Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism

by Baruch M. Bokser

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.

Genres: Judaism, Jewish, Judaica

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Eric Chevlen]

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the Jewish religion, like the Jewish people, faced a crisis. In both cases, the overused term "existential crisis" is appropriate. The pre-destruction faith had been centered on the Temple cult, in which the priestly caste offered sacrifices for the people, and the Levitical caste provided musical adornment to the service. Three times a year, all the members of the faith were to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem to observe the festivals there.

One of those festivals was Passover, and the highlight of the Passover Temple service was the offering of a lamb. The blood of the lamb would be sprinkled on the altar, and the meat would be taken home by its donors, there to be roasted and shared with family in a ritual meal.

But what were the people to do if the Temple no longer existed, and its priests and musicians no longer able to serve their roles? What if the paschal lamb offering could not be brought to the Temple for the Torah-mandated ritual slaughter and sprinkling of blood?

Rabbi Baruch Bokser elucidates the different ways in which the Jews of the early centuries after the destruction dealt with the problem. The sect that was later to become known as Christians asserted that a Temple and a paschal sacrifice were no longer needed, because the ultimate and conclusive sacrifice, that of Jesus, had been made; there was no need for any other. The schismatics of the Qumran community believed that the faithful community itself was the new center of holiness, just as the Temple had been.

The rabbis of the Mishnah followed a different path. They emphasized other aspects of the laws and rituals of Passover, downplaying the role of the roasted lamb. They reframed the redemption saga as being forward-looking as well as backward-looking. Their purposefully anachronistic reworking of these themes eventuated in the Haggadah, the liturgical basis of the Seder.

Bokser's book is an insightful review of the process by which the modern seder and Haggadah were created, and how the rabbis of the Mishnaic era were able to sustain the Jewish faith by adapting it to a radically different world.

[Karen]

Definitely a niche book, probably of interest only to those who have reach Tractate Pesachim. As it happens, I've been reading that tractate for two years now (my study group's pace is one page a week), so I was a good audience. Bokser's argument is that the Mishna author(s) deliberately misrepresent the post-70 CE Passover seder, when the Passover lamb can no longer be sacrificed because the Romans have destroyed the Temple: "To respond to the loss of the temple and the passover offering, the Mishnah has to claim, anachronistically, that the present rite is not discontinuous with the past" (95). The rabbis joined the formerly distinct Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Passover Sacrifice; they raised the status of the bitter herbs and unleavened bread so that they're the equal of the roasted sacrificial lamb; they added the tradition of four glasses of wine, replacing the sacrificial meat, as an expression of joy; and they made the singing of Psalms something that all Jews rather than just the Levites do, all while maintaining that they had made no changes at all. A very interesting book, despite its
dry academic style.

[Uri Cohen]

The subtitle of this book should have been something like: How the Mishnah Subtlely Created the Seder for a World Without the Paschal Sacrifice. That, not the origins of the Seder throughout history, is Bokser's thesis. (I do appreciate his response to Stein about how much the Seder was influenced by the Symposium.)

First published in 1984, the book is highly technical, with a maximum of textual presentation and a minimum of explanation. For those of us who aren't professional scholars, Tabory's The JPS Commentary on the Haggadah: Historical Introduction, Translation, and Commentary is probably a better bet.

[David Simon]

This book is a good review of the history of the Seder. It goes back and reviews scriptures from the Torah, Prophets and New Testament, then looks at writings of Josephus, Philo and others to show the Passover his Hebraic, and not a Greek Symposium meal.

[Steve Gross]

Somewhat dated but still worthwhile.

[Khanan Abayev]

Informative! Written with an older style so it can be hard to read. Could probably have used a better editor.

[Dale Rosenberg]

Excellent overview of the early development of the seder, its relationship to previous Temple-based Passover rites and its relationship to the Greek symposium.