Passover Seder


The Passover Seder is a ritual feast at the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. It is conducted throughout the world at the start of the 15th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. The day falls in late March or in April of the Gregorian calendar. Passover lasts for seven days in Israel, and customarily usually eight days in the Jewish diaspora. A seder is held on the first night, the 15th of Nisan; where eight days are observed, a seder is often also held on the second night.
The Seder is a ritual involving a retelling of the story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt, taken from the Book of Exodus in the Torah. The Seder itself is based on the Biblical verse commanding Jews to retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt: "You shall tell your child on that day, saying, 'It is because of what the did for me when I came out of Egypt. At the seder, Jews read the text of the Haggadah, an ancient Tannaitic work narrating the Israelite exodus from Egypt, with special blessings and rituals, Talmudic commentaries, and Passover songs.
Seder customs include telling and discussing the story, drinking four cups of wine, eating matzah, partaking of symbolic foods, and reclining in celebration of freedom. The Seder is one of the most often celebrated Jewish rituals, performed by Jews all over the world.

Etymology

Seder is a transliteration of the Hebrew סדר, which means 'order' or 'procedure'. The name also expresses the conduct of the meal, all the dishes, the blessings, the prayers, the stories and the songs, written in the Haggadah, a book that determines the order of Passover and tells the story of the Exodus from Egypt. And all the mitzvot in the "order" are done in a fixed order in every Jewish home.

Overview

  1. Sanctify! – recital of Kiddush blessing and drinking of the first cup of wine
  2. and Wash! – the washing of the hands
  3. Vegetable – dipping of the karpas in salt water
  4. Halving – breaking the middle matzah; the larger piece becomes the afikoman
  5. Telling – retelling the Passover story, including the recital of "the four questions" and drinking of the second cup of wine
  6. Washing – second washing of the hands
  7. "Who brings out..." – blessing over the bread
  8. "...matzah" – blessing before eating matzah
  9. Bitter – eating of the maror
  10. Wraps – eating of a sandwich made of matzo and maror
  11. Set table – the serving of the holiday meal
  12. Hidden – eating of the afikoman
  13. Bless! – blessing after the meal and drinking of the third cup of wine
  14. Exalt! – recital of the Hallel, traditionally recited on festivals; drinking of the fourth cup of wine
  15. Desired'' – say "Next Year in Jerusalem!"
The Seder is most often conducted in the family home, although communal Seders are also organized by synagogues, schools and community centers, some open to the general public. It is customary to invite guests, especially strangers and the needy. The Seder is integral to Jewish faith and identity: as explained in the Haggadah, if not for divine intervention and the Exodus, the Jewish people would still be slaves in Egypt. Therefore, the Seder is an occasion for praise and thanksgiving and for re-dedication to the idea of liberation. Furthermore, the words and rituals of the Seder are a primary vehicle for the transmission of the Jewish faith from grandparent to child, and from one generation to the next. Attending a Seder and eating matzah on Passover is a widespread custom even among those who are not religiously observant.
Family members come to the table dressed in their holiday clothes. There is an Orthodox Ashkenazi tradition for the person leading the Seder to wear a white robe called a kittel. For the first half of the Seder, each participant will only need a plate and a wine glass. At the head of the table is a Seder plate containing various symbolic foods that will be eaten or pointed out during the course of the Seder. Placed nearby is a plate with three matzot and dishes of salt water for dipping.
Each participant receives a copy of the Haggadah: an ancient text that contains the complete Seder service. Men and women are equally obliged and eligible to participate in the Seder. Traditionally, each participant at the Seder table recites the Haggadah in the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Halakha requires that certain parts be said in language the participants can understand, and critical parts are often said in both Hebrew and the native language. The leader will often interrupt the reading to discuss different points with his or her children, or to offer an insight into the meaning or interpretation of the words.
In some homes, participants take turns reciting the text of the Haggadah, in the original Hebrew or in translation. It is traditional for the head of the household and other participants to have pillows placed behind them for added comfort. At several points during the Seder, participants lean to the left – when drinking the four cups of wine, eating the Afikoman, and eating the korech sandwich.
Jews generally observe one or two seders: in Israel, one seder is observed on the first night of Passover; traditional Diaspora communities also hold a seder on the second night. Seders have been observed around the world, including in remote places such as high in the Himalaya mountains in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Themes

Slavery and freedom

The rituals and symbolic foods evoke the twin themes of the evening: slavery and freedom. It is stated in the Haggadah that "In every generation everyone is obligated to see themselves as if they themselves came out of Egypt" – i.e., out of slavery.
The rendering of time for Jews is that a day began at sunset and ended at sunset. According to the Exodus narrative, at the beginning of the 15th of Nisan in Ancient Egypt, the Jewish people were enslaved to Pharaoh. After the tenth plague struck Egypt at midnight, killing all the first-born sons from the first-born of Pharaoh to the first-born of the lowest Egyptian to all the first-born of the livestock in the land, Pharaoh let the Hebrew nation go, effectively making them free people for the second half of the night.
Thus, Seder participants recall the slavery that reigned during the first half of the night by eating matzah, maror, and charoset. Recalling the freedom of the second half of the night, they eat the matzah and 'afikoman', and drink the four cups of wine, in a reclining position, and dip vegetables into salt water.

The Four Cups

There is an obligation to drink four cups of wine during the Seder. The Mishnah says that even the poor are obliged to drink the four cups. Each cup is imbibed at a specific point in the Seder. The first is for Kiddush, the second is for 'Maggid', the third is for Birkat Hamazon and the fourth is for Hallel.
The Four Cups represent the four expressions of deliverance promised by God Exodus 6:6–7: "I will bring out," "I will deliver," "I will redeem," and "I will take."
The Vilna Gaon relates the Four Cups to four worlds: this world, the Messianic age, the world at the revival of the dead, and the world to come. The MaHaRaL connects them to the four Matriarchs: Sarah, Rebeccah, Rachel, and Leah. Abarbanel relates the cups to the four historical redemptions of the Jewish people: the choosing of Abraham, the Exodus from Egypt, the survival of the Jewish people throughout the exile, and the fourth which will happen at the end of days.
The four cups might also reflect the Roman custom of drinking as many cups as there are letters in the name of the chief guest at a meal, which in the case of the Seder is God himself whose Hebrew name has four letters.

Seder plate

The special Passover Seder plate is the special plate containing symbolic foods used during the Passover Seder. Each of the six items arranged on the plate has special significance to the retelling of the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The seventh symbolic item used during the meal – a stack of three matzot – is placed on its own plate on the Seder table.
The six items on the Seder plate are:
  • Maror: Bitter herbs, which Gamaliel says symbolize the bitterness and harshness of the slavery which the Jews endured in Ancient Egypt. For maror, many people use freshly grated horseradish or whole horseradish root.
  • Chazeret is typically romaine lettuce, whose roots are bitter-tasting. In addition to horseradish and romaine lettuce, other forms of bitter lettuce, such as endive, may be eaten in fulfillment of the mitzvah, as well as green onions, dandelion greens, celery leaves, or curly parsley. Much depends upon whether one's tradition is Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Mizrahi, Persian, or one of the many other Jewish ethno-cultural traditions.
  • Charoset: A sweet, brown, pebbly paste of fruits and nuts, possibly representing the mortar used by the Jewish slaves to build the storehouses of Egypt. The actual recipe depends partly on ethno-cultural tradition and partly on locally available ingredients. Ashkenazi Jews, for example, traditionally make apple-raisin based charoset while Sephardic Jews often make date-based recipes that might feature orange or/and lemon, or even banana. Other Talmudic traditions claim the Charoset "recalls the apple", apparently referencing a tradition that Jewish women snuck out to apple orchards to conceive in Egypt, and that it is not obligatory but serves to nullify the poison of the maror.
  • Karpas: A vegetable other than bitter herbs, sometimes parsley or celery or cooked potato, which is dipped into salt water, vinegar, or charoset at the beginning of the Seder.
  • Zeroa: A roasted lamb or goat bone, symbolizing the , which was a lamb offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and was then roasted and eaten as part of the meal on Seder night.
  • Beitzah: A roast egg – usually a hard-boiled egg that has been roasted in a baking pan with a little oil, or with a lamb shank – symbolizing the that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and was then eaten as part of the meal on Seder night.