Seder Thoughts 2018

Question:

According to the Oral Torah [mPesashim 10:4], the seder is an active discussion, of asking compelling questions, and getting appropriate answers.    The Haggada is a narrative waiting to happen, not a liturgy to be dutifully, piously, and passively recited. The four questions should be asked by the father if and only if the children do not ask their own questions. The four sons each require separate and appropriate responses.

The Seder that almost all Orthodox Jews observe is a “reading,” not a telling.

What really should be done on Seder night, and what should we really be thinking on Seder night?

Answer:

1. The text is indeed called Haggada, which means “telling,” not “reading” or “recitation.” Ideally, we tell and retell the Exodus narrative in our own voice, beginning with the bad times and conclude with the end times, the times when we do not have pretend we are redeemed, but we imagine that we are redeemed.
2. By legislation, we are required to explain [=not merely mumble] the Midrash “our ancestor was a wandering Aramean.” And we are obliged to explain the meaning of the Passover offering, the Matsa, and Maror. And the explanations must be in a language the assembled understand. Today we do not eat the Passover lamb, albeit by law, we would be permitted to perform the rite were Israeli law not forbidding the offering on security grounds. Sadly, King Messiah is taking his time, and we don’t want to wait.

3. According to Oral Torah law, which has not been overruled by any legal body authorized to do so, on Seder night, Jewish children must first be invited to ask their own questions, express their own doubts, and formulate their own narrative. When popular practice now requires that Jewry choreograph both the never changing questions and the accepted, expected, and conventional answers, we are reciting, not learning, probing, or discovering. The Oral Torah tradition allows the child the freedom to ask her/his question; it is street culture “orthodoxy” that sanctifies memory and not The Oral Torah agenda wants to nurture Jews who are free because they know, revere, and obey Torah law; street culture Orthodoxy prefers a Jewry that is obedient, unquestioning, and subordinate to those who speak as if they are Torah incarnate, whose rules and rulings are not subject to review.
4. At one family Seder, my precocious grandson asked “why do we talk about splitting the Reed Sea at Seder night, when the topic is more appropriate for the last night of Pesash?” One rabbi at the table said firmly, “we don’t ask those kind of questions at the Seder!” So following my family Tradition which respects Torah authority completely but not the questionable opinions of people who think they know, own, or control “tradition,”
5. I responded:
   1. Where in the Oral Law canon does Jewish law forbid such questions?
   2. Rabbi Moshe Tendler teaches that all questions are kosher at the Seder. The reason the wicked son is welcome at the Seder is so his questions may be answered.  If we do not provide real and convincing answers on the inside, at the Seder table, for sure we won’t like what atheist philosophy professors or secular Bible Critics have to say about Torah on the outside, in the University lecture hall.
   3. The Haggadah passage regarding the splitting of the sea was not original to the Oral Torah Seder; it does not appear in Maimonides’ Haggadah, either. Therefore, by Oral Torah law the passages need not be recited in contemporary times. If post-Talmudic rabbis have the right to tinker with the Seder and add the passage, then other post-Talmudic modern Orthodox rabbis, armed with the ability to read that comes with philological understanding have the right to delete the passage.  The question is not “who gave you the right to delete the passage; the issues are [a] who gave those rabbis the right to add the passage and [b] claim that all Israel is obliged to accept their subjective taste as universally binding Jewish law.
   4. Just as in the case of birchat ha-shir, the prayer that is said after the Hallel recited at the Seder, that was expanded from one paragraph to a whole liturgy, we have both the right and Torah obligation to apply our reason to understand and practice Torah correctly and avoid lengthening and thereby diminishing the evening’s emotive effect by wearying the Seder celebrants with a plethora of words. After all, sometimes less is more. I am always amused when the olive bulk we are required to consume has grown into the size of American baseballs. The Oral Torah requires that we eat “ke-zayit,” approximately the bulk of an olive. While Rashi and Tosafot, who taught Torah in Northwest Europe, suggest that the olive is half or a third of an egg.  The olives found in Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda open air market are approximately only one sixth of an egg bulk based on my nearsighted eyes.  I suspect that neither Rashi nor Tosafot, enjoyed a Mediterranean diet, where olives were on the menu.
   5. After Seder night, the question was raised regarding my objection to Orthodox practice deviating from what the Oral Torah defines as Jewish law, “what about Tradition?” My response:
      1. Normative Orthodox “tradition” is no more and no less what the Oral Torah prescribes, not what our ancestors happened to have done. I am aware that R. Moses Sofer allows “traditional” folk piety to override the letter of the law. In his time and place, which contemporary rabbis do not inhabit, R. Sofer’s position must be respected.  In R. Sofer’s time, he spoke of passionate commitments  The traditions of  simple Jews carried greater valence  than sophisticated intellectuals who sought to assimilate.  Ours is a different culture horizon, and Judaism’s default boundary is not our parents’ actual practice, but the actual norms recorded in the Oral Law.
      2. On Seder night we learn that “our ancestors were originally idolaters” [bPesahim 116a], Our parents report historical memory [Deut. 32:7], not Jewish law. Torah law is transmitted by the Jewish Supreme Court, the Beit Din ha-Gadol, whose apodictic authority ended with Rav Ashi [bBaba Mezia 86a]. Furthermore, Lamentations 5:7 reports that “our fathers sinned and are no more, and we carry the burden of their iniquities.”
      3. The popular “orthodox” street culture seder will usually find a leader reciting a semi-canonical text with comments limited to cute, clever, and pedestrian comments that read and impose Orthodox street culture narrative into the text, whether the narrative fits or not.
      4. Both of my teachers, Rabbis Jose Faur and Moshe D. Tendler from whom my iconoclastic proclivity was for sure magnified and hopefully sanctified, I learned that the Seder takes the Exodus as a paradigm for future redemption and the final chapter in Haggadah history, when we will feast on broiled lamb in the brand new old city of Jerusalem restored, rebuilt, and reborn, in holiness and purity. This is the Narrative of the Oral Torah. This is our “old time religion” and “it is good enough for me.”
      5. My Seder is informed by the research of Dr. Daniel Goldschmidt and Prof. Bokser, which reveal to me a Narrative of eschatological proportion. On that night of watching, we will all wash for the vegetable dipped in water with a commandment blessing being recited as required by the Oral Law protocol that was forgotten in the exile. This rule was enacted in order that we not forget the ancient cult. In my mind’s eyes I see the Messiah ben David now standing on a platform with a loudspeaker [when the Messiah ben David comes, the Sanhedrin will have been renewed, and with help of the Bar Ilan Digital Library, will have discovered that the Arurch ha-Shulhan permits electricity on Yom Tov].
      6. The assembled children, awestruck by the assembly, say and ask nothing. At that moment, for the first time since Temple II was felled by fire, Temple III, formed by the fire of fate and faith, finds the King Messiah asking the 600,000 assembled, “How is this night, a night of vigil, after which the Passover and Zevahim are offered on the altar in good will, different from those nights of darkness, wandering, and exile?”  And King Messiah, in the Tradition of his ancient ancestor, Qohelet, taking his place as Israel’s Torah teacher in chief, explains, “On all other Seder nights before this one, we said ‘next year in Jerusalem,’ and then we said, ‘next year in Jerusalem rebuilt.’ And we prayed that ‘may the “day” come near that is neither day nor night.  There will be  watchmen on the walls.  Look closely. There they are, the watchmen have been assigned their positions. In Lamenations Rabba, we say that Zion sits in ashes as if she is a widow, because Zion is not and knowing her Husband, will never be a widow.  Her Husband promised to come back.  And when God brought Jewry back to Zion from the captivity of exile, we were like dreamers. Why like dreamers and not as dreamers? Then King Messiah will say “just as Jerusalem can never be a widow, you were not and are not dreaming.”