what makes a good seder?

[cellio]

On Friday a coworker asked me how my Pesach sedarim had been and I said "eh", and she said something like "that's too bad -- mine was great". Hey, I thought to myself, I didn't know you were Jewish. She saw my puzzled expression: no, she's Roman Catholic, but several years ago she asked friends if she could join their seder because she was curious, and it was great, so she does it every year now. She described some of what they did and I was drooling inside. ("I thought of you!" she said. Rub it in. :-) )

Edited to add: let me be clear that everyone involved in the sedarim I went to acted with good will. These are good people; we just have some differences in approach that are turning out to be hard. Clear? (end edit)

The thought of "how come my Roman Catholic friend gets a more fulfilling seder than I do?", combined with a recent discussion in a locked entry, leads to this question: what is it that makes a seder fulfilling for me? What elements make me come away at the end feeling that I'd been at a good seder? (I encourage y'all to chime in.)

There are, of course, lots of factors. Here are some things that matter to me; I think a seder must have most of them for me to feel satisfied. Some of these might be essential on their own and others might be more like "minimum N of these"; I'm not sure yet which are which. And I'm sure I haven't figured them all out yet; it's taken me many years of sedarim (some good, some not) to get even this far.

Some commonality of purpose. There are lots of reasons to hold a seder. Mine include recalling God bringing our people out of Egypt. (Fact or shared mythology? Doesn't matter. But either way, it has to be important.) You might think "well, duh", but there are sedarim out there that are primarily about modern Zionism, and ones held by people who don't believe in God, and ones that are so much about freedom in general that the exodus core has been lost.

I used to think that it was enough that I am there for a particular purpose, and that others' intentions don't matter. I now question that. I think some amount of this is essential for the rest to follow. We are affected by each others' moods and attitudes.

A spirit of education, inquiry, and discussion. It is not sufficient to just read the fixed text of the haggadah; the seder should evoke questions (beyond "ma nishtanah", which was originally just a starting point), and people should bring things they've learned or thought about. We should be willing to pause at almost any time to have such conversations. (And, to be clear, this should not just be the dumbed-down stuff for little kids that some families do; the adults should be getting something out of this.) At the end of my ideal seder, I have learned something and taught something.

All the traditional elements are present. I don't require that every word of the haggadah be read in order to feel satisfied; there are parts that you can linger on or cut short, based on the people there, and that's fine to a point. Lots of people cut out the talmudic reasoning about the number of plagues, for instance. (I personally think that part is fun just because it's so over the top, but I have been overruled at every seder I've attended where I knew enough to have an opinion, so I'm used to it.) Some people object to "pour out thy wrath"; fine.

So we don't have to do everything, but if we skip sections entirely, or don't do the blessings before certain ritual elements, I feel a little out of sorts. I can compensate for dropped blessings (I know all the relevant ones and can say them for myself if the group doesn't), and that's survivable, but it's one more little nudge in the "you don't really belong here" direction. And we have to at least touch every part, I think. I've been to sedarim that end with the meal and skip the second half entirely; that doesn't work for me.

Related to this: there are zillions of haggadot out there, some very traditional and some so creative as to be nearly unrecognizable. I certainly don't insist on Artscroll and I welcome supplementary on-topic material, and it's certainly ok to take a light approach, but if the creativity gets too far out of hand that can make me feel disoriented. As with a siddur (prayer book), I should always be able to tell how what we're doing relates to the standard outline of the service.

Spending adequate time. There is a joke that the four real questions at the seder are "when do we eat? when do we eat? when do we eat? when do we eat?". I don't want to rush. It's ok to take an hour or more to get to the meal, and to spend a couple hours on the part after the meal. This shouldn't be forced, of course; if everyone is tired or out of it or something, lengthening it is not going to lead to better discussions. But we should be willing to spend time on it, and if we get into a really good discussion, we should let it run its course, even if it's 2AM when we finish. Where did you have to be the next morning anyway?

Singing. It is, after all, a festival. I want to sing. (But not that Clementine song... :-) )

There are some things that I don't think matter to me. Who's there, for instance. While it's nice to be with friends, of course, I think I can be comfortable in a seder with strangers. (Was the one time I did it.) For some people the seder is all about the family reunion; that's not true for me. (This should surprise no one.) As for children, my only concerns are in the cases where the presence of young kids causes the adults to change the seder in ways that would violate the principles above. That doesn't mean don't bring kids; it means give them a place to go (away from the table) if they're bored or sleepy or misbehaved, and don't start skipping parts to speed it up for their sake.

So, if you've read this far, what makes a seder fulfilling for you?

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Since you asked - but knowing won't help you...

As you probably know, I am an agnostic, with an active childhood Jewish identity and belief, and a current Jewish household in support of my wife and child. In many ways, I am the obverse of you. :-)

Passover was the only Jewish holiday my ex-wife and I marked during the year. It was important to her family, who were theistically resistant but culturally Jewish. Years later, when we stopped going to NYC, we had Passover seder the first night with friends and their family, who were more believing.

For me, the core of enjoyment was that everyone wanted to be there, and was genuinely glad that most everyone else was there too. The details of our "group endeavor" didn't matter, and the religious components varied wildly (Kos Maryam and an orange, for example, from a home-made Haggadah at one, the old Maxwell House Coffee Haggadah and lots of skipping at the other).

As with most things in my life, fellow-feeling was really important. That: and what became a standing joke at that local seder. :-)

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Your posts always make me think... so, after my reply, I kept thinking.

What are your in-laws criteria for a successful and valuable Seder? And, do you think your presence satisfies those criteria?

[cellio]

I think "everyone wants to be there" is an important point, worth calling out from the more general "commonality of purpose". And I had entirely missed "glad that everyone else is there", which does seem important. Thanks.

What are your in-laws criteria for a successful and valuable Seder? And, do you think your presence satisfies those criteria?

I think a primary goal is that of family reunion. That makes it important for Dani to be there; I don't know about me. The father-in-law's wife's kids and their families are usually there (one skipped last year), so I guess that's a data point. (Well, they're there on their side of the family's night.) There are people who miss due to juggling multiple families (for example, my sister-in-law is divorced, so her kids aren't always at the same seder she is), but other than that, people come.

For any seder run by my sister-in-law -- which means my mother-in-law's every year and my father-in-laws' every other year -- the haggadah that her family made is important. So I'm inferring a strong nostalgia element, perhaps comparable to pulling out the family photo albums every year at Christmas dinner. (I don't know if people do that; I just made it up.) The haggadah (or photo album) provides a frame for a bunch of memories from past years. I, of course, am not part of that, and I haven't perceived an invitation to become part of it.

(My sister-in-law was open-minded and willing to add a few things to the seder that I felt were important. There were limits both on quantity and religiosity.)

Dani's mother-in-law and sister (I can't tell about his father-in-law) have strong emotional ties to secular Israel. They lived there on kibbutzim for a few years, and seem to share the political and philosophical inclinations you would expect from that. The home-made haggadah reflects that somewhat, but I can't tell if that's a first-order criterion for a good seder in their eyes.

I've tried asking Dani what his family considers important in a seder, but he can't really articulate it. So I'm left to guess here. Sigh.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

This may be me, projecting how I would feel...

But do you think they feel judged by you? Is your dissatisfaction palpable?

Do you have a "glad to be here" and "commonality of purpose" with them?

That's what I was talking about, before Pesach, when I wrote about Shalom Bayit, frankly.

I don't know if they do or don't feel as I am querying. It would be both my concern (going into it) and my concern (if I were in it).

[cellio]

(Wow, I see on rereading that the typos were stalking me last night and winning. Sorry 'bout that.)

I suspect that some of them feel intimidated by me. They're Jews because they were born to it but are pretty much secular, and here's this weirdo who chose to join (and not for a socially-conventional reason like marriage) and who actually buys into it (and seems to know a lot). That's got to be a little off-putting to them in and of itself.

That said, I think I do a decent job of not projecting dissatisfaction. (Of course, if I'm wrong I'd be the last person to know it. :-( ) My sister-in-law knows that I'm unhappy with the haggadah because we've had specific discussions about changing it; those discussions have been mediated through Dani, so I don't know exactly what's been said. And my mother-in-law has certainly picked up that I enjoy singing Hebrew songs and don't enjoy singing Yiddish songs, because last year (after discussion) I brought along some more Hebrew songs to sing. My father-in-law and I have never had a discussion about religion or the seder; I've never perceived interest from him in doing so, and I've had no reason to bring it up. Father-in-law's wife seems to care even less than he does about this stuff. (Her main concern seems to be having her own children and their families there.)

I'm glad to see most of the people. The ones I find a little wearing are also found wearing by several other attendees, so there's nothing special about me in that. I like my in-laws; we just have different religious outlooks, and in something like this it turns out to matter more than I had first thought.