And thou shalt attend the sedder to which your family has obligated you to attend. Should your family place no such obligation upon you, or should they place upon you two or more conflicting obligations such that the only option is to ignore both or all of them, or should you have the gall to back out of such obligations as are placed upon you by your family, thou shalt attend a sedder of your choosing. And, upon completion of two such seddarim, or one, should you happen to be in Israel, and after darkness has fallen upon the conclusion of the first day or days of the holiday, thou shalt post such thoughts as shall occur to you in regard to this sedder which you have attended, and thus share these thoughts with your friends during the intermediate days of the holiday, that all of your friends may know whether your sedder was fun or stressful, and how much you love or cannot stand to spend holidays with your family.
And so, in fulfillment of the above obligation...
Seddarim were nice. I had the pleasure, once again, of hosting
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mbarr for the seddarim, and got to see various members of the immediate and extended family, as well as some family friends.
Going into this year, I felt like it was a year of transition in various ways. Mostly, this is because there is only one relative left in my grandfather's generation who is well enough to make the trip up from South Jersey. Many of you may recall that my grandfather passed away at the end of Pesach three years ago (check out my posts from the end of April/beginning of May three years ago for more info if you haven't heard the story). For two years after that, his surviving brother, sister, and sister-in-law made the trip up. This year, only his brother was able to travel. We weren't sure until erev Pesach whether or not even he would be able to make the trip.
In addition to that, this is my parents' first sedder as grandparents, and my nephew was with our side of the family this year for the sedder. He is almost a year old, adorable, and gets upset when someone tries to break his (egg) matzoh for him. After all, what is the fun of eating matzoh if you can't also play with it?
We also had a toddler at the sedder, along with her father, who is my second cousin.
Of course, my little cousins who live up the block are that generation also, and the oldest of them is nearly ten, so this is not an entirely new phenomenon, though they were at the other side of their family this year, so not at our sedder.
The more interesting change, though, was that my father finally replaced the old haggadot we had been using for so many years, for as long as I can remember, really. Probably longer. We began with over 30 copies of them, I think, and by last year we were down to maybe 20. Up until a few years ago, it was a gradual attrition, but by last year, haggadah after haggadah began to fall apart. Bindings split and pages were falling out all over the place. Of the 20 haggadot that were left, maybe 10 would have survived in one piece past this year. Plus, my father didn't much like them anyway.
So he finally bought new ones. He had his eye on the haggadah by Noam Tzion (or however that is spelled) but it was too big and too expensive to buy 30 of. This year, however, there was an abridged version (which is to say, full text with abridged commentary) that was much more cost-effective. So we had a new haggaddah for the first time in my life.
The Hebrew was the same, but the English was different. There are some English readings we have done every year, to the point where some of us have parts of them memorized. So it was a new experience to miss those familiar (if archaic) turns of phrase.
My father also cut down on the amount of inserts we did - i.e. special readings and songs that I get to fold and stick in to every haggaddah. We did two each night, rather than the three or four of years past. And we had to ask my father specifically to include, as is traditional, the Ballad of the Four Sons on the second night, which is the first "fun" insert we ever had - predating all of those internet parody songs that now get forwarded. So old that half of the copies we have are photocopies of a version that was typed on a typewriter!
Of course, the sedder was probably more the same than different. On the first night, we hit close to maximum capacity with 30 guests or so, and on the second night we had a more intimate sedder with about 20. As usual, the South Jersey contingent headed out early on the second night so that they could get back home, and so we were down to 10 of us, which is always refreshing, since it is 10 of us who know the songs and can read the Hebrew.
My parents were exhausted, as were many of the rest of us, and it was fun to watch them get a bit punchy by Hallel, when they began clapping along with the songs. I laughed so hard, I was crying.
Because my nephew was present, and because we sing an African American Spiritual (let my people go/go down moses) at our sedder - good thing it is also in the new haggadah - I got to thinking about what my nephew's future connection to the sedder will be. He is part African American (he is adopted, for those who are wondering how this makes sense) - as in, some of his ancestors were almost certainly slaves here in America, not too many generations ago. So slavery is in his much more immediate past, not a story from long ago. I wonder how this will affect his connection to seddarim in the future, and how he will feel, as he gets older, when he joins us in singing that song.
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