Recently, my two brothers and I were
reminiscing about our childhood years. My brothers started to sing some old
songs; I noticed that almost all of them were Seder songs. My mind drifted back
over the years to our family Sedarim. To my father, the Seder night was of
supreme importance. In one of his
recorded shiurim, he said:
As
we sit around the magnificent table, we relive the birth of our nation together
with our children. In the process, we impart to our children their spiritual
genetic makeup. Everything that they will accomplish in life, the success of
their individual missions in life, the people that they will grow into –
everything! Everything depends upon the way that we transmit our mesorah
to them.
But what is that “way”? How does
the Seder transmit the mesorah? What
do such lofty ideas as the “birth of our nation,” our “genetic makeup,” and our
“mission in life” have to do with whether we use potatoes or celery for karpas? Whether we tip the cos or drip the wine with our finger?
Pesach is a holiday with many
halachos but it is also, perhaps
more than any other Yom Tov, replete with minhagim.
They are the conduit through which the mesorah
is passed down, the audiovisual/kinesthetic/culinary spectacle that makes
the Seder memorable. Here are some memories of our family’s minhagim as well as those of the people
I spoke to.
Songs
of the Seder
In our home, Seder night was the
night of singing. Since my parents were from Germany, I assume that the tunes
as well as the special songs we sang were part of the tradition of German
Jewry. I remember “Adir Hu,” which describes
the attributes of Hashem. For some reason, it was always sung in Hebrew and
translated into German. The chorus was Nu Bow Dein Temple Schiere, which
means “build Your Beis Hamikdash quickly.”
I remember people wishing others something about “Bowing de Gut,” meaning,
did you sing the words of the song properly? (My neighbor told me that even
though her husband was not from a German background he thought this song was
important and taught it to his students.) We also used to sing three songs at
the end of the Seder: first Yigdal,
then Adon Olam, and then Ein
Klokeinu in a few different languages. I always thought that was a German
custom, but I do not really know for sure.
A cousin from England told me that his father, who was
from Germany but did not like to speak German, did sing Echad Mi Yodea in German with great enthusiasm.
My first cousin, Mrs. Judy Neuberger from Yeshiva Lane,
remembered that my parents went to her parents for the Seder for many years.
In later years, Judy and her husband, Rabbi Sheftel, z”l, used to come to my parents to sing songs with us after they
finished their own Seder.
Whose
Customs Do We Follow?
When a young couple gets married,
they must figure out whose customs they will keep – the husband’s or the wife’s.
Tova, a woman married for many years, explained the conflict she and her
husband had. “My father sang all the Seder songs with a certain tune. I was
horrified when my husband wanted to sing the tunes that his family sang. By now,
40 years later, we have made peace. My husband’s tunes have become my own!”
Sometimes, a husband’s minhagim make Pesach easier. My nephew
says that when he asked his wife if she was unhappy to take on his minhagim, she replied, “No!” She was more than
thrilled to be able to eat machine
matzos, gebrochts, and bought products.
I heard another interesting story
from a relative. Tova said, “My grandfather only ate machine matzahs because he
felt that no human could be as perfect as a machine. My father only ate hand
matzahs. When my father married my mother there was a bit of a problem, but
then my father convinced my grandfather to use hand matzahs for the Seder so
they would be made with intention of doing the mitzvah.
Here are
some examples of different minhagim that I
heard about while researching this article: At Urchatz, some people have
the custom that just the head of the Seder washes his hands, and the water is
brought to the table as though he were a king. Others have everyone at the Seder
wash their hands. Some people fill the kos shel Eliyahu before benching,
while others fill it a little at a time as the participants drink each kos.
Then, of course, there is the very
strange custom of stealing the afikomen.
In some families, the children hide the afikomen
from the father, and in some families, the father hides the afikomen from the children.
I asked my other cousins what they
remember about the Seder. My cousin from England said, “I took on a custom I
saw from my father-in-law, who was from Czechoslovakia. After breaking the
middle matzah and putting half of it in a little bag, he used to sling it over
his shoulder and walk around the room followed by all the children singing a
particular song: ‘We are going out of Mitzrayim with the dough on our back,’ thus
bringing alive how the Yidden left Egypt.”
A reader, Chaiah Schwab, said, “I learned
a Pesach tradition from my dad, in the 50s to 60s: Dad used to walk around the
dining room table carrying a pillow slung over his shoulder like a sack, held
by a corner, saying, ‘I’m leaving Egypt!’ Now I’m a ‘gramma’ (even a great
gramma!), and I enact it for my grandkids.”
The night following Pesach also has
its traditions. My parents always had a neilas
hachag at the end of Yom Tov. We ate
chocolate spread on matzah and sang the Seder songs again. Then there was “rumpeling.” Everyone cleans up after
Pesach, putting away the Pesach dishes and taking out the dishes for the year,
but not everyone rumpels!
That night when all the cleaning up happens was called rumpel nacht. The
words mean “night of chaos,” which is a good description of it. Good Jewish
German families wished each other a good rumpel.
Food,
Glorious Food
People have all kinds of hiddurim
(enhancements) and chumros
(stringencies) when it comes to food on Pesach. The stores today are full of
convenience foods – including Pesachdik “Cheerios,” “pasta,” and even packaged
salt water. However, many families do not eat any commercial products at all,
making everything from mayonnaise to jelly to candy from scratch.
Judy Neuberger told me that when
she was growing up they did not eat chicken. She thinks it was because the Jews
in Germany lived in many little villages, where there was no permanent rabbi.
If a chicken was shechted and had
grain in its stomach, the question was whether it could be eaten on Pesach.
Since there was no rabbi to ask, it was the German minhag not to eat chicken at all on Pesach. Another cousin said
that, since they do not cook chicken on Pesach itself, they have the custom of
cooking all the chicken dishes and chicken soup before Yom Tov and freezing it.
Others do not buy milk on Pesach for the same reason, because of the chametz that the cows eat; rather,they
rather buy all their milk before Pesach. These minhagim most likely come from the halacha that chometz before Pesach can be nullified (batel) but chometz on Pesach cannot be nullified.
Mishing is a
custom that sometimes leads to bad feelings. Someone who doesn’t mish
(mix) only eats
food from their own home on Pesach and does not eat at anyone else’s home, even
if the other family keeps the same minhagim. I saw an article by Rabbi
Yona Weiss, the av beis din of the CRC
about this minhag.
Whichever
practice is adopted, it is important to respect and appreciate the legitimacy
and authenticity of long-established practices and stringencies accompanying
the Pesach holiday. Families should not be insulted if friends follow the
practice of not eating out for Pesach, nor should they feel inhibited from
maintaining such a practice themselves, although they should be careful to
apply their practice consistently to all individuals in order not to slight
anyone.
Seder
Everlasting
What is fascinating about
Pesach is how engrained it is even among Jews to whom the traditions have been
diluted. The “magnificent table,” the special food, and the strange customs
surely made the mesorah comes alive.
Rochel, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, grew
up in a non-observant home. Although the family did not keep Shabbos or kashrus, they did keep Pesach. Her
mother cleaned the house thoroughly and took down their special Pesach dishes.
(These were accumulated from the china that movie theaters in the ’50s used to
award you with each time you came.) “Of course, we did not eat bread the whole
week,” said Rochel. “My mother had told me about how she and the other inmates
of concentration camp did not eat bread on Pesach even in those dire
circumstances, and I proudly brought matzah sandwiches to my public elementary school.
I still remember my indignation at all the Jewish kids who ate regular bread sandwiches
on Pesach.”
At the Seder, Rochel’s father sat at the head of the
table and read the Haggadah. Rochel followed along in English from the
pocket-sized Maxwell House Haggadah, captivated by the story and the vivid
illustrations of the slaves’ suffering and the crossing of the turbulent waters
of the Yam Suf. “Even though our Pesach was not a halachic one, it was enough
to inspire me with the story of the Jewish people.”
Rivka, another woman who grew up in a non-observant
home says, “Pesach was great fun. The highlight of the Seder was stealing the afikomen and getting together with
relatives. In our family, Pesach was more important than Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur. We ate matzah, but I don’t think we bought many kosher l’Pesach
products.”
Tirtza, also a baalas
teshuva, remembers one Pesach in particular. “Although we were not shomer Shabbos, my father led the Seder
and read the Haggadah every year. One year, he read in the instructions that
one must drink most of the cup of wine. That was for my benefit since I had
started to become frum. Well, our
cups were 14 ounces. By the end of the second cup, I was basically drunk!”
*
* *
Much of this article is about my
family’s minhagim from Germany. I am sure that my readers have other minhagim
that I never heard off. I would love to hear about your minhagim,
and maybe I can write about them next Pesach.
Sidebar
My
friend Shulamis Juravel told me that her husband, Rabbi Juravel, z”l, a fifth grade rebbe in TI for many
years, gave his students a list of 114 questions to ask their family about
every small minhag of the Seder. He
wanted the kids to notice and respect their family’s minhagim. In Rabbi
Juravel’s introduction to the questions, he wrote, “Yiddishkeit has
survived the galus intact because of our ability to transmit the mesorah
of our fathers to our children…. Having your son aware of these minhagim
will kindle his interest in keeping the minhagei Yisrael, and especially
those of his family.”
Here are only 10 of the questions.
You can see how every small detail was important:
1.
Do you keep the door locked, unlocked, or open during
the Seder?
2. Do you put
salt water on the Seder plate?
3. What
ingredients go into the charoses?
4.
Does your father wear a hat at the Seder?
5.
Do you
sit or stand for kiddush?
6.
Do you
sit or stand for Kiddush?
7.
After the
child asks the Ma Nishtana, is it
repeated by the leader of the Seder?
8.
Do you
eat the egg on the Seder plate, other eggs, or none at all?
9.
Do you
save a piece of the afikoman to burn with the chometz the next year?
10. Does the person who opens the door say “Shfoch chamascha” by the door or back at the table with everyone?
