Wow. That was the longest and latest seder I have *ever* been to. We were still singing at nearly 2 o'clock in the morning! (Then again, we also started around 9.) I missed my last bus and spent the night at the Ravenna Kibbutz! We used seven different haggadot simultaneously! We sang the entire Chad Gadya, complete with animal noises! There were matzah balls! And fresh horseradish that nearly gave me a heart attack! We dipped! We leaned! We drank! It was a wonderful seder.
Here's the best new thing I learned: the word chag does not actually mean "holiday." It means "pilgrimage," and refers to the times in which the Israelites who lived outside Jerusalem would journey in for major festivals.
This word, chag, shares an important root with an Arabic word: haj. According to the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, "Just as Haj to Mecca is a requirement for the Moslem (if one can afford it) so is the Chag to Jerusalem if one is a Jew." (citation)
During benching, I sang "Harachaman hu ya sim shalom ben b'nai Sarah u'vayn ben b'nai Hagar" - May the Merciful One make peace between the children of Sarah and the children of Hagar.
Abrahim, the one mizrachi at the table (or maybe he was Muslim. I couldn't figure it out the whole night), smiled at me for that one and added an "Amen."
It feels like Pesach for real now.
1 comment:
We were still singing at nearly 2 o'clock in the morning! (Then again, we also started around 9.) [...] We used seven different haggadot simultaneously! We sang the entire Chad Gadya, complete with animal noises! There were matzah balls! And fresh horseradish that nearly gave me a heart attack! We dipped! We leaned! We drank!
Apart from the animal noises, that sounds like all of my family's seders.
Chag Sameach!
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