Word: sedere
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...rich and magical aspects of the Passover celebration have not been encouraged among the hundreds of thousands of Reform Jews in North America. Some Reform Jews used other texts, of course, but since 1923 their official Haggadah has offered a resolutely rational and somewhat wan celebration of the Seder. It held no reference, for example, to the ten plagues, because, as one Reform authority now sheepishly explains, the plagues were considered "unworthy of enlightened sensitivities." The climactic, ringing phrase "Next year in Jerusalem!" was omitted too. It seemed overly Zionist to many Reform Jews of the time. The diligent preparations...
...this night different from all other nights?" a child would ask at the Seder, the ritual meal on the first night of the week-long feast. Why the matzo? Why the bitter herbs? Then, as the family followed the rites set down in the Haggadah (literally, a "telling"), the old story would unfold: the bitter slavery under the Pharaoh and God's scourging of Egypt with plagues until the children of Israel were set free. And always, that last terrible plague, when the wrath of God slew the first-born of every Egyptian but passed over the houses...
Similarly, the new text includes a much more specific welcome to the prophet Elijah, who is expected to "visit" each Seder. "From beyond," says the new text unabashedly, "Elijah's spirit enters these walls ..." The expansion of the Elijah rite, Rabbi Bronstein explains somewhat prolixly, is a move "to preserve a sense of reverence before the mysterious pluralities of the transcendent." In another symbolic touch, an innovation of their own, the Reform liturgists have added a fifth cup of wine to the four traditional cups drunk by the celebrants-a cup that is left untasted "as a sign...
...think you're cute, don't you, Dunlop? Did Derek Bok go to church on Easter, Dunlop? Or on Good Griday, Ash Monday, and Passover? A Freedom Seder, perhaps? Or a midnight mass celebrated by a homosexual defrocked Jesuit married to a former nun? Dunlop, I'm afraid you're really up shit creek without a paddle. And you can tell your friends in Hanoi that the President is a merciful man, but his mercies do not endure forever...
...with one people. That compact often seems "exclusive," yet according to the Old Testament, God did charge his people with a message of love and justice for the world. Thus Passover also means a kind of redemption to Jews, a redemption anticipated in the climactic affirmation that ends the Seder celebration: "Next Year in Jerusalem!" For two millenniums that cry has been the Jews' link to the homeland and each other, a confident pledge that they will one day be reunited in Israel...