Is there a “right” Seder?

On Saturday night my family gathered around the table to celebrate Pesach. The dining table was extended, the white tablecloth spread on, the Pesach plate was presented, and the wine waited to be poured. We all sat around the table – the three generations of the family and began reading the Haggadah, following the customs and clarifying some of the symbolic meanings of what we read and sang. Each person read a part of the Haggadah and I felt very proud as my first-grade-daughter read so fluently.

What strikes me most are the different versions of the songs sang around similar tables around the world. As a child, we celebrated the Seder mostly with my aunt’s family – they had wonderful melodies to the Haggadah songs and I adopted those melodies as the “right” ones. Whenever I heard different versions, I thought that they were simply wrong. As I grew up, I realized that there are no “right” melodies, but I still feel the best with the songs I heard and sang as a child.

Later on in my life, when we lived in the US, we were invited to celebrate the Seder with friends of ours. They are a wonderful funny family with grown-up children, but there were not familiar with the Haggadah songs. Fortunately, we felt comfortable enough to share with them our songs. Our little Israeli family added some “pilpel” (pepper=פִּלְפֵּל) into that Seder with songs and Israeli tradition. These friends of ours later admitted that they had never had such a wonderful and joyful Seder before.

In another American Seder at our temporary home in Pittsburgh, we gathered an eclectic group of friends – Israelis, Jewish, and some acquaintances who never participated in a Seder before. We put a collection of white tablecloths on a ping-pong table and had a unique Seder. When it was time to sing, each one sang a different tune of the same song. Each one of us felt s/he sang the “right” tune. On my opinion, my “right” ,melodies sound the best…

Last year, I wanted to experience again the “right” Seder here, in Israel. I invited my aunt and her “tribe” and my brother’s family and dad. Throughout the years we became quite many. Again, we spread a collection of white tablecloths on a collection of tables and had all the “right” songs, and the “right” tasty food. It felt so “right”! Childhood memories are stronger than we tend to realize.

Chad Gadya חַד גַּדְיָא

At the end of that Seder there was a wonderful surprise. My sister-in-law, who was raised in a Kibbutz, organized the kids to act the final song of the Haggadah – “Chad-Gadya”. This song concludes the Seder and is written in Aramaic. My sister-in-law introduced the Kibbutz Hebrew version (written by Givon Uri).

The kids acted it out with home-made costumes and we could all follow the lightsome music and lyric. The kids could better understand the song and actually passed it on to this year’s Seder.

Chad-Gadya is a cumulative song (like many of the songs in the Haggadah) that tells about one little goat that father bought for two zuzim. The goat was eaten by the cat, that was bitten by the dog, that was beaten by the stick, that was burned by the fire, that was extinguished by the water, that was drank by the ox, that was killed by the slaughterer, that was slained by the Angel of death. The song concludes with the arrival of the Holy One, Blessed be He, who smitten the Angel of death.

There are many explanations of this song, its symbolism and relevance to the story of Passover. But I see it as a wonderful way of demonstrating the various “right” ways of the Seder.

A short search in the Internet revealed a countless versions sang (and videotaped) by different families in their Seders. Many poets translated it giving the song their own interpretations and actualizations, such as: Chava Alberstein , Nathan Alterman and Levin Kipnis.

This year, I was no longer looking for the “right” Seder. I came to realize that every Seder is right as long as we keep in mind the meaning of the Holiday that was mandated in the bible to recount the story of The Exodus. Every Seder is right as long as we feel free enough to accept what we were given and to pass it on.

The Hebrew Corner:

Here are the main characters of the Chad-Gadya song in Aramaic, Hebrew, and English: