![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIntroduction
This year and last year I've gone with Rachel to her family's passover meal, and recently caused her very much hilarity by trying to summarise the order of service from the perspective of a layman, and I decided to try to write up a short summary for anyone curious to know.
The emphasis will be heavily on (i) humour (ii) theology (iii) her family's particular passover, as it various incredibly widely. The initial part will focus on "if I'm invited to a friend's passover service, what do I need to do", although hopefully it will move on into running the best service you can when EVERYONE is ignorant.
Family Gathering
The Passover meal is a the big family celebration, somewhat equivalent to Christmas (but no presents). All the family get together, you invite any strangers who may not have a passover to welcome, it's in the home rather than the synagogue, there's a big meal, children are encouraged to enjoy themselves.
It's supposed to teach the children a few of the basics, so there are lots of points where the youngest person is invited to say something. Furthermore questions are explicitly requested, especially from children, but ignorant guests are invited to play their role too, and everyone else should ask theologically sophisticated questions if they have them. Someone is supposed to lead it, but it's supposed to be interactive, and everyone is supposed to question and participate.
Honestly, I never thought I'd be asked to a religious service where there was a big meal and every time someone said something I didn't understand or agree with, I was supposed to interrupt the service to ask about it. When Rachel invited me I hardly believed it. But that's the idea.
Bear in mind that at many OTHER religious services, and at many passover services, it's considered rude to randomly interrupt. Please check beforehand if you're expect to, or not to, stand up and start contradicting things :) But even at (edit) Rachel's, where there's seven Rachels who have been honing their pedantry together for twenty years, you have to stop arguing long enough to get to the food, so don't push the interruption TOO much -- you can always come back to something later if you really want to know more.
Escape from Egypt
All Jewish holidays are a celebration of "there was this massacre, and then exile, of the israelites, but then this great leader rescued us, so in order to commemorate, we have a big meal". This may be a marginal exaggeration. But if you wait for any Jewish holiday to roll round and then ask "what was the massacre, and then exile, of the israelites, that then this great leader rescued them from, that in order to commemorate, you are going to have a big meal" Rachel will find you surprisingly knowledgeable. Or at any rate, it's worked so far.
Of course, there are variations. Sometimes the festival is a lot grimmer. Sometimes it's a lot more joyful. At Purim, you celebrate some really misogynistic events by dressing up as spider-man. Apparently.
Passover celebrates ALL the massacre, etc, etc, At some crucial point you have to list them all in order and it goes on for two pages and say "thank God we got out of that" (but, you know, literally thank God).
But it MAINLY celebrates the first big one, where Moses leads everyone from slavery in egypt. The name "passover" comes because from the ten plagues the Egyptians suffered, the last being the angel of death carrying away all the first born, but passed over the houses of the Israelites marked with blood smeared on the door.
Of course, they left in a hurry and didn't have time to leaven any bread, so (as will be explained IN EXCRUCIATING DETAIL NO I'M NOT KIDDING) in the next post, in order to commemorate this, you don't eat any leavened bread. Or any wheat. Or sort of ingredient that might conceivably at any time in the last millennium have borne any slight resemblance to wheat, in a fashion which has been extensively codified by all Rabbis since. But you DO eat matzah, which is a cracker-like unleavened bread.
Course of the evening: bluffing confidently
There is a service lasting for an hour or so, and then a meal, and then some more service. Make sure everyone knows the timetable in advance -- it can be awkward if a lot of Scandanavians drag out the service and then get impatient and start trying to rush ahead at plausible but theologically inappropriate moments.
You will generally not offend people by NOT doing things, but may offend people BY doing things. Often weird things that may not be obvious. So generally, watch everyone else and follow along and it will all be easy and people will helpfully tell you what to do.
If you're ever not sure what to do, speak up and ask! That's part of the point, and you will be performing a traditionally relevant service by drawing attention to something that everyone else may have got too used to to question.
Hopefully you will have obvious questions to ask, and should ask one every so often. It's ok if you don't, but you should try to if you can just to get into the spirit of the thing. If you're not sure what to ask, try:
- "Hang on, isn't there some traditional question I'm supposed to ask at this point?" (There are several traditional questions children are supposed to ask, there's generally one that will be broadly appropriate.)
- "Hang on, didn't Rabbi, ummm... " -- pause for suggestion -- "yes, him, say something about that? Didn't he have some surprising opinion...?" Someone else will generally fill in something appropriate. There's a very tiny risk of failing to hit with this one -- pretty much everything was the centre of SOME famous disagreement in the Talmud
- "Hang on, isn't this different at a normal sabbath service?" Children are supposed to notice what's theologically significantly different at passover than at a normal Friday night service and ask why and get an interesting answer. Of course, you will likely have been to this meal and NO other service, so you'll have to guess, but there's generally SOMETHING you might have been referring to, as almost everything is different, and the things that are not are the same for some specific traditional reason.
- "Ha! Those wacky Christians, they totally got the wrong end of the stick about this tradition, didn't they? :)"
This year and last year I've gone with Rachel to her family's passover meal, and recently caused her very much hilarity by trying to summarise the order of service from the perspective of a layman, and I decided to try to write up a short summary for anyone curious to know.
The emphasis will be heavily on (i) humour (ii) theology (iii) her family's particular passover, as it various incredibly widely. The initial part will focus on "if I'm invited to a friend's passover service, what do I need to do", although hopefully it will move on into running the best service you can when EVERYONE is ignorant.
Family Gathering
The Passover meal is a the big family celebration, somewhat equivalent to Christmas (but no presents). All the family get together, you invite any strangers who may not have a passover to welcome, it's in the home rather than the synagogue, there's a big meal, children are encouraged to enjoy themselves.
It's supposed to teach the children a few of the basics, so there are lots of points where the youngest person is invited to say something. Furthermore questions are explicitly requested, especially from children, but ignorant guests are invited to play their role too, and everyone else should ask theologically sophisticated questions if they have them. Someone is supposed to lead it, but it's supposed to be interactive, and everyone is supposed to question and participate.
Honestly, I never thought I'd be asked to a religious service where there was a big meal and every time someone said something I didn't understand or agree with, I was supposed to interrupt the service to ask about it. When Rachel invited me I hardly believed it. But that's the idea.
Bear in mind that at many OTHER religious services, and at many passover services, it's considered rude to randomly interrupt. Please check beforehand if you're expect to, or not to, stand up and start contradicting things :) But even at (edit) Rachel's, where there's seven Rachels who have been honing their pedantry together for twenty years, you have to stop arguing long enough to get to the food, so don't push the interruption TOO much -- you can always come back to something later if you really want to know more.
Escape from Egypt
All Jewish holidays are a celebration of "there was this massacre, and then exile, of the israelites, but then this great leader rescued us, so in order to commemorate, we have a big meal". This may be a marginal exaggeration. But if you wait for any Jewish holiday to roll round and then ask "what was the massacre, and then exile, of the israelites, that then this great leader rescued them from, that in order to commemorate, you are going to have a big meal" Rachel will find you surprisingly knowledgeable. Or at any rate, it's worked so far.
Of course, there are variations. Sometimes the festival is a lot grimmer. Sometimes it's a lot more joyful. At Purim, you celebrate some really misogynistic events by dressing up as spider-man. Apparently.
Passover celebrates ALL the massacre, etc, etc, At some crucial point you have to list them all in order and it goes on for two pages and say "thank God we got out of that" (but, you know, literally thank God).
But it MAINLY celebrates the first big one, where Moses leads everyone from slavery in egypt. The name "passover" comes because from the ten plagues the Egyptians suffered, the last being the angel of death carrying away all the first born, but passed over the houses of the Israelites marked with blood smeared on the door.
Of course, they left in a hurry and didn't have time to leaven any bread, so (as will be explained IN EXCRUCIATING DETAIL NO I'M NOT KIDDING) in the next post, in order to commemorate this, you don't eat any leavened bread. Or any wheat. Or sort of ingredient that might conceivably at any time in the last millennium have borne any slight resemblance to wheat, in a fashion which has been extensively codified by all Rabbis since. But you DO eat matzah, which is a cracker-like unleavened bread.
Course of the evening: bluffing confidently
There is a service lasting for an hour or so, and then a meal, and then some more service. Make sure everyone knows the timetable in advance -- it can be awkward if a lot of Scandanavians drag out the service and then get impatient and start trying to rush ahead at plausible but theologically inappropriate moments.
You will generally not offend people by NOT doing things, but may offend people BY doing things. Often weird things that may not be obvious. So generally, watch everyone else and follow along and it will all be easy and people will helpfully tell you what to do.
If you're ever not sure what to do, speak up and ask! That's part of the point, and you will be performing a traditionally relevant service by drawing attention to something that everyone else may have got too used to to question.
Hopefully you will have obvious questions to ask, and should ask one every so often. It's ok if you don't, but you should try to if you can just to get into the spirit of the thing. If you're not sure what to ask, try:
- "Hang on, isn't there some traditional question I'm supposed to ask at this point?" (There are several traditional questions children are supposed to ask, there's generally one that will be broadly appropriate.)
- "Hang on, didn't Rabbi, ummm... " -- pause for suggestion -- "yes, him, say something about that? Didn't he have some surprising opinion...?" Someone else will generally fill in something appropriate. There's a very tiny risk of failing to hit with this one -- pretty much everything was the centre of SOME famous disagreement in the Talmud
- "Hang on, isn't this different at a normal sabbath service?" Children are supposed to notice what's theologically significantly different at passover than at a normal Friday night service and ask why and get an interesting answer. Of course, you will likely have been to this meal and NO other service, so you'll have to guess, but there's generally SOMETHING you might have been referring to, as almost everything is different, and the things that are not are the same for some specific traditional reason.
- "Ha! Those wacky Christians, they totally got the wrong end of the stick about this tradition, didn't they? :)"
no subject
Date: 2010-04-22 11:11 pm (UTC)