It took me a long time to get it, but it seems so obvious now.
When I was a kid, we read the Maxwell House Hagaddah and Seders seemed interminable and almost punishing. It was fine when my turn came to read out loud, and my grandma's cooking was good, but the Seder as a whole felt like something we were obligated to go through. The text pontificated endlessly on the four sons and quoted various rabbis discussing something I could never focus upon and about which I have no idea even today.
We never deviated from the text, we never talked personally about anything, we never made a connection between the Seder and our lives. Not surprisingly, I never had a sense that it actually spoke deeply to anyone at the table- beyond, at least, a firm conviction that if this is what Jews had to read at Passover, then we darn well were going to read every last word before so much as touching our lips to the waiting matzo ball soup.
Later, Seders were quaint, tasty, pleasant opportunities to be with friends, occasionally even places for interesting political expressions- but never actually personally meaningful.
And then one year, It clicked for me. I'm not sure when exactly, but it makes sense that it coincided approximately with me having my own kids and thinking about the turning of generations. I think it also happened around the time that I hosted a Seder myself instead of just passively going along with the way someone else chose to do it.
The revelation for me was that the Seder is an effort to solve a tremendous human problem: that it is impossible to effectively transmit the experiences and lessons of one generation to the next.
Slavery is something that we haven't personally experienced, but it was the experience of Jews living thousands of years ago (and making it more poignant still, of many others, even today). How can we value freedom when we don't know what it means to live without it? How can we stand up for it if we don't understand what a privilege it is in the first place?
The Passover Seder to me should be a reenactment of the slavery to freedom experience. Just as when we see a good movie or read a good book-- our ability to understand in a visceral way is strengthened, so too the Seder should act as a sort of superimposed physical reminder of what it is that we have today in our freedom. I'm fascinated by teaching that incorporates reenactment a of history for the same reason, or games that have people immersing themselves in completely different roles. But this is special because it is an annual ritualized reminder, because it uses food, because it involves different generations of the same family. Incidentally, I have also come to appreciate the importance if having kids at the table with their questions and interest in understanding the bottom line.
The most fitting part of the ritual to me is the instruction to lean rather than sit up straight. I can't wait for the day when I let my kids eat sitting or lying down on the floor, cozy.
For me, Passpver is really about appreciating what we have, knowing to value it.
Today my son asked me what all the elevated praising God rhetoric means- he didn't realate. This is coming from someone not too religious- I said the the praise of God is really just the effort to direct that gratitude and personify the recipient.
Today, the question also came up of what freedom and slavery really are, a level deeper. And I want to give that some more time. Here are some of the questions I have: is freedom the ability to work at all, to earn money? To work for a living wage? To enjoy time off? To make ones own ultimate decisions (but aren't all decisions prefaced on context, so that if I have to work today or starve, how different is the to having to work for fear of punishment)? Who are the people who are not free about whom we think? When are we free vs not free?
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