"My Table is an Embassy of My Father's" - Rabbi Moshe Hauer

i'm david pardo i run the our initiatives and i am on a quest for the perfect seder join me and we're going to find out how to mask the magette with the magette of the masters rabbi moshe hauer is the executive vice president of the orthodox union prior to that he was the rav of beth jacob charade sion in baltimore for over 26 years he came to position of leadership in the ou in the storm of a global pandemic and has since demonstrated wise and visionary leadership on the national stage i'm excited to see what he has to say about his pesach theater could you tell us what the what the howard sata table looks like what what do you do what are you doing now in the week in advance of pesach to prepare for your seder what am i doing now to prepare for the seder in the formal sense personally i'm not doing that much to prepare for the seder and it's not necessarily perfectly you know illustrative i've had the privilege to teach torah and to teach about the seder and teach about that and to write about that for many many years so the material is there but the idea here is the following um the the seder has to be engaging and we got it but the torah tells us that you teach the child according to who they are is really a fulfillment of the notion that aina loma torah where their heart desires the way their heart desires and the seder has to be not a a presentation but it has to be completely and totally interactive and that means that you're responding to the questions that are on people's minds as they raise them and and trying to to move forward the discussion that way we prepare for that by a lifetime of jewish learning sometimes yes it's good to come we are armed with some specific ideas questions which you know will emerge and be up there on people's minds but you need to a great degree to be able to be spontaneous the seder can't be it can't be hand and if i can can i share a tip which helps maintain that you know many times when you have children at a seder and they come armed with duvre torah with thoughts and ideas sometimes like parents are a little worried they got like 432 divrei torah and that's just on urhats and they say you know how are we going to handle this how's the say you're not going to get out of control so there's a very valuable method i i think it's great and you know people sometimes joke it's supposed to be got it but of course it's a great way for for children to be engaged we do all kinds of stuff for children to be engaged when they're excited to speak you know that keeps them up that keeps them engaged and involved but here's the trick a child can say advar torah can share a thought that they brought with them use it every time as a step to the next piece of the discussion meaning if they just share with you a lord a thought and you take it and say okay on to the next one then you're allowing the seder to become canned to become just sort of like a bunch of statements but if when they share with you with that you say well one second wow that's so interesting and they have to take it to the next step you'll ask them something about what they said you'll point out a ramification of what they said so it's not a hit and run that they shared with but the torah is a springboard to the next step of discussion and i have found that it escapes a lot of the pitfall first of all of course it's not going to be an idea that they're just going to be rattling off to 432 thoughts it's just impossible to do that and they'll choose the next thought that they'll share as something which is going to be a good not just again a hit and run but a conversation starter where it's going to take it to to the next step so preparation is to be knowledgeable as best we can preparation yeah yeah of course we should read and learn before so that we have you know some some material that so to speak to some degree ready to go in taking the conversation in a in a certain direction but the greatest seder preparation in terms of this is to get into the mindset when you're going to sit down there that this is going to be an engaged interactive conversation of shayla of questions and answers and to have that kind of a focused and at the same time flexible and relaxed posture to the to to the sailor that's amazing that's a that's an amazing tip also because it's not a tip that's just that that is the problem yeah yeah yeah i agree do you wait till the kids you go around you wait till a kid kind of jumps up or or do you you go in a circle people take turns reading i'll tell you i'll just tell you something that i've tried to do my i i want my seder as much as possible to look in many ways like my father's seder can i tell you a beautiful little story it's a beautiful story um so i follow my father's i was not at my father's seder pretty much for 25 years one exception as my my parents moved to eretz israel at the same time that i became a congregational rabbi i couldn't go there and they weren't going to come to america for for youngsters they waited long enough to be an artichoke reactive and my father conducted you know until his last year the seder around his table one year our shul when after i was in school 18 years they were amazingly wonderful and they sent us so i could have pay stock with my parents we would base out this dairy and see sure i could have paid my father's stay at a table but every year on air of pesach i'm sorry every year in our face i told my father that i'm not at his table but there's a there's a an embassy of his table and i was worried i'm doing it the way he did it with his the way he said it the way he chanted it and and we do things the same way i eat the same way more that he ate more you know everybody had lettuce and there's you know like what do you do everything i tried to do as much as possible the way my father suffered did it so listen to something my son was learning in yeshiva and he had a havarusa whose name was howard his name was his harvest his name was howard he says carlos was his third cousin my my my second cousin's child we were they were learning together and this was the second cousin who i met for the first time when i was already i think graduating high school um our families because of the disruption not just of the second world war but even of the first world war were were separated and they were so they became friendly and before pesach before pesach the two of them said and they said by the way what's the tune what's the nusa that you use and they shared the tune of what they said and they said it the same way in other words our they had shared third cousins what that mean great great grandfathers a great grandfather i think great great grandfathers and and each one had faithfully conveyed and continued it so that now these third cousins who had never met each other before were were sharing the same way of saying the haggadah and that's of course part of the beauty of the seder it's part of the incredible beauty of the seder the the continuity le mans scores you remember the sade is about creating memories in so many ways it's about creating traditions about creating a sense of what a house is like and a family is like and that's the that's just like the the the richest part of it all you asked if we go around the table yeah so so so my father used to say the whole hague and we would we would say it along huh oh he stopped all the time he stopped all the time for us to say things for us to ask things for him to say things but there was a mama implies there was one person who said the haggadah for everybody it's perfectly legitimate to go around the table but that was my father's custom and that's the custom which we do as well and uh but everybody everybody says it says along it's very we know that it's very conducive to people joining and saying along it's not just red it's it's really all with a with with a tomb um we invite people to chime in sorry can we hear the tune can you hear the tool i'm loving that um it's uh we'll see we'll see but um but the the the um we encourage people like hazel taurus now the gemara says that you would give out to children they would give out to children cleos vegos which is basically like sweets or treats or something like that when did they give it the gemara's not perfectly clear when they gave it it sounds like they they gave it out on their viente and they were so maybe they were hyper they couldn't go to sleep or whatever it is but what we've done is we do it during the seder and and and i'll i'll share with you phase one and then i'll share with you the true genius here which is which is my wife's genius what happened that has added incredibly incredibly to to our seder and to the family members for our children memories for our children you know to this uh to this to this day so we used to we we reward people we have our hashem we had our children around the table we had many guests and we wanted to encourage people to speak and so i always had in front of me a a a basket of treats uh sometimes they were chocolate lentils uh which you're allowed to have in the lentils are kidneys but chocolate lentils are not kidneys um or or some other kind of a of a of a candy something which you know they're halachus you're allowed to eat it during maggot um but certainly people could certainly store it up sometimes they got so to speak tickets towards it towards a prize but people would say something and i would it would i would send something to them and of course it was it was a lot of fun it was not just okay you did something you get a reward right somebody would would you know somebody would say can you please pass the salt water here you get a ticket you know but just you know like piling it on and using it as a method of engagement the the addition may i show you exhibit a rabbi pardo please i don't know if you can see this but this is a basket of what you can get in your neighborhood dollar store or pharmacy of easter eggs okay i didn't want to help that's okay okay right but that's it's a seasonal item that's available and they they open up they open up so my wife came up with this plan years ago where every year of pay stuff you will you know canada she's a busy person busy preparing for a seder busy preparing for a three-day auntie she disappears for a couple of hours and she's busy putting a little a letter a piece of paper with a letter on it the letter e with a little number three in the corner for example goes in this egg and all those comes together into this basket and during the seder instead of just giving out candies sometimes a person asks a question i give them an egg and another egg and another egg the idea is that when you have all the eggs you can piece together a message so again so each egg has a letter with a little number in the corner looks like a scrabble letter but it's not a point and and right three is the third word in the sequence so you get all these letters and eventually now they don't usually get all the eggs by the end of the seder they don't get them all but they have to piece it together and by by the time they get up to school by the time you get up to the meal they have enough to start piecing something together and it's very motivating it's very very motivating and it doesn't matter how old you are by the way and how serious you are and how much by the way you're laughing at this with this ah my parents are doing this thing it's unbelievable it's beautiful and by the time they have it they piece together and they have they have a statement they have a sentence and it says something now what's that what does it say what does it say it was it's it's always a family surprise something a family a family dream maybe it's going to be something that we're going to do on halloween maybe it's going to be something that we're going to be doing in the summertime you know my my my my parents for example once uh they they had many years ago they had their 50th wedding anniversary and they lived in israel and they they brought everybody together for ah so that pesach previous the seder surprise was that we're going to be going territory srila in the summer but we didn't just tell it to them and we didn't want to tell them we don't believe in surprises like a last minute surprise we wanted that anticipation so two months before three months before they had this seder thing and it spelled out with a hangman chart i remember remember what it was what it is sometimes we just get them like a family ethically present everybody you know one year we got everybody one of those firm pillows you know what are they called the memory foam pillow you know we'll cover the pace up for haseva we've got every every everybody in the family we got them we got the one so what happened the seder surprise said go look i'm i'm making this episode go look in the front closet and he went to the front closet and there was a note in the front closet which said uh you know secrets are better found in the refrigerator downstairs and they went to the refrigerator downstairs and then there was another note telling them to a third place and they're running around and excited and then eventually they land in some place where they find a bunch of these pillows and so it's it's it's beautiful because during the seder they're completely engaged in just trying to get another egg and it doesn't distract it doesn't distract it the conversation is engaging and this is that little extra motivation to keep them awake to engage them and then you know after the market when people are a little spent you know and tired then a new realm of excitement starts and that is okay now we got to piece this together and find it and it happens while the meal is going on and while it's doing it and and then the search it's just the the memories which it builds incomparable incomparable stroke of genius do you have your message ready for this year i tell you the truth my i sh she certainly my wife is certainly planning it we there's a there's a surprise to you too now many times it's a bit of a surprise to me sometimes it's not but it's uh you know many times again we we coordinate but but it's uh it's it's my wife's specialty and she does it like really really great so it's wonderful don't be scared and you know the pesach is again it's the cornerstone it's the cornerstone of our memory of our experience of our own personal story our own our own identity and that cornerstone has to be poured with joy it has to be poured with joy there there are plenty of tears in it but the tears shouldn't be of the difficult variety pesach can be over experienced in a certain sense in the sense of the preparation we can make it more difficult than it that that than it needs to be the the the simcha the joy that it is possible to generate in a house around peso preparation is the you know that's really the magic of the whole thing it's the magic of the whole thing have music playing to have tasks you know accomplish together as as a as a team yes it's wishful to say it'll just happen without any any stress but we as fathers and mothers as participants in the seder have to have a singular goal that we're going to enjoy this that this is going to be something which is going to be a source of positive memory and positive experience and boy can it be that way it really really can and the the value of that is so immense it's so immense it's it's uh it's it's uh it's beyond the words and um [Music] this is hashem everyone's gonna get there we'll all get there to you know and uh this year we have a gift era of pay stuff that comes out on shabbos we have i i personally creates all these complicated halachus and how we're going to how we're going to manage the crumbs we can manage it we the gift is that you get to catch your breath on her pesach you get to catch your breath you can you can yeah just you first of all you don't have to go into airplanes and the satellite exhausted because you can have a uh you can rest on job this afternoon you can you can learn toad on child this afternoon of preparation you could you could learn through the bringing of the carbon pesach during the time when it would be broad as it would be it's such a you know without having to run around the running around this friday and then like as you would imagine you would want to pres you know spend there of pesach we get to so enjoy the gift enjoy the gift and let it lower the temperature for that uh for that night for that very very special night beautiful brother thank you everybody how are you should have a good listener five of us kusher price off thank you you too [Music] you