should respond: with a mighty fist has the Lord rescued us from the bondage of Egypt (Exodus 13:14)."

We know that answer: It is the one given to the simple child in our Haggadah!

Meanwhile, in the Yerushalmi: "The foolish child asks mah zot, what is all this? And you should: 'teach him the laws of Passover, that they do not end [with] afikoman [M 10:8]. What is afikoman? That one should not get up from one fellowship and join another fellowship [as was customary in after-dinner revelry gatherings]." (Translation, Baruch Bokser.)

That answer, too, is familiar to us--as the answer our Haggadot offer for the wise child.

How is it that the Yerushalmi has confused the answers of the wise and the simple children? Or is it the Haggadah that has confused the two?

The implication in our Haggadah is that since the wise child has asked an excellent and intelligent question, he or she is treated to a lengthy explanation of the laws of Pesach, including the laws of afikoman. The answer is meant to be a compliment; perhaps such a child is even to be told laws known only to the scholars, the best and the brightest. On the other hand, even though similar words are used, the implication of the answer to the foolish child in the Yerushalmi is that he or she is too ignorant even to know the rules of the afikoman. We have to explain it to the foolish child.

Times change, generations change, places change, expectations change. An answer that is regarded as foolish and simple in Israel in the early years of the Common Era is regarded as considered and wise in medieval and modern times.

More Differences & Similarities

Nor is that the only difference between the story of the four children as we know it in the Haggadah and the much earlier version in the Yerushalmi; there are many. For example, in the Yerushalmi the wise child asks what the Lord our God has commanded us, while most Haggadot follow the Mekhilta version and have the wise child asking what the Lord our God has commanded you, sparking many a discussion about the differences between the wise and the wicked children.

Some modern Haggadot, such as the Feast of Freedom, return to the version of the Yerushalmi. It does make the difference between the wise child and the wicked child much clearer.

A the same time, the renditions of both the wicked child and the one who does not know how to ask are fairly similar in the Yerushalmi, in the Mekhilta, and in our Haggadah, at least in implication if not in precise language.  But the differences in the precise language are also interesting.  The Haggadah reads:

"The wicked child asks: 'what is all this work to you?' S/he says to you and not to him. Thus s/he separates her/himself from the community and denies the point of it all. You should set her/his teeth on edge (hak'he et shinav) and tell her/him that God did this for me when I went out of Egypt, for me and not for her/him.  Had s/he been there, s/he would not have been redeemed."

The phrase hak'he et shinav is particularly remarkable. It is an odd phrase, usually translated as "setting the teeth on edge,"--that is, making the child very uncomfortable. This bears some resemblance to a passage from Jeremiah 31:28, that in the future days no longer will parents eat vinegar and set the teeth of the children on edge. But literally it might mean to punch the child in the mouth, thus getting the child's attention rather dramatically. Furthermore, that phrase does not appear in the Yerushalmi, and while it does appear in some printed version of the mekilta, it is not found in the manuscript versions. Perhaps it was even retroactively put into the printed mekilta to make the text accord with the familiar Haggadah.

Again, times change and later generations apparently found the need to be clearer and more graphic in the treatment of the wicked child. The passage without the phrase "hak'he et shinav" did not censure the wicked child strongly enough.

Modern Questions

Modern Haggadot bring other questions to the story. Perhaps the four children represent four generations of American Jews (Riskin). Perhaps every one of us is in reality all four of these children (Feast of Freedom, and others). Perhaps the four children represent questions asked at different ages and life positions (Prince of Egypt Haggadah). Maybe we should be worried about a fifth child – the one who does not show up at seder at all (Hartman).

The passage begins: "k'neged arba banim dibra Torah," the Torah speaks of four children. But this passage is not a quote from the Torah and it has grown, changed, and developed over the years, each generation finding meaning in the text as they found it.

Sefer Shemot illustrated through LEGOs

Ten Plagues

דָּם    

צְפֵרְדֵּע        

כִּנִים   

עָרוֹב

דֶּבֶר   

שְׁחִין  

בָּרד

אַרְבֶּה

חשֶׁךְ  

מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת

In the following rap, each seder guest is assigned a number. When the leader calls out their number, they do their assigned plague. 

CHORUS:

Moses at the Red Sea, like “who’s gonna follow me?”
Pharaoh’s in the tide, we gonna ride, to our destiny,
In back of me, so sad to see, them bodies in the Red Sea
chariots get buried, b-b-buried in the Red Sea
Pharaoh sat and laughed when a staff became a snake,
too long we’ve been your slaves, just let us go and pray,
said "don’t make this mistake,"no pardon his heart was hardened,
so started what we regard as: the days of 10 plagues...

One: blood in the river gonna shiver, gonna freak outlips take a sip now there's blood in your mouth

Two: frogs on your beds in your house on your platedon't matter what's for dinner better like frog legs

Three: gnats buzz buzz watch the dust turn to bugsitch itch hard to think with all the lice in your mugs

Four: beasts roam your streets when you step outsidethere's a tiger on your tail nowhere to hide

Five: death of your livestock, flesh dries upb-b-bodies in your barn Pharaoh when you gonna wise up?

CHORUS

Six: boils on your flesh no less than torturecareful bout the ash in the air it'll scorch ya

Seven: hail rains down beats your brains downlike a message from the heavens better lay our chains down

Eight: locusts from the coast you can hear their wings clickeating crops eating trees til they're used as toothpicks

Nine: darkness, dispatch, 3 days pitch blackremember when this started and you thought it was just witchcraft

Death of the first born how did it come to this ten is what it took so we all would remember it

CHORUS