Spicing Up the Seders

c. 2004 Religion News Service

BROOKLINE, Mass. -- Since the ninth century, Jews have gathered in their homes each year to read the story of Passover. And since 1952, David Arnow's family had told the story in the same way, out of the same book around the same table.

What had felt "magical" to him about the holiday as a child, the psychologist and author told listeners at the Brookline Booksmith store during a recent reading, "got a routinized feeling" as he became an adult and realized that because the annual Seder was "100 percent fixed, a lot of the magic and a lot of the meaning got squeezed out."

Over the past 18 years that Arnow has been leading Seders in his own family, he decided to do something about that.

Passover, the eight-day period which this year begins at sundown on April 5, commemorates the exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. The holiday, which is celebrated at a festive meal called a Seder, is central to Judaism.

"It's the founding story of the Jewish people," said Arnow. "A collection of families goes into Egypt, and out we come as a nation."

But Arnow believes the spiritual drama and human emotion of the story is lost when families sit passively at their dining tables, listening to the story read aloud.

"That's not the way to make the story come alive, to make people think, 'this is my story,'" he said.

He hopes the way that Jews celebrate the transformation of Passover is itself changing, as he explains in his new book, "Creating Lively Passover Seders: A Sourcebook of Engaging Tales, Texts and Activities" (Jewish Lights Publishing).

Arnow's book is a collection of reflections, activities and ideas for families to consider if they want to create a custom-made Seder experience that is unique to their family. Parts of the book are culled from pamphlets Arnow has written since 1994, at first for friends and family, but later for increasingly large interested audiences.

"The way to make this story come alive for people is not to just read it," he said, but rather to experience it interactively, discuss and debate it vigorously--and even think about doing so seated in small groups in the living room and not around the dining table.

"When people are sitting at the table, it's hard," said Arnow, whose own family Seders typically last for around five hours. "Empty plates are in front of you and the food is not there yet. It's amazing--if you get people sitting in a circle in another room, you have a different dynamic."

Observers of trends in Jewish family life place Arnow's book and others like it in a "second wave" of evolution of the modern Passover Seder.

There are more than 3,000 different haggadahs, the books that outline the structure of the Seder and record the story of the exodus, on the market today, according to Yosef Abramowitz, CEO of Jewish Family & Life!, a multimedia educational organization.

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