A Rabbi Answers All Your Seder Questions

Hi GOLDA gang,

Last night I saw Dara Horn in conversation with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl at Central Synagogue. They were discussing Dara’s new book, One Little Goat, a Seder-themed time-traveling graphic novel caper that is so brilliant I can’t do it justice here. Amazon apparently ran out of its stock, so if you want it in time for Passover check out Bookshop.org or your local bookseller. 

Meanwhile at GOLDA, our Passover Hotline is heating up. Today we’re answering your questions about all things ritual. Our guide today is Rabbi Joanna Samuels, the CEO of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, and one of the best people on the Upper West Side. 

I gave her your toughest questions and she seriously delivered. Read on to find out when to do havdalah since Passover starts on a Saturday night, how to navigate tense politics at the Seder table, and more. 

If you missed last week’s GOLDA tour de force on how to host a kid-friendly Seder by our friend Ariel Stein of Jewish Family Magic, you can check it out here.  

Question 1: How do you strike the right balance for the attendees when there are some people who want to nerd out about the Seder and discuss, and others who are unsure why they even came after about 15 minutes? I’m talking about adults here!

I wrote a piece about this, called Shel Ma’alah Shel Matah, which is about the earthly Seder and the real Seder. The Seder of our dreams is the Seder where everybody's totally engaged and everyone's chitchatting, and all the kids are happy. And in the Seder of our reality, there's always at least one person who you can just tell wishes they weren't there. 

In terms of practical ideas, it's good to give someone like this an assignment in advance. That assignment could be taking some part of the Seder and asking them to bring a reading that relates to that, or bring a set of questions that they want to discuss. Put them in the position of having to take some responsibility for the experience. 

Some hosts put different pieces of paper under each plate, indicating what each person has to say at certain parts of the Seder, and no one knows who has what. It makes people pay attention a little bit more. 

You also might have children sitting around the table who are going to get antsy despite how much you feed them. We used to do paper bag skits: We would divide up all the kids into teams and give each team a paper bag that had all kinds of random stuff in it, like a dustpan and an orange. The kids would have to use the objects to tell some part of the Passover story. It's also a good thing for sullen teenagers to have to go and lead the kinder in this, because teenagers love stuff like that, and they do a great job. And the younger kids listen to them much more. 

So if you have someone at your table who is either a teenager or acting like a teenager, I would put them in charge of skit night. They have to leave the table. They go into another room. They have to rehearse. They come back, and they perform it. It's a win. 

Question 2: We had some drama at our Seder last year when Israel/Gaza came up in conversation, and family members voiced very passionate and differing opinions. I think some people left feeling pretty offended. Do you have any advice for creating an inclusive environment at the Seder table? It feels wrong to say a topic is off-limits, but I really don't want the meal to devolve into fighting again.

I know political differences are something that we think about with some dread as we're hosting people around our table, and I really feel very sympathetic to that. And I think that like everything else that's difficult, there is something to be said for naming it. 

There's a beautiful poem written by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai called “The Place Where We Are Right.” The poem says this: “In the place where we are right, no flowers will grow.” And in many ways, that's what I aspire to have as my motto for living: to step back a little bit from a kind of certainty and sense of rightness that makes me sometimes shut off to other people's opinions, sometimes triggered by other people's opinions, and sometimes arrogant. And none of those things are the way that I want to be in the world, and they are certainly not the way that I want my Seder table to be. 

What if a Seder opened with that poem and asked people, “How do we understand this? How do we have a conversation where flowers grow?” Really normalizing that people have different opinions, and that that's okay. Breaking that taboo takes away some of its power. You just kind of take the air out of it. 

Question 3: What are some good readings or other inserts that you're planning to add to your seder this year?

Besides the Yehuda Amichai poem, there are so many beautiful readings. One of the strange mysteries of the human experience is that human beings have the capacity to make beautiful meaning out of tragedy. And certainly the Passover story is an example of that. But I think more recently, there are just exceptional people out there and exceptional resources that we can bring to bear to make our Seders feel relevant and deep. I'm thinking about a beautiful essay written by the Israeli writer David Grossman that I have sometimes used in my Seder. There's this beautiful new book of Israeli poetry called Shiva: Poems of October 7, that was put together by Rachel Koraz­im, who is an Israeli teacher and poet.

All of this helps us to ground the story that we're telling. The story about liberation from slavery to freedom is happening at every moment and to every person. I was just listening to a podcast with Rachel Goldberg, and I thought, “I'm going to bring some of this into my Seder.”

I also think you should give guests permission to bring readings that they think are relevant. Those readings don't have to be from Jewish thinkers. They don't need to be about Jews. There are beautiful, beautiful passages in Nelson Mandela's autobiography, for example. 

There's so much that the Jewish people have given the world through this story of “We were enslaved in Egypt, and now we're free.” From that very simple narrative structure there has been a lot of beautiful reflection that we can bring to our tables.

Question 4: Since Passover starts on Saturday evening, when do we do Havdalah? I’ve tried to internet it, but I still can’t find the answer. Do we do all the Havdalah prayers or just some? Thanks!

This is my favorite question, and you’re totally right to ask it. What happens when Shabbat goes into a holiday, or a holiday goes into Shabbat? We are not kodesh l’chol—going from holy into non-holy, as we would on a “regular” Saturday night. We are going from kodesh to kodesh, from holy to holy. So that's one thing that we notice. 

Havdalah has wine and it has a candle and it has a blessing, but so does kiddush. We light candles before Shabbat, and then we say the blessing over wine. So what do we do? 

The rabbis of the Talmud made this wonderful mnemonic to help us: YaK N’HaZ. 

First, you're going to light your holiday candles. If you are someone who is concerned about lighting a new flame when it is a holiday, you are going to light from an existing candle. Many very observant people buy big yartzeit candles before holidays, so that you are just transferring one flame to another. 

Then you’re going to do YaK N’HaZ: 

• Yayin (wine): Say the blessing over the wine. 

• Kiddush: Make the kiddush for Yom Tov.

• Ner (candle): Light the havdalah candle.

• Havdalah: Say the Havdalah prayer. 

• Z’man: Say the Shehecheyanu.

It’s such a special thing that only happens a few times in the 19-year cycle. It becomes an opportunity to engage the people around the table. The essence of the Passover Seder is “Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh mikol haleilot:” Why is this night different from all other nights? And we have our standard answers, but really those questions are just asked so that we have the opportunity to narrate the story of this redemption from slavery into freedom. Even to say “Why is there a Havdalah candle at the table?” And the response is “Well, let me tell you! It’s because we’re doing this fun thing where we are both saying hello to a new holiday and saying goodbye to Shabbat at the same time.”  

Editor’s note: While I had Joanna, I knew I had to ask her two more questions: 

I’ve heard about your famous karpas vegetable course. Tell us about this major Passover hack.

The inherent flaw of the Seder is that you make everyone sit around, you want them to be interested in talking about lots of things that are in Hebrew and Aramaic, and you also keep them from really eating until, like, 10 o'clock at night. 

And as Jews, we know that this is not what is going to make us successful. 

I learned this from friends of mine, and now many people that I know do this. When you make the blessing for dipping a green vegetable like parsley or celery into salt water, you say the words borei pri h’adama: the fruit of the earth. Once you've said that, you can eat any vegetable. 

How fun then to dip that vegetable into something and make a whole smorgasbord on your table. Some of my favorite things to serve are french fries dipped in ketchup, or potato chips with onion dip, or asparagus, artichokes, or carrots served as crudités with any dip you want. 

You take away the yawning feeling of hunger and anticipation and dread that everybody at your table is feeling. You just feed them and everyone's happy.

Do you have any rabbinic wisdom for us going into this year’s Seder?

I'm thinking a lot these days about how disrupted the world feels in so many ways, and how some of the usual stories that we tell ourselves about how to make progress no longer feel like the right stories. 

I’m also wondering about the question of how to have a positive impact right now. What is my role on this planet right now to make things better? I think a lot of people are asking themselves that question, and we are not yet collectively coming up with a set of answers. 

The power of telling the same story year in and year out reminds us, in some way, that we have been here all along. That there is always a place of narrowness and constriction, and there is something that we have to do in community together so that we all arrive at a place of greater spaciousness. And I am hopeful that by observing this ritual, something will give collectively in our consciousness that will tell us what is the right path, and also give us some perspective on what we're living through and how to move through it.

Thanks to Rabbi Joanna Samuels for taking on those big questions. We’ll be back in your inbox Friday to help with your last minute food and decor dramas. 

Until then, tell your friends to subscribe! Send them this easy link.

Stay GOLDA,

Stephanie