Missing at Seder, Missing in Life

Ten years ago, the filmmaker Michael Rubiner drafted a plan for a two minute, short and sweet Seder.  Listen carefully.

Thanks, God, for creating wine. (Drink wine.)

Thanks for creating produce. (Eat parsley.)

Overview: Once we were slaves in Egypt. Now we're free. That's why we're doing this.

Four questions:

1. What's up with the matzoh?

2. What's the deal with horseradish?

3. What's with the dipping of the herbs?

4. What's this whole slouching at the table business?

Four Answers:

1. When we left Egypt, we were in a hurry. There was no time for making decent bread.

2. Life was bitter, like horseradish.

3. It's called symbolism.

4. Free people get to slouch.

A funny story: Once, these five rabbis talked all night, then it was morning. (Heat soup now.)

The four kinds of children and how to deal with them:

Wise child—explain Passover.

Simple child—explain Passover slowly.

Silent child—explain Passover loudly.

Wicked child—browbeat in front of the relatives.

Speaking of children: We hid some matzoh. Whoever finds it gets five bucks.

The story of Passover: It's a long time ago. We're slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh is a nightmare. We cry out for help. God brings plagues upon the Egyptians. We escape, bake some matzoh. God parts the Red Sea. We make it through; the Egyptians aren't so lucky. We wander 40 years in the desert, eat manna, get the Torah, wind up in Israel, get a new temple, enjoy several years without being persecuted again. (Let brisket cool now.)

The 10 Plagues: Blood, Frogs, Lice—you name it.

The singing of "Dayenu":

If God had gotten us out of Egypt and not punished our enemies, it would've been enough. If he'd punished our enemies and not parted the Red Sea, it would've been enough.

If he'd parted the Red Sea—(Remove gefilte fish from refrigerator now.)

Eat matzoh. Drink more wine. Slouch.

SERVE MEAL.

Thanks again, God, for everything.

I can count up to 13, but there was only 1 kid goat.

Say good night  (my additions)

Was anything missing?  One of the most important parts of the Seder absent from this two-minute version, was also missing from my seder table. Although it is important enough that the entire hag of Pesah is related to it, this part has been missing from all Seder tables for 1900 years.

So that you don’t have to guess, I’ll tell you: A roasted lamb. While we associate the yom tov with matzot and even refer to the festival as Hag haMatzot, the sacrifice offered to commemorate this event was called the Korban Pesah. After the destruction of the Mikdash -Temple, the seder meal, which once revolved around the consumption of the sacrificial lamb, no longer had this central food.

Our rabbis reconfigured the Seder, putting the meal AFTER all the commentary and discussion, kept matzah and maror at the culmination of part one, and added Hallel and lots of songs following the meal.  And while Sephardim do consume roasted lamb, Ashkenazi Jews refrain even from dry roast for the Seder meal.

Even so, all haggadot include Rabban Gamaliel’s elevator speech.

רַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל הָיָה אוֹמֵר, כָּל שֶׁלֹּא אָמַר שְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים אֵלּוּ בַפֶּסַח, לֹא יָצָא יְדֵי חוֹבָתוֹ,

וְאֵלּוּ הֵן, פֶּסַח, מַצָּה, וּמָרוֹר.

פֶּסַח, עַל שׁוּם שֶׁפָּסַח הַמָּקוֹם עַל בָּתֵּי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ בְמִצְרָיִם.

מַצָּה, עַל שׁוּם שֶׁנִּגְאֲלוּ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ מִמִּצְרָיִם.

מָרוֹר, עַל שׁוּם שֶׁמֵּרְרוּ הַמִּצְרִים אֶת חַיֵּי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ בְמִצְרָיִם לְפִיכָךְ אֲנַחְנוּ חַיָּבִין לְהוֹדוֹת...

Remember, Rabban Gamliel says that there are three essential foods: Pesah, Matzah and Maror. Which comes first? The historic sacrifice.

One of Rabban Gamilel’s innovations was that we were not directed to simply eat the essential foods, we were told to discuss them. And when we read this section, we are supposed to point to or lift up the symbolic food. Matzah zo- point. Maror zeh- point. But when we say Pesah zeh - we don’t lift up the shankbone. Some people don’t even point at it.

A key food, intended to be at the table, mentioned in the mishnah and the haggadah, and we don’t recognise it the way we do the other foods. It’s strange, because we refer to the yom tov as Pesah, which by the way, doesn’t mean passed over. It means saved or protected, in connection with the first lamb sacrifice in Egypt.

Without the possibility of the sacrifice, the other two foods - which - as Hillel taught - were supposed to be eaten with the Pesah offering - moved up in significance to replace the lamb. This was one of the great innovations of post-Temple rabbinic Judaism. Ritual life was to continue, despite destruction and disruption.

How do you continue when something or someone really important is missing?

Do any of you remember the children’s book by Shel Silverstein, the Missing Piece?  A circle is missing a wedge-shaped piece of itself. Like a slice of pie or pizza missing.

It was missing a piece.

And it was not happy.

So it set off in search

of its missing piece.

One way of compensating for a loss is to try to fill it by trying to go back to “the way we were.” Some of us do this when a person we love dies. We want to keep the room the same way as when our daughter was alive. We leave a seat empty at the table for our zaidie or bubbie.

There are Jews who want to restore the Passover sacrifice. For them, the recapture of all of Jerusalem in 1967 raised the possibility of returning to the ritual of the Second Temple. The korban Pesah can be offered on an altar on the Temple Mount. A halakhic question about this was asked of Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, a great rabbinic sage, whose legal compendium is called Tzitz Eliezer. His reply was first, that there’s no obligation to offer sacrifices in our times. He also wrote that if Jews started constructing an altar on the Temple Mount, millions of people would rise up and declare a holy war against us. Indeed, the Muslims focus on the small group of Jewish extremists as a reason to stone and attack the vast majority of peaceful worshippers at the Western Wall and to prevent any Jewish or Christian prayer on the area that they call Haram al-Sharif.

Another way we deal with loss is to try to fill the gap with a search for something else. So people will travel or try to be busy to block out the awareness of their grief. We often feel that finding our own Missing Piece -whatever it may be - will make us happy. But then othercomplications arise. The Circle in Shel Silverstein’s book finds a seemingly perfect Missing Piece, only to discover that it now rolls too quickly for a butterfly to land atop it, it cannot stop to talk to a beetle or smell a flower.

Unfortunately, we are witness to what Fred Iklé and the late US Senator Daniel Moynahan called “semantic infiltration.”  This is the adoption of the terms of reference which others use to criticize and attack your position. So there are Jews who have inadvertently adopted the language of anti-Zionism. They imagine that their lives would be better if they could find the missing piece that would make Israel perfect. Recently, my friend, Rabbi Daniel Gordis, criticised his uncle Rabbi David Gordis for just that. These idealists lose perspective on what is real and what is ideal. They object to the huge challenges still facing the tiny state. They declare that the prophetic vision and voice of justice is neither heard nor seen in the Land.

But this is an imaginary desire. No one lives in a perfect nation-state. The Israelis I know are constantly striving to lessen the gap between the ideal and the real, the aspirational and the daily duties of life.

So what does one do with the missing paschal lamb? What does one do with the missing pieces in our personal life?

We include them in our memories and words. We acknowledge what would have been present. We mention the Pesah lamb. We don’t forget it. But we don’t try to make it real again. Missing, yet somehow still in action.

We take note of the grandfather’s chair that is empty this year, of the loving partner whose bed is vacant, of the sibling who can no longer take our phone call, of the child whose laughter used to fill the house with joy. We mention them. We miss them. And we continue to roll forward knowing that there will always be an empty piece.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2006/04/the_twominute_haggadah.html

Baruch M. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder, (U Cal Press, 1984)

http://greek.rabbinics.org/Bokser.pdf

http://www.daat.ac.il/chazal/maamar.asp?id=150

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/8703

http://www.torahmusings.com/2016/02/leaving-jerusalem-on-the-14th-of-nissan