Here are some of the things we do or have done at our Passover seder to make it more fun and interesting. As always, feel free to consult your own halakhic authority if you want before adopting these ideas.
- Bedikat Chametz בְּדִיקַת חָמֵץ searching for chametz: by the time you have finished cleaning, you really shouldn’t have random items of chametz sitting out, so we assign different people each year to hide exactly 10 pieces of farfalle pasta around the house. The search should be real, but it is exciting to have specific pieces of chametz to find. Note, do not hide them as well as you hide the afikoman. Second note: macaroni works just as well.
- An Orange: The idea of the orange on a seder plate begins with Suzanna Heschel creating a symbol of inclusiveness of LGBTQ Jews at her seder. Later, people retold the story creating a negative interaction about women rabbis. The point, in either case, is about inclusiveness. At my family’s seder, we don’t put the orange on the seder plate, but rather, we begin seder, even before kiddush, with orange slices, to emphasize that our seder is welcoming and affirming of different people’s stories of oppression and redemption. This is in line with the passage from the Haggadah
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This is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in Egypt. All who are hungry–come and eat. All who are needy–come and participate in the Pesach. |
הָא לַחְמָא עַנְיָא דִּי אֲכָלוּ אַבְהָתָנָא בְאַרְעָא דְמִצְרָיִם. כָּל דִכְפִין יֵיתֵי וְיֵיכֹל, כָּל דִצְרִיךְ יֵיתֵי וְיִפְסַח. |
Of course, הָא לַחְמָא עַנְיָא Ha Lachma Anya is said about the matzah, so we emphasize the same message using the orange, and begin the evening with it.
- Karpas כַּרְפַּס vegetable hors d’oeuvres: In addition to a piece of parsley or celery dipped in salt water, we serve significant veggie dishes at this point. The reason why this is traditionally not done is that once you eat a certain amount of food, you are obligated to recite a blessing afterwards, and that blessing afterwards is not part of the seder. If you continue to nosh, however, you never incur that obligation to bless afterwards. So we serve crudites throughout the seder, and this makes it easier to have a very long maggid section because people aren’t asking “when do we eat.” We extend the idea of dipping with the extra veggies, so we have had artichokes with basil pesto, or roasted potato spears with a salsa, or asparagus with a hollandaise (yes, we have a dairy seder), and crudites with a dip. Needless to say, this also shortens the time needed for shulchan orekh/שֻׁלְחַן עוֹרֵךְ the seder meal, which for us is usually just soup, fish, and a dessert.
- Maggid מַגִּיד telling the story: We usually get up from the table and move the maggid to the living room where people can sit on comfortable chairs. We also reward people who ask questions with candy.
- Miriam’s cup כּוֹס מִרְיָם: We fill a special cup with seltzer to recall the well of water that the midrash says accompanied Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Moshe and Aharon, through the wilderness. This can be done at any time, although we often fill it right before we sing dayenu דַּיֵּנוּ.
- Seder Plate קַעֲרַת הַסֵּדֶר: As I mentioned, we have a dairy seder, which makes a traditional zroa/זְרוֹעַ shankbone a challenge. Rabbinic texts mention using a beet on the seder plate, so I have adapted that for our z’roa. I carve a yellow beet into an altar and red beet into a ram. The juice from the red beet ram drips down on the yellow beet and looks like blood dripping down the sides of the altar. You can blow a little cinnamon sugar onto the sides of the yellow beet to make it look more like stone. There is a picture of this also in the Seder Songs document.
- Maror מָרוֹר bitter herbs and Haroset חֲרֹסֶת: Our haroset is made of dates and almonds, a bit of wine and lots of cinnamon. I roll the haroset into balls and assemble it into a pyramid which we pass around and deconstruct when it is time to eat maror with haroset. A picture of our haroset pyramid is found in the Seder Songs document. Also, there is a custom (based on the Biblical verse) that we use two different bitter herbs. My custom is to eat horseradish root plain the first time and then use endive with haroset in the Hillel sandwich. Others do this differently, including my wife (the rabbi).
- Hallel הַלֵּל: We sing. We sing a lot. Anything we can sing, we do sing, and that includes adding in other songs like these ones which you can download and print..
- Afikoman אֲפִיקוֹמָן: Instead of having people search for a randomly hidden afikoman, prepare a hunt for the afikoman where age-appropriate puzzles lead to the next clue which is also a puzzle, eventually leading to the afikoman. This will occupy children while the adults finish the meal.
- Elijah’s cup כּוֹס אֵלִיָּהוּ: Following the custom of Eliezer of Ropschitz, we pass an empty cup around and each person adds a bit of their wine into the Cos Eliyahu/Elijah’s cup. This can be accompanied with an affirmation of something that they might do to help redeem the world. Although this is daunting, I usually think of that quote by Lily Tomlin, “I said ‘Somebody should do something about that’. Then I realized I am somebody.”
Wishing you a sweet and joyous Pesach.
Shabbat Shalom,
Jeffrey Spitzer