Congregational Seder

A congregation that has never conducted a congrega tional Seder has recently built a large dining hall and a kitchen. Now that these facilities are available, a demand has arisen from some members for the con gregation to hold a congregational Seder. The Rabbi and the Board are undecided as to whether to yield to this demand, since there is a general feeling that the Seder is primarily a home ceremony and there is, therefore, some danger that the congregational Seder may diminish the number of home Seders. Those who argue for a congregational Seder say that there are many old people who live in hotels and can no longer have a Seder, and also many young people who would learn from the public Seder how, in future years, to conduct a Seder in their home. Is there any material in Jewish law and tradition that would help the con gregation in its decision?

There is no doubt that by Jewish tradition the Seder is almost exclusively a home ceremony. Every stranger is to be invited to some home. This is evident from the law that the Kiddush (which was originally recited in the synagogue on the evenings of Sabbath and holidays for the benefit of strangers who were away from home) should not be recited in the synagogue on the Passover Eve service, because on that evening every stranger would be invited to a home. Therefore, if he drank the Kiddush in the synagogue, he would have five cups of wine instead of the four ordained by the law (Ha-Manhig, Hil. Pesach #51).

When, however, we begin with the Scriptural account of the Passover meal, we find that the custom of a home Seder was not always prevalent. At the very beginning (Exodus 12), it is clear that the intention was that each household should slay its paschal lamb, and that the family, or even two or three families in a group, should have their Seder. Even here it is clearly intended that a group may unite in partnership for the Seder (see R. Ishmael, Mechilta Tract. Pis-cha, ed. Lauterbach, I, 82). But basically the original Seder seemed clearly a family affair.

Yet in the narrative about Josiah and his reforms (II Kings 23 : 21-22) we are told that the king commanded the people to observe the Passover as it was written in the Book of the Covenant, and it continues: “For this Passover was not observed in this way since the days of the Judges and all the days of the kings of Israel and Judah.” Clearly there was some change of observance. This is indicated as follows in Deuteronomy 16 : 5-6: “You may not sacrifice this Passover in any of the cities which the Lord gives you, but only in the place in which the Lord shall choose to cause His name to rest. There you shall sacrifice the Passover at sunset and you shall cook and eat it in that place, and in the morning return to your home.” It is evident, then, that there was no longer any home Seder for the pilgrims. The paschal lamb could be eaten only in Jerusalem. Of course the people living in Jerusalem could have a home Seder. We must, then, assume that it was only after the destruction of the Temple that the home Seder developed.

It is generally held that thereafter the Seder was always exclusively in the home and (as indicated by the abolition of the Passover synagogue Kiddush) every stranger was invited to some home. There is only one reference in the legal literature against this general assumption that all Seders are home celebrations. Although this is one reference only, it is an important one from an unimpeachable source. Eliezar b. Joel Ha-Levi (Raviah I, 179, twelfth century), the great authority of the Rhineland, states in his code that in Spain it was the custom for the cantor (Sheliach Tsibur) to conduct the Seder in the synagogue, and he says that this was the custom in Spain and in Babylon.

There is no ground for doubting the statement of this authority, for there is a general argument which tends to confirm it. Even though this report as to the Seder is not quoted widely, there is a record of an analogous situation. We are told at the beginning of the Seder of Amram, in the question from Lucena, Spain, that the short blessings with which the daily services begin were recited in the synagogue by the cantor. But these blessings were meant to be recited at home at the various stages of arising from bed (when a man first steps on the floor, when he puts on his turban, girdle, et cetera). The questioner to Rav Amram says that in Spain, because many people cannot recite the Hebrew blessings which should be recited at home, it is the custom for the cantor to recite these blessings for them in the synagogue. Thus it happened that these home blessings found their way into our public service. Still another example from Spain of a home ritual transferred to the synagogue was the Havdala ceremony at the close of the Sabbath (cf. Ha-Manhig, Hil. Shabbas #70, #71).

Such consideration for those who could not recite the Hebrew has a firm precedent in the Mishnah. When the first fruits were brought and the confession prescribed in Deuteronomy 26 was to be recited, that ritual created embarrassment, since it had to be recited in Hebrew, which some did not know. Thereupon the custom arose for the priest to recite the confession for everybody, so as not to embarrass the unlearned (Bikkurim III, 7; Sota VII, 3; and Sifre to Deuteronomy 26).

It is evident that as the ritual of the service developed and the knowledge of Hebrew did not keep pace with it, it was in Spain that they faced the fact; both in the daily service and in the Passover Seder they arranged for public rather than private recital. Shem Tob Gaguin, the Sephardic rabbi of London and head of Montefiore College in Ramsgate, says in his four-volume work on the customs of contemporary Sephardim (Keter Shem Tob III, 106) that he regrets that this ancient custom of Spain referred to by Raviah has disappeared.

As for us, we are certainly in a situation analogous to the community of Spain in the early period of its development. The general knowledge among our people of how to conduct certain rituals certainly leaves much to be desired, and therefore, as in Spain, we are justified in having the public Seder. Yet we must do all that we can to prevent this public Seder from supplanting the home Seder, which is more in the general line of tradition. Our public Seders are justified when they are for the benefit of older people who no longer have a home or relatives to invite them, and for the benefit of young married people who, after observing the Seder, should be informed of their obligation in future years to conduct their own Seder at home. If the public Seder is accompanied with frequent emphasis on the primacy of the home Seder—in other words, if, as much as possible, it is self-liquidating, as was the public Seder in Spain—then it is justified by good sense, by the necessities of our time, and has a strong (if not well-known) precedent in the procedures of the early Jewish community of Spain.