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Leading the Passover Journey: The Seder's Meaning Revealed, the Haggadah's Story Retold
Enrich Your Passover Seder with Renewed Meaning and Significance Whether you are planning to participate in, contribute to, or lead a Passover Seder, Leading the Passover Journey will help you relive the Jewish People's legacy of survival, hope and redemption, and reconnect with the rich heritage celebrated in this special event. Reclaim the hidden meaning of the Passover Seder. Connect the pieces of the Haggadah narrative into one meaningful, cohesive story. From preparing for Passover to understanding the order of the Seder, from eating the meal of freedom in the house of slavery to reenacting the saga at the sea, this fascinating exploration of the texts and traditions surrounding the most celebrated event in the Jewish calendar will awaken latent knowledge and provide new understanding. It will empower you to fully understand and identify with the complete story of the Jewish People’s journey of liberation.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published February 15, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 1, 2023
I need to read this book again. I really applaud the idea of it; the impulse behind it. But a lot of it was too much of a stretch for me; too complex for me to think it was genuinely the why behind what he was discussing and not an overlay of meaning the author could implant. Much of his explanation was not uplifting. In preparing a Seder, I always think 'What can people take away? What can lift their hearts and give them something to go on in their own spiritual journey?' This is not about that. It's about understanding why certain things are in the Haggadah and the Seder and that's interesting. But not all of it struck me as true (the 'real' reason), as I said. And much of it is too scholarly and abstruse to be what I would want to actually talk about at a Seder. The counting of the promises seemed formulaic; one more thing to remember and feel confused by. I don't honestly think this train of thought would necessarily bring people personally into the experience of fleeing slavery in hopes of freedom. But it's interesting. And behind it is a great idea. So I applaud it. I will definitely look at it again. So this review is an interim one.
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February 2, 2019A lot of Passover books describe the seder or even walk you through leading the seder: indeed, the My People's Prayer Book series dedicates two fascinating volumes to analyzing every feature of the seder. But this book offers a full-blown theory of the seder, integrating its disparate parts into a cognitive whole. It presents the meaning of the enterprise as a twofold realization that both radical evil/suffering and radical redemption/liberation are inescapable features of life: both as Jews and as individuals, we often find ourselves on a path from one to the other, and our faith strengthens us with the conviction that the universe is moving, however slowly and unevenly, in the same direction. This made me think of a quote by Theodore Parker, as memorably recalled by Dr. Martin Luther King: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
We internalize this meaning through the story of the Exodus, indeed by immersing ourselves in the story. In this way, the story becomes a mythic reenactment, which builds toward the euphoria and catharsis of song near the end. This experience of immersion is so crucial that the Haggadah has three overlapping methods of achieving it: visually, through the seder plate; kinesthetically, through ritual action; and verbally, through the narrative of the story.
Viewing the seder plate in a clockwise fashion, each of its objects evokes a different part of Exodus story in chronological order, from the green vegetable (karpas) that symbolizes the fertility of the Hebrews, which antagonized the Egyptians in the first place, down to the singed egg (beitzah), a memory of the yearly Passover offering and therefore of the revelation at Sinai. We engage with these and other items ritually, most notably through four cups of wine, which simultaneously serve as benchmarks in the evolving tale (i.e., a "time machine") and lower our skepticism so as to become more perfectly a part of it. And at the center of the seder is the Maggid, a seder-within-the-seder, which verbally sets out all of the fundamental assumptions and definitions of the story: e.g., Who are "we?" What is our story? To whom do we tell the story? When do we tell the story? How and why were we enslaved? How and why were we redeemed? Etc. We finally reach the Nirtzah, which reveals that the revelation at Sinai, rather than the deliverance of the Sea of Reeds, is the conclusion of the seder.
There are some huge achievements here. The author brilliantly weaves together a variety of sources, including the foundational Jewish texts, into a creative, nearly seamless whole. He also has the intellectual integrity not to shy away from the more controversial parts of the traditional seder, such as the prominence of the ten plagues and the "pour out your wrath" exhortation. These are portrayed as the just deserts of evil (indeed, of genocide) in a moral universe, though in full disclosure, they still make me wince. Neither does Rabbi Laufer dodge the yearning for a rebuilt Temple, which is geopolitical dynamite in today's world.
In reading the book, I was particularly struck by features of the seder that seem to be a Jewish answer to the claims of rival religions, guided both by comments from the author himself and the insights of the My People's Prayer Book series. In playing down Moses' singular role as deliverer (indeed, in sometimes "masking" him behind the figure of Elijah), it seems as though we're trying to avoid making the seder about a singular spiritual hero, such as a Jesus or a Muhammad, though we still "ingest" Moses when the Tzafun (afikomen) matzah fragment is recovered. Similarly, the stress on liberation as a bodily, not just a purely spiritual, phenomenon seems to be another riposte against Gnostic, Neoplatonic, and Christian counterclaims, while the emphasis on Sinai establishes the Jewish assertion of the primacy of the Law versus subsequent supersessionist philosophies. I've often found the intervention of cerebral rabbinic interpretations into the Maggid as breaking the flow of the mythic reenactment of the rest of the seder, but this may be intended to differentiate normative Judaism from anti-rabbinic and antinomian sects that emerge from time to time in Jewish history.
However you feel about any specific assertions, the overall effort here is very worthwhile toward making the seder more than just a collection of isolated, sometimes inscrutable rituals and prayers. Well done.
We internalize this meaning through the story of the Exodus, indeed by immersing ourselves in the story. In this way, the story becomes a mythic reenactment, which builds toward the euphoria and catharsis of song near the end. This experience of immersion is so crucial that the Haggadah has three overlapping methods of achieving it: visually, through the seder plate; kinesthetically, through ritual action; and verbally, through the narrative of the story.
Viewing the seder plate in a clockwise fashion, each of its objects evokes a different part of Exodus story in chronological order, from the green vegetable (karpas) that symbolizes the fertility of the Hebrews, which antagonized the Egyptians in the first place, down to the singed egg (beitzah), a memory of the yearly Passover offering and therefore of the revelation at Sinai. We engage with these and other items ritually, most notably through four cups of wine, which simultaneously serve as benchmarks in the evolving tale (i.e., a "time machine") and lower our skepticism so as to become more perfectly a part of it. And at the center of the seder is the Maggid, a seder-within-the-seder, which verbally sets out all of the fundamental assumptions and definitions of the story: e.g., Who are "we?" What is our story? To whom do we tell the story? When do we tell the story? How and why were we enslaved? How and why were we redeemed? Etc. We finally reach the Nirtzah, which reveals that the revelation at Sinai, rather than the deliverance of the Sea of Reeds, is the conclusion of the seder.
There are some huge achievements here. The author brilliantly weaves together a variety of sources, including the foundational Jewish texts, into a creative, nearly seamless whole. He also has the intellectual integrity not to shy away from the more controversial parts of the traditional seder, such as the prominence of the ten plagues and the "pour out your wrath" exhortation. These are portrayed as the just deserts of evil (indeed, of genocide) in a moral universe, though in full disclosure, they still make me wince. Neither does Rabbi Laufer dodge the yearning for a rebuilt Temple, which is geopolitical dynamite in today's world.
In reading the book, I was particularly struck by features of the seder that seem to be a Jewish answer to the claims of rival religions, guided both by comments from the author himself and the insights of the My People's Prayer Book series. In playing down Moses' singular role as deliverer (indeed, in sometimes "masking" him behind the figure of Elijah), it seems as though we're trying to avoid making the seder about a singular spiritual hero, such as a Jesus or a Muhammad, though we still "ingest" Moses when the Tzafun (afikomen) matzah fragment is recovered. Similarly, the stress on liberation as a bodily, not just a purely spiritual, phenomenon seems to be another riposte against Gnostic, Neoplatonic, and Christian counterclaims, while the emphasis on Sinai establishes the Jewish assertion of the primacy of the Law versus subsequent supersessionist philosophies. I've often found the intervention of cerebral rabbinic interpretations into the Maggid as breaking the flow of the mythic reenactment of the rest of the seder, but this may be intended to differentiate normative Judaism from anti-rabbinic and antinomian sects that emerge from time to time in Jewish history.
However you feel about any specific assertions, the overall effort here is very worthwhile toward making the seder more than just a collection of isolated, sometimes inscrutable rituals and prayers. Well done.
February 23, 2011
Although the Haggadah remains for me still largely a relic of a
distant age, this book made me much more comfortable with it and with
the entire proceedings of a Seder. The author, partly by citing
textual authority and partly by applying his own creativity, finds a
purpose and a hidden meaning to the most important activities and
prayers in the Haggadah, as well as the Seder plate. This book did not
explain everything I wanted to know or provide a wide range of the
learned commentary available about the Haggadah, but it was satisfying
intellectually and a good companion to the Haggadah, as well as a
pleasure to read.
distant age, this book made me much more comfortable with it and with
the entire proceedings of a Seder. The author, partly by citing
textual authority and partly by applying his own creativity, finds a
purpose and a hidden meaning to the most important activities and
prayers in the Haggadah, as well as the Seder plate. This book did not
explain everything I wanted to know or provide a wide range of the
learned commentary available about the Haggadah, but it was satisfying
intellectually and a good companion to the Haggadah, as well as a
pleasure to read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews