TI Celebrates Passover: A Seder Outline

The Seder can perhaps best be described as a "talk-feast." Conducted around a table laden with the bounty of the earth, it is people spending a leisurely evening engaged in good talk and good food. For the rabbis who formalized its procedures, Seder was the pre-eminent vehicle of cultural transmission from one generation to the next. Long before printed books and formal schools, the yearly Seder night transformed every Jewish home into a classroom, with the Haggadah (from the Hebrew root "to tell") as the text.

The word "Seder" means order. The tradition understands the Passover table ritual as a fixed progression, 15 steps, a logical unfolding of the single most important Jewish lesson from the retelling of the single most significant Jewish experience. In actuality, the Pesach Seder is one of the most carefully constructed learning experiences ever created. In an amazing combination of aural and tactile learning tasks, the Seder has something for everybody--drink, food, symbols, prayers, songs, stories, philosophy, text study, simulations, ritual actions--all designed with one overall goal: to take each person at the Seder back to Egypt, to re-enact the dramatic Exodus story, to make each one of us feel as she or he had actually been redeemed from Mitzrayim (Egypt).

The Pesach Seder is a talk-feast in four acts. Four is an all-important number in understanding the Haggadah. And so, here is the "script," the Seder outline.

Act I: The Beginning

The Prologue: Even before the Seder begins, there are a number of activities which create the setting. A production of this magnitude cannot be staged without adequate preparation. Formal preparations can include ridding the house of chametz, "kashering" the kitchen for Passover, setting the Passover table, and preparing the meal.

Hadlakat ha-Nerot (Lighting the Festival Candles): Before the seder begins, the Yom Tov (festival) candles are lit, signifying the begining of the holiday.

Scene 1: Kadeish (The First Cup of Wine): The festival Kiddush is chanted, praising God who sanctifies the people Israel and the Festival seasons, and thanking God for enabling us to reach this time of celebration.

Scene 2: Ur'chatz (Wash Hands): In traditional homes it is the custom to wash hands before eating. Here, we wash hands as if preparing to eat, but without reciting a blessing.

Scene 3: Karpas (Appetizer): A green vegetable is dipped in salt water, a reminder of the tears of our ancestors in Egypt. It is a kind of historic appetizer.

Scene 4: Yachatz (Break the middle Matzah): The matzah is introduced silently. We break the middle matzah in order to hide one portion as the afikomen, the "dessert" of our meal, a symbol of the redemption yet to come.

Curtain: Ha Lachma Anya (Invitation): We uncover the matzot, calling them the "bread of affliction," for as we are about to begin our story, our ancestors are enslaved in Egypt. We invite all who are hungry or needy to join in our Pesach service. As Act I closes, we acknowledge our slavery, but hope for our freedom.

Act II: Maggid (The Telling)

Act II is the heart of the seder experience. We tell the story of our Exodus from slavery to freedom in four ways, in four different tellings. Each telling begins with a question, to which an answer is given, and for which we praise God, the Hero of our story.

Scene 1: The First Telling. The first telling begins with the famous Four Questions (really one question with four statements), traditionally asked by the youngest member of the seder party. The answer, which is to begin with the degradation of our people and end with the story of redemption, tells the story in one brilliant, concise sentence: "We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, but Adonai our God brought us forth with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm." But this story deserves more than a one-sentence summary, so, we have three more versions to come. God is deserving of praise which we pronounce four times.

Scene 2: The Second Telling. The second telling begins with the question of the Four Children. Here, the Haggadah teaches us that to tell the story well, we must tell it differently to different types of learners. Although the questions are different, they all relate to the same central question: "What is this Passover service all about?" The answer in this telling goes back even earlier in Jewish history, back to our idol-worshipping roots. Yet, we recall the promise God made to Abraham to make his descendants a great nation. We praise God who kept a promise then and keeps the Covenant with us alive to this day.

Scene 3: The Third Telling. The third telling offers the learner the core story of the Exodus as related in four verses in Deuteronomy. By exploring the meaning of these words, we embellish the answer, we flesh out the story of our liberation. The climax of this story is the awe-full series of Ten Plagues which God brought upon Egypt, convincing Pharaoh to let the people go. We then praise God who, if God had performed only this one act of kindness, Dayeinu--it would have been enough!

Scene 4: The Fourth Telling. The fourth telling returns to concrete symbols with questions about the Pesach (paschal lamb), matzah, and maror, the central symbols on the seder table. The specific questions are answered, but once again, the key question is "Why do we do this ritual? Why do we tell this story?" The answer is directed to each person, individually: "Because in each generation, every individual should feel as if he or she had actually been redeemed from Egypt." We are redeemed and therefore, we acclaim God with a new song, Halleluyah, and we praise Adonai, Redeemer of Israel.

Curtain: Kos Sheini. (the second cup of wine) : Act II comes to a close with the sanctification of the second cup of wine, a reminder of God's promise to deliver us. We have told the Exodus story four times, we have relived the slavery and the liberation from bondage. We celebrate our redemption with a cup of wine.

Act III: The Feast

The third act of the talk-feast is the feast itself. As with all Jewish holiday meals, there are ritual actions before and after the meal. On Passover, some of these rituals are common to any Jewish meal (washing hands, motzi, birkat ha-mazon), while others are specific to the Passover celebration (maror, korech, tzafun). The importance of these rituals is to underscore the fact that this is no ordinary meal. In fact, it is no ordinary Festival meal. It is the Pesach feast which we reenact today as our ancestors did on that fateful night in Egypt. To some observers, this is the climax of the seder itself; we eat the matzah, the maror, and the korech--substitute for the paschal sacrifice, just as the Israelites did on the eve of Passover.

Scene 1: Prepare to eat

We actually began the preparation for the meal at the very beginning of the seder with the kiddush. Then, we washed without a blessing and ate an appetizer, the karpas. Now, we continue the preliminaries to the feast by performing the four ritual acts:

Rochtza (Washing) --we wash our hands and recite the blessing for this act which precedes the breaking of bread at every traditional Jewish meal.
Motzi/Matza (Motzi/Blessing of the Matzah)--we praise God, first for the general blessing of bringing forth the bread from the earth, and then for the specific blessing of matzah, the bread of freedom.
Maror--we eat the bitter herbs, symbol of our former slavery.
Koreich--we bind the matzah and maror together, just as Rabbi Hillel did at his seder nearly 2000 years ago as a reminder of the paschal offering on Passover night.

Scene 2: Schulchan Orech (Set the Table): The festive meal is eaten.

Scene 3: Tzafun (Dessert): We find or redeem that which is tzafun--hidden, the afikomen. It is our dessert, the last morsel of food eaten at the seder, a symbol of redemption.

Scene 4: Bareich (Blessing after the food): We praise God for providing us food, the Promised Land, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Jerusalem, and all the goodness we have in our lives.

Curtain:Kos Shli'shee (The third cup of wine): The meal concludes with the third cup of wine, another reminder of God's promise of redemption.

Act IV: Redemption

We have told the story of the Exodus. We have eaten the symbolic foods and the festive meal. Now, we celebrate our redemption, with praise for God the Redeemer and prayers for our ultimate redemption in Messianic times. We sing songs of praise, songs of joy, we recognize the harvest season, and we conclude with the final cup of wine and the prayer for our return to Jerusalem.

Scene 1: Eliahu ha-Navi (Elijah the Prophet): The redemption theme is sounded by the lilting, hopeful strains of "Elliahu ha-Navi," welcoming to the table Elijah the Prophet, harbinger of the Messiah.

Scene 2: Hallel (Songs of Praise): The recitation of Hallel which began before the meal with Halleluyah, now continues with the remaining psalms of praise for God who redeems the people Israel.

Scene 3:Songs: With the formal requirement of the seder completed, the mood turns more festive with the singing of songs which celebrate our rejoicing.

Curtain: Kos R'vi'i/Nirtzah (The fourth cup of wine/acceptance): The seder now draws to a conclusion, marked by the fourth cup of wine and a prayer that our seder be accepted and the promise of our redemption be fulfilled. We end with the messianic hope spoken by generations of Jews: "Next year in Jerusalem!"

This seder outline was adapted from The Art of Jewish Living: The Passover Seder by Dr. Ron Wolfson, published by the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs and the University of Judaism, 1988.