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jackThe piece of Hebrew writing called the Haggadah is the traditional instructions for the passover meal. Basically "here is the story of the exodus and a number of other traditions". People normally do some subset of this.
You should find one of these. Preferably one with text in your native language, or at least a language you read, or at least an alphabet you read. It also helps if the most important things are printed biggest, because then it's much more natural to have a service with, rather than without, the important bits.
But the basic things you should include are:
The story of the exodus I
The whole point of the holiday is to recount the story of the exodus. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt. Then God sent ten plagues to the Egyptians. Not in order, there are
Chordate plagues: frog[1], locusts[2]
Vermin plagues: lice[3], flies
Disease plagues: boils, livestock pox
Meteorological: hail
Meteorological but slightly theological: water turned to blood
Theological but slightly meteorological: darkness
Theological: death of the firstborn
People have different ways of grouping them to make them easy to remember; one is "things that affect crops", "things that affect humans", etc. At some point you can recite them all and make a little drop ofblood wine for each. If you practice, these are all strikingly separate spots. If you don't, they muddle together into a Rorschach picture.
The last plague was death of the firstborn when the angel of death came and killed all the oldest sons, but "passed over" the houses of the Israelites, marked with blood, which is why the festival is called "passover"[4]
[1] I am reliably informed that if you say "frog" in the singular instead of the plural, people who know Hebrew will think you are witty, because the original Hebrew is better interpreted that way, even though everyone agrees that whyever the singular was used grammatically, multiple frogs was more likely than one single killer demon death frog.
[2] Locusts are obviously actually arthropods, but my classification of plagues is neater and more memorable if they're not :)
[3] Almost all of the plagues can be translated in various ways. "beasts" is better translated as "rampaging stuff", but people disagree about what is most likely "stuff".
[4] Not making this up.
The story of the exodus II
After the death of the firstborn, the Egyptians are finally completely fed up and Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt. God then continues to miraculously rescue them from a 2000-year-long string of disasters and opportunities.
There is a song, Dayenu, traditionally sung near the end of the meal, where you list the very large number of things God did, and how each alone would have been enough, although it depends if you think drowning in the red sea is better than being a slave in Egypt or not, or whether some of the more recent disasters should be included in the list, or if people are not actually happy with God's performance on those.
The six things on the plate
The is a special plate, with six special things on. These are:
* Bitter herb (to represent bitterness about slavery in Egypt)
* A different sort or part of bitter herb (uh.... the same?)
* A sort of sweet paste (which represents the mortar used while building things in slavery)
* Parsley dipped in salt water (dipping being a good thing but salt represents tears shed in slavery)
* An egg (blah blah blah rebirth blah)
* A roasted bone, to represent the lamb that would be sacrificed, roasted, and eaten as part of the passover if there were a temple in Jerusalem to sacrifice it in.
Three pieces of covered Matzo and a four-and-a-half-th cup of wine are also often put physically on the plate but are not, as it were officially on the plate.
According to Rabbi So-and-so you are specifically supposed to mention three of these: the matzo, the herb, and the bone. But honestly, you normally spend the entire evening talking about matzo, and if someone thrusts a matchstick of horseradish at you and cries "eat" you are pretty much guaranteed to mention it. So the main point is that the sacrifice, represented by the bone, which is theologically very important, but sort of non-politically-correct, shouldn't get forgotten in the shuffle.
Most but not all of these things you eat some of at special moments. I think you eat some egg, some parsley, some herb-with-mortar, some matzo-with-mortar, and of course, you eat lots of matzo and four or five cups of wine. But you have to do all these things at the theologically meaningful moment so follow other people's instructions or, if you're in charge, decide in advance.
The matzo, you should break the middle piece carefully in half and then hide half of this AS WELL. A child will find it at the end of the meal as a treat, or, if you think bread with all the breadness taken out is not very exciting without some spread, you can give them some chocolate or something instead.
At various points in the seder you will wash your hands, and say a grace, and NOT say a grace when you might otherwise expect to, and break one or two of the non-hidden pieces of matzo into bits and share them out one each.
During the course of the meal you will drink four or five cups of wine. Each represents an important moment in the seder, so you should drink at least some (normally only some but sometimes all) in the glass each time, and refill at least some each time (whether there's some left or not). Of course, everyone agrees the number is very important, but not whether it was supposed to be four or five, so as a compromise, everyone there drinks four, but there's one extra for the table on or near the passover plate that no-one drinks.
If anyone DOES drink from this they are the prophet Elijah and you should immediately welcome them into your home (and back from the afterlife) and ask them how many cups there SHOULD be (and will the first coming of Christ be any time soon, and what about the apocalypse, and generally any nagging theological details like that that thinking very hard didn't answer already).
Unless you didn't leave the door open for him, in which case they are NOT Elijah, and they probably shouldn't be sipping his wine. Unless it's funny.
The four sons
As mentioned, there are lots of questions, but four are especially traditional.
The "wise" son says "Say, I notice that the ceremony is different tonight to the normal Sabbath service in several theologically significant ways. I wonder if you could enumerate them and describe the theological significance of each respectively?"You should do so.
Some people would say this was wise because knowledge is good. Others because going along with the obviously expected plan is the best thing to do. Guests can also take these roles, as being explained-to people equally much as children. If you've read this guide, you can try your hand at this "best" question!
The "wicked" son says "Hey why are YOU all doing this? What's it to YOU". You should reply "because God took US out of Egypt". The point being, the presumably Jewish son doesn't see himself as part of the community, whereas everyone else should do so. The people who left Egypt were not the people who arrived many decades later in the promised land; an entire generation had passed, but they still saw themselves as rescued as a people.
Obviously, as an outsider, you might actually NOT be Jewish, so you can also ask the question this way if you like. However, in order to get into the spirit of the thing, you should ask yourself if you've ever lived abroad and not really had a country to go back to, and if you'll still be doing so for 2000 years. Obviously for some people that will be an intensely personal question, whereas for many English people the answer is "no, so far as I know my ancestors are norman, anglo or saxon, but I've no idea which ones conquered which other ones, I'm happy to consider myself English and not think more about it"
The unknowledgeable (or simple) son says "Hey, what's going on?" so you should begin to repeat this series of posts until their eyes glaze over.
If you're not quite sure what you're doing, this is the question for you.
The other son doesn't know what to ask, and just looks around bewildered. You should explain it to him as simply as possible. Many guests fall into this category too, so it's more the responsibility of non-guests to notice and give potted essays in explanation to reassure them.
Since the ceremony is for the whole family, and should introduced the youngest generation to the traditions, you can see the last two sons may well be quite young and very young, even though there may be other reasons to be like that. (And many rebellious teenagers will do a wicked son.)
Obviously Liv and the rest of the four re-Dore children map onto the four sons, but equally obviously it would be impossible to speculate which.
Chad Gad-ya and other songs
Not all the songs have to be sung, but a few are very nice, and popular, and normally show up, so in a good seder you probably want to include them.
I mentioned Dayenu before. That basically goes:
If He had XXXX for us
Yet had not XXXXXXXX for us
Da-yei-nu! ("It would have sufficed")
But in Hebrew. And very slowly. For fifteen different things. That honestly, some friends think that while they're very grateful in principle, if he was slinging miracles around, it's a damn good thing he did make a proper job of it, and DIDN'T abandon Moses half way across a massive unstable tunnel of water in the red sea, saying, "well, I gave it my best shot, good luck with that."
The other famous one is where everyone makes animal noises (except some people who make water-noises or fire-noises or angel-of-death noises).
The first verse is:
One little goat, one little goat
Which my father bought for two zuzim.
And then for every subsequent verse, you add in another subsequent animal or theological concept: the cat that ate the goat, the dog that bit the cat, the stick that beat the dog, the fire that burned substhe stick, the water that extinguished the fire, the ox that drank the water, the slaughterer who killed the ox. Then the Angel of Death who came and slew the slaughterer. And then (honestly) the Holy One, Blessed be He, who came and smote the Angel of Death.
So it's a lot like "there was an old lady, who swallowed a fly" but with more God. Except that some people sing all of it in Hebrew and nearly all people sing some of it in Hebrew, saying "Chad Gad-ya" instead of "one little goat".
Also, after every animal or thing, there's a short pause for a two-beat noise to represent it. This is often two bleats for the goat, two chinks for the money, two mews for the cat, two barks for the dog, one or two sharp cracks for the stick, a roaring for the fire, splashing for the water, lowing for the ox, and tzzz tzzz knife sharpening for the slaughterer.
The Angel of Death is obviously the second most difficult. A creaking door would do, but I can't remember what Liv's family did two years ago, which I'm sure worked well.
It's generally considered polite to leave a brief respectful silence rather than attempt to capture with the best sound a drunken person can make out of common eating utensils the concept of the Holiest of Holies, Blessed be He, God, striking down the Angel of Death. Maybe thunder.
You should find one of these. Preferably one with text in your native language, or at least a language you read, or at least an alphabet you read. It also helps if the most important things are printed biggest, because then it's much more natural to have a service with, rather than without, the important bits.
But the basic things you should include are:
The story of the exodus I
The whole point of the holiday is to recount the story of the exodus. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt. Then God sent ten plagues to the Egyptians. Not in order, there are
Chordate plagues: frog[1], locusts[2]
Vermin plagues: lice[3], flies
Disease plagues: boils, livestock pox
Meteorological: hail
Meteorological but slightly theological: water turned to blood
Theological but slightly meteorological: darkness
Theological: death of the firstborn
People have different ways of grouping them to make them easy to remember; one is "things that affect crops", "things that affect humans", etc. At some point you can recite them all and make a little drop of
The last plague was death of the firstborn when the angel of death came and killed all the oldest sons, but "passed over" the houses of the Israelites, marked with blood, which is why the festival is called "passover"[4]
[1] I am reliably informed that if you say "frog" in the singular instead of the plural, people who know Hebrew will think you are witty, because the original Hebrew is better interpreted that way, even though everyone agrees that whyever the singular was used grammatically, multiple frogs was more likely than one single killer demon death frog.
[2] Locusts are obviously actually arthropods, but my classification of plagues is neater and more memorable if they're not :)
[3] Almost all of the plagues can be translated in various ways. "beasts" is better translated as "rampaging stuff", but people disagree about what is most likely "stuff".
[4] Not making this up.
The story of the exodus II
After the death of the firstborn, the Egyptians are finally completely fed up and Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt. God then continues to miraculously rescue them from a 2000-year-long string of disasters and opportunities.
There is a song, Dayenu, traditionally sung near the end of the meal, where you list the very large number of things God did, and how each alone would have been enough, although it depends if you think drowning in the red sea is better than being a slave in Egypt or not, or whether some of the more recent disasters should be included in the list, or if people are not actually happy with God's performance on those.
The six things on the plate
The is a special plate, with six special things on. These are:
* Bitter herb (to represent bitterness about slavery in Egypt)
* A different sort or part of bitter herb (uh.... the same?)
* A sort of sweet paste (which represents the mortar used while building things in slavery)
* Parsley dipped in salt water (dipping being a good thing but salt represents tears shed in slavery)
* An egg (blah blah blah rebirth blah)
* A roasted bone, to represent the lamb that would be sacrificed, roasted, and eaten as part of the passover if there were a temple in Jerusalem to sacrifice it in.
Three pieces of covered Matzo and a four-and-a-half-th cup of wine are also often put physically on the plate but are not, as it were officially on the plate.
According to Rabbi So-and-so you are specifically supposed to mention three of these: the matzo, the herb, and the bone. But honestly, you normally spend the entire evening talking about matzo, and if someone thrusts a matchstick of horseradish at you and cries "eat" you are pretty much guaranteed to mention it. So the main point is that the sacrifice, represented by the bone, which is theologically very important, but sort of non-politically-correct, shouldn't get forgotten in the shuffle.
Most but not all of these things you eat some of at special moments. I think you eat some egg, some parsley, some herb-with-mortar, some matzo-with-mortar, and of course, you eat lots of matzo and four or five cups of wine. But you have to do all these things at the theologically meaningful moment so follow other people's instructions or, if you're in charge, decide in advance.
The matzo, you should break the middle piece carefully in half and then hide half of this AS WELL. A child will find it at the end of the meal as a treat, or, if you think bread with all the breadness taken out is not very exciting without some spread, you can give them some chocolate or something instead.
At various points in the seder you will wash your hands, and say a grace, and NOT say a grace when you might otherwise expect to, and break one or two of the non-hidden pieces of matzo into bits and share them out one each.
During the course of the meal you will drink four or five cups of wine. Each represents an important moment in the seder, so you should drink at least some (normally only some but sometimes all) in the glass each time, and refill at least some each time (whether there's some left or not). Of course, everyone agrees the number is very important, but not whether it was supposed to be four or five, so as a compromise, everyone there drinks four, but there's one extra for the table on or near the passover plate that no-one drinks.
If anyone DOES drink from this they are the prophet Elijah and you should immediately welcome them into your home (and back from the afterlife) and ask them how many cups there SHOULD be (and will the first coming of Christ be any time soon, and what about the apocalypse, and generally any nagging theological details like that that thinking very hard didn't answer already).
Unless you didn't leave the door open for him, in which case they are NOT Elijah, and they probably shouldn't be sipping his wine. Unless it's funny.
The four sons
As mentioned, there are lots of questions, but four are especially traditional.
The "wise" son says "Say, I notice that the ceremony is different tonight to the normal Sabbath service in several theologically significant ways. I wonder if you could enumerate them and describe the theological significance of each respectively?"You should do so.
Some people would say this was wise because knowledge is good. Others because going along with the obviously expected plan is the best thing to do. Guests can also take these roles, as being explained-to people equally much as children. If you've read this guide, you can try your hand at this "best" question!
The "wicked" son says "Hey why are YOU all doing this? What's it to YOU". You should reply "because God took US out of Egypt". The point being, the presumably Jewish son doesn't see himself as part of the community, whereas everyone else should do so. The people who left Egypt were not the people who arrived many decades later in the promised land; an entire generation had passed, but they still saw themselves as rescued as a people.
Obviously, as an outsider, you might actually NOT be Jewish, so you can also ask the question this way if you like. However, in order to get into the spirit of the thing, you should ask yourself if you've ever lived abroad and not really had a country to go back to, and if you'll still be doing so for 2000 years. Obviously for some people that will be an intensely personal question, whereas for many English people the answer is "no, so far as I know my ancestors are norman, anglo or saxon, but I've no idea which ones conquered which other ones, I'm happy to consider myself English and not think more about it"
The unknowledgeable (or simple) son says "Hey, what's going on?" so you should begin to repeat this series of posts until their eyes glaze over.
If you're not quite sure what you're doing, this is the question for you.
The other son doesn't know what to ask, and just looks around bewildered. You should explain it to him as simply as possible. Many guests fall into this category too, so it's more the responsibility of non-guests to notice and give potted essays in explanation to reassure them.
Since the ceremony is for the whole family, and should introduced the youngest generation to the traditions, you can see the last two sons may well be quite young and very young, even though there may be other reasons to be like that. (And many rebellious teenagers will do a wicked son.)
Obviously Liv and the rest of the four re-Dore children map onto the four sons, but equally obviously it would be impossible to speculate which.
Chad Gad-ya and other songs
Not all the songs have to be sung, but a few are very nice, and popular, and normally show up, so in a good seder you probably want to include them.
I mentioned Dayenu before. That basically goes:
If He had XXXX for us
Yet had not XXXXXXXX for us
Da-yei-nu! ("It would have sufficed")
But in Hebrew. And very slowly. For fifteen different things. That honestly, some friends think that while they're very grateful in principle, if he was slinging miracles around, it's a damn good thing he did make a proper job of it, and DIDN'T abandon Moses half way across a massive unstable tunnel of water in the red sea, saying, "well, I gave it my best shot, good luck with that."
The other famous one is where everyone makes animal noises (except some people who make water-noises or fire-noises or angel-of-death noises).
The first verse is:
One little goat, one little goat
Which my father bought for two zuzim.
And then for every subsequent verse, you add in another subsequent animal or theological concept: the cat that ate the goat, the dog that bit the cat, the stick that beat the dog, the fire that burned substhe stick, the water that extinguished the fire, the ox that drank the water, the slaughterer who killed the ox. Then the Angel of Death who came and slew the slaughterer. And then (honestly) the Holy One, Blessed be He, who came and smote the Angel of Death.
So it's a lot like "there was an old lady, who swallowed a fly" but with more God. Except that some people sing all of it in Hebrew and nearly all people sing some of it in Hebrew, saying "Chad Gad-ya" instead of "one little goat".
Also, after every animal or thing, there's a short pause for a two-beat noise to represent it. This is often two bleats for the goat, two chinks for the money, two mews for the cat, two barks for the dog, one or two sharp cracks for the stick, a roaring for the fire, splashing for the water, lowing for the ox, and tzzz tzzz knife sharpening for the slaughterer.
The Angel of Death is obviously the second most difficult. A creaking door would do, but I can't remember what Liv's family did two years ago, which I'm sure worked well.
It's generally considered polite to leave a brief respectful silence rather than attempt to capture with the best sound a drunken person can make out of common eating utensils the concept of the Holiest of Holies, Blessed be He, God, striking down the Angel of Death. Maybe thunder.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 10:24 pm (UTC)