We Just Had The Largest Seder Ever
Tech Tribe Dispatch #56
Original art by Meredith Miotke for Chabad.org
“Ven der tatte kumt a heim fuhn shul...When Father comes back from shul, he quickly makes kiddush before the children get sleepy, so they can ask the Mah Nishtanah”
These words, recited in Yiddish, traditionally narrate the Seder, guiding and informing each step of the evening.
Berel, our eldest son, wiry and boisterous at ten years-old, stood up on a chair and belted them out. It’s something he’s done every year for our many guests.
But this year, like Jews around the world, we celebrated a decidedly different Passover.
For the past 15 years, first as a rabbinical student and later with my family, I hosted Jews of all backgrounds, from all walks of life, for the Passover seder. This wasn’t a secondary decision to the yearly Passover practice, a nice addition that came with the brisket. It was at the very heart of the whole holiday: As the Rebbe taught, how can we say “all who are hungry, come and eat” if we haven’t done our utmost to make sure that every Jew has a chance to join and partake in the Seder?
This year, like many of my colleagues, we worked to get #PassoverInABox kits to everyone we could. But those seders, conducted by friends at the safety of their homes throughout the city, meant that we were all apart.
So this year, with a single table and none of the guests, I prepared to celebrate the festival of liberation with my family as we sheltered in place.
In many ways, I was incredibly lucky—lucky to be able to have a complete Passover meal with matzah and wine, and even more so, to have the loved ones to share it with. So many other Jews celebrated alone, far from the bustling seder tables and sights and smells of family and comfort.
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In the dark years of the 1930s in the Soviet Union, Rabbis Nochum Pinson and Shlomo Matusof, then just yehsivah students, spent the night of Passover in a cellar in Siberia, hiding from the NKVD - the Soviet secret police.
With no matzah or wine, the two young Russian chasidim conducted their seder with the only thing they had - potatoes seasoned with the salt of their tears.
But when the seder had ended, the two began to sing a positive, upbeat song. One that nourished their souls throughout that long, bitter night.
“May we merit, live, see, and inherit good and blessings, in the era of Moshiach and the life in the world to come.”
They danced together - there alone, far from their families, in a Russian cellar, hiding from the Soviet police.
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I mulled over these thoughts—of privilege and connection and loneliness—and made kiddush.
We drank the wine and prepared for the next step when suddenly Levi, our three-year-old, looked up in a combination of shock and horror, his older brother's words ringing in his ears:
“Tatty, you forgot to come home from shul!”
The story is related that the Shpoler Zeide, Rabbi Aryeh Leib of Shpoli, once tols his son why it was so important that the children stay awake for the Mah Nishtanah
“Our Father, G‑d, comes home from shul—he sees the hard work and preparations the Jewish people put into Passover, their exhaustion and toil, and yet, despite it all, they still go to the synagogue to sing His praises.”
“So our Father in Heaven rushes to say the kiddush, to sanctify us, to draw us near and bring us home, to take us out of Exile.”
“For if He were to delay,” the Shpoler Zeide concluded, “we would become exhausted—exhausted from the difficulties we have experienced, inured to the suffering of the world— asleep to it all and unable to ask G‑d the Four Questions, to ask Him the tough questions—‘Why is this night different, why is the world so dark, so difficult, why do we suffer?’”
And this year there has been a lot of suffering in the world…
Yet, though it all - through the distance and suffering, the death and the contagion - we made it to the Seder. Alone, in our apartments, in our homes, but at the table.
Perhaps, one wonders though, that this is actually the largest Passover ever.
At home, unable to come back from shul, unable to rely on the normal experiences of nostalgia, we realize that it was in the simplicity of that moment, the purity of our desire to celebrate, that we are not waiting for G‑d to come back from the synagogue and hear us—but rather we celebrated with Him. Each and every place we as a people celebrated, were not Seders done in isolation, but rather were combined parts of one massive, collective, seder with G‑d.
We are truly all together.
🏃 DO:
🏠 Stay home! We’re working on virtual events - so sit tight and flatten the curve!
📞 After Passover we’ll start rabbis hours - a chance to schmooze and catch up on Skype, Zoom, the phone or whatever you’d like. I’m here to hear you kvetch . . . or to study together.
🍷 🍪 This Thursday, there is a custom started by the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the chasidic movement, to make a final meal, called “Moshiach’s Meal.”
All you need to do is eat, drink four cups of wine, and experience the spirit of the day. Sing some songs!
🎬 Watch:
Up now on Amazon Prime:
Outback Rabbis
On a road trip like no other, Chasidic rabbis hit the Aussie bush looking for ‘lost Jews.’
📚 Read:
🚗 I wrote about how Deliveroo Partnered With Chabad in UK to Bring Seders-to-Go Helping people celebrate in the safety of their own homes
👮 The New Yorker profiles Aleph, Chabad’s initiative to help prisoners: Preparing Prisons for Passover in a Plague Year
🔁 A condensed version of this email is up on Chabad.org
😢 Remembering some of those who passed from the Coronavirus: Rabbi Sholom Eidelman, 84, Served Moroccan Jewry for More Than 60 Years
Rabbi Yehudah Leib Groner, 88, Aided the Rebbe for More Than Four Decades
📸 For members of our Chai Society: ✨ The Mysterious Portrait of the Rebbe