Notes from the seders
Apr. 9th, 2012 03:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI attended two family seders, and they were very different in timing, tone, menu, approach, pretty much everything.
First night had a lot more people, both adults and children, which made things a bit hectic at times. It can be hard to balance what different people need from a seder, especially a seder that has a wide range of ages and experiences. I mostly enjoyed the people I found myself with, but found myself reading a lot of the haggadah to myself. Pluses: meeting some new people, a taste of passionfruit wine, my knuckle gnawed on by a very cute four month old, the thin soft crispiness of oat matza (but not the bitter aftertaste, alas), managing to keep the shredded red paper 'blood' out of my wineglass, watermelon karpas (among other options), crispy sauteed mushrooms. Plus company for much of the walk home. My useless yet satisfying realization of the evening: the meal begins and ends with matza, rather like a Hillel sandwich.
Second night seder started a bit later, and ended substantially later, with me getting home much later than that, since it's about an hour's walk. Again there were kids at the table, then kids playing with games, but even when the decibel level was high, it was easier, perhaps partly because I was more rested. Pluses: people I already knew and was comfortable with, more of the traditional text and discussion thereof, matza balls, more watermelon karpas (among other options), being in a small enough group that I didn't have to deal with multiple conversations going on around me, the chance to hang out and reconnect with friends. Challenges: cat allergens plus my back making it uncomfortable to sit after a while.
Second night I got to use a new haggadah by Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander. I liked their choice of Hebrew font, which made it appealing on first glance, though as the evening progressed, I became less enchanted with their decisions about font sizes, which changed, sometimes multiple times, with a paragraph. I didn't care for how stage direction notes (raise a cup of wine, uncover the matza, etc.) were given only in the English, not the Hebrew. And while the Hebrew was mostly the traditional text, there were emendations. I can understand giving an alternate reading; those tended to be clearly marked. But I found at least one case where words were changed (in the wise son's question, "etchem" was changed to "otanu", which completely changes what one might discuss), and another where the order of paragraphs was changed. Again, had these been market somehow, they would have bothered me less. And then there was the translation, which Son1 declared "poetical," a description I think is true, and also a kinder word than I might have chosen. Other features included some spreads with modern commentary, and an ongoing timeline of Jewish Paschal history (with some demographics thrown in for good measure). I found those notes interesting, some amusing, though I was baffled why the last timeline entry was for 2007, about the first haggadah for Jewish Buddhists being published. Another surprise: the counting of the omer was in the middle of the songs, after the end of the seder, though this is apparently not too unusual, since another haggadah had that same placement (and hey, it's one up on the Artscroll, which lacks omer counting in the haggadah at all, making it easy for people to miss on the first night). All in all, I found it interesting to have used (and some of the modern commentaries entertaining), but perhaps not something I'll choose to use again.
First night had a lot more people, both adults and children, which made things a bit hectic at times. It can be hard to balance what different people need from a seder, especially a seder that has a wide range of ages and experiences. I mostly enjoyed the people I found myself with, but found myself reading a lot of the haggadah to myself. Pluses: meeting some new people, a taste of passionfruit wine, my knuckle gnawed on by a very cute four month old, the thin soft crispiness of oat matza (but not the bitter aftertaste, alas), managing to keep the shredded red paper 'blood' out of my wineglass, watermelon karpas (among other options), crispy sauteed mushrooms. Plus company for much of the walk home. My useless yet satisfying realization of the evening: the meal begins and ends with matza, rather like a Hillel sandwich.
Second night seder started a bit later, and ended substantially later, with me getting home much later than that, since it's about an hour's walk. Again there were kids at the table, then kids playing with games, but even when the decibel level was high, it was easier, perhaps partly because I was more rested. Pluses: people I already knew and was comfortable with, more of the traditional text and discussion thereof, matza balls, more watermelon karpas (among other options), being in a small enough group that I didn't have to deal with multiple conversations going on around me, the chance to hang out and reconnect with friends. Challenges: cat allergens plus my back making it uncomfortable to sit after a while.
Second night I got to use a new haggadah by Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander. I liked their choice of Hebrew font, which made it appealing on first glance, though as the evening progressed, I became less enchanted with their decisions about font sizes, which changed, sometimes multiple times, with a paragraph. I didn't care for how stage direction notes (raise a cup of wine, uncover the matza, etc.) were given only in the English, not the Hebrew. And while the Hebrew was mostly the traditional text, there were emendations. I can understand giving an alternate reading; those tended to be clearly marked. But I found at least one case where words were changed (in the wise son's question, "etchem" was changed to "otanu", which completely changes what one might discuss), and another where the order of paragraphs was changed. Again, had these been market somehow, they would have bothered me less. And then there was the translation, which Son1 declared "poetical," a description I think is true, and also a kinder word than I might have chosen. Other features included some spreads with modern commentary, and an ongoing timeline of Jewish Paschal history (with some demographics thrown in for good measure). I found those notes interesting, some amusing, though I was baffled why the last timeline entry was for 2007, about the first haggadah for Jewish Buddhists being published. Another surprise: the counting of the omer was in the middle of the songs, after the end of the seder, though this is apparently not too unusual, since another haggadah had that same placement (and hey, it's one up on the Artscroll, which lacks omer counting in the haggadah at all, making it easy for people to miss on the first night). All in all, I found it interesting to have used (and some of the modern commentaries entertaining), but perhaps not something I'll choose to use again.
Wow!
Date: 2012-04-09 08:18 am (UTC)Re: Wow!
Date: 2012-04-11 01:56 pm (UTC)