Why is this seder different from all other seders

Apr 08, 2020

Easter is the one holiday in the Christian calendar that aligns with one of the major Jewish festivals, Passover. Every year, Passover and Easter take place within days of each other, so while everyone else is eating chocolate and counting bunnies, us Jews are suffering with unleavened bread and bitter herbs during a ritual meal called a seder, which roughly translates as order.

The seder follows a prescribed ritual pattern, telling the stories of the exodus, how the Jews managed to escape from enslavement in Egypt thousands of years ago. Everything about the meal, the foods we eat, the stories we tell, even the way we sit, is different from all other meals throughout the year. At the beginning of the seder, the youngest person at the table asks the four questions. The first question is the key the evening, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

This year we are asking a different version of that question. We are asking “why is this seder different from all other seders”. The seder is the ultimate family gathering in our tradition. The table is the centre of the holiday, and breaking and sharing the matzoh around that table is the central element to the seder. Matsoh is the poor, unleavened bread, which, as the story goes, was made so quickly when word came out the Jews were free to leave Egypt, that it never had a chance to rise.

But you cannot pass around the matzoh when you are not able to meet together in one place.

The government of Israel is so worried about the urge for families to get together for seders this week that they have forbidden anyone to leave their homes for the next three days.

It is not possible to hold a seder without at least one ornery uncle; a cranky aunt, a misbehaving child, brothers and sisters who barely get along; and the rest of us nice people, all jammed in together. You need a diverse crowd, there should even be a stranger at the table who is brought in to share the meal. A seder without a large table and at least 8-10 people, preferably a lot more, is not really a seder. Passover is canceled.

Not so fast. This is the year of Zoomover, Passover on Zoom. Families around the world are busy this week figuring out how to make something work. In my own case there will be participants from Northern India, Halifax, Montreal, Perth, Toronto, Hamilton, and Victoria.

It won’t be ideal, but we will make do. I don’t think it will be easy for all of us to find authentic matzoh or gefilte fish during the lockdown, but one ritual will be easier than ever to follow, drinking the required four cups of wine during the evening. Because nobody will have to drive home afterwards. At the end we will sing the same songs as we do every year, but this time the Zoom moderator will be able to mute the most off-key singers, which may not be a bad thing.

Because of COVID-19, and other more difficult personal factors, this will not be a normal seder in my family, not by a longshot.

But we will hold a seder nonetheless. For my Christian friends, not sharing the sacred Easter rituals in their churches and open-air processions may be just as difficult, or more so. But people find a way to honour their traditions. I know that special arrangements are being made by families and congregations, to ensure that both the religious and family gathering aspects of Easter weekend will be honoured.

As with everything else to do with our current state, collective house arrest, we know we are still faring better in Canada, particularly in rural Canada, than just about every other place in the world.

Happy holidays.