You're the Conductor Not the Speaker

[Music] we're on we're yeah oh okay so this is my question this is like my i'm sorry one moment i should look at you or look at that me okay how do people pull off the greatest seder like what do you do at your seder do you do you prep every year do you do something different every year do you do things the same every year right does everyone have to say my god okay so let's talk about the seder um so i think that to have a successful seder it begins with understanding what is the goal the goal is the mitzvah of the night is separate so the mitzvah of the night is to tell a story and to have everyone at the table become part of that story to have that story mean something to them to have that story um enter into their consciousness beyond just a surface narrative of something that happened specifically from a perspective to have that story become part of you in a deeper way than just the memory because that's the distinction between the mitzvah of saturn night and the story of ethious messiah the rest of the year so i think it begins with understanding what is the goal i think that by definition since the mitzvah is to relate this story to a lot of different individuals it's going to mean different things for different people and it's going to resonate in different ways for different people so i think that if you lock yourself in to a particular lesson or a particular theme or a particular message at the seder and you view the seder as sort of almost like a class with a lot of interactive and experiential components to convey that theme or that message or that idea then i think you'll fall short of what the fundamental goal is i think the fundamental goal is to animate the people who are there um and i think you see that by virtue of the fact that there are so many things that we do to elicit curiosity and some of them we don't even resolve with a clear answer some things we do with the seder so that people will ask questions and if they were to actually pose those very questions the answer is we're doing these things so you can ask questions what is the point of that right so some focus on the fundamental ideal of questioning that judaism embraces questions shaas begins with a question we love questions we're not a just simply a dogmatic you know here's our rules and regulations but i think it's something deeper because a question ultimately originates in a sense of curiosity and wonder within the context of the person who's asking it if our goal is to evoke questions that means what we really want is to hear your voice we want to hear the voices of everyone around the seder so i bring that up because my approach to seder is first of all to chill out and to recognize that your goal is to get people engaged and to animate their sense of interest in the story of isis mitzrayim so you're a conductor you're not a speaker and a conductor recognizes that there's a violin section and a trumpet section and a timpani in all different instruments that are all gonna play different you know different melodies different things different uh components and they'll have different voices at different times and sometimes they'll play together and sometimes they'll play individually your job is to get the most out of all of these musicians that's what you're trying to accomplish so when you sit down to prepare the seder you have to think of that about that in a pragmatic way and an educational way in a pragmatic way you have to think about it in the sense that you have to create an experience that has enough structure so that people don't lose interest and it's not chaotic but enough space for individuality that everybody really feels like they're connecting with their part of the story how do you create space when the script is written great so um again depending on who's at your seder and what their level of knowledge is and background is and those kinds of things um i don't use the haggadah as a script i'm not even sure the haggadah was intended to be um embraced as a script of super utilius mitsuran um i use the haggadah as here is a series of thematic ideas from which we can engage in a way that we find meaningful so you know let's take dayenu um i will not set it to seder and pontificate about all the different steps of dieno that's for a sheer hondayano dalleno is a beautiful composition and you can study it and explore it and learn through all the different commentaries on it but at the seder dayenu is supposed to evoke something it's supposed to evoke a sense of gratitude a sense of appreciation for where we are and where we're going and what's happening so if i were to call the mufarshi mandayenu i would try to extrapolate a point or an idea or a comment that would try to convey that value to the to the seder and then try to ask the participants of the seder to reflect on that or to mention it themselves so if you're dealing with young children it's you know what are you thankful for you know what did you have this year that um if you didn't have in the past that you know it would have been enough what is enough what is you know those discussion points are just as important as singing the song so i think it starts with first of all um relating to the haggadah not just as a continuous text but sort of i mean at least at our seder there are parts of the haggadah that we just read through rather quickly and there are parts of the haggadah that we stop and say okay this is this is a moment of pause to connect to a particular idea to a particular concept to a particular theme then i mean we're doing our siddhari mostly with our children so we hand it to them what do you have to say about the theme often what they have to say about the theme is what they learned in school so we do a lot of preparation with that um we do not let the seder just go on autopilot and every kid come with a 16-inch binder and start sharing machalim for nine hours what we try to do is sit with them beforehand and set expectations we use other meals of pesach to share divreitora from the haggadah from the school but for the haggadah itself for the saturday night itself so one of the things we do is we get those um colored sticky notes and one colors for one night and one colors for the other night and we sit with them before the seder and we go through okay what did your teacher give you on manish time so i have these seven things to say about nanashana okay which two do you like the best which two do you like which are your favorite two you jump ahead of the the binder situation right what are your favorite two i want you to put the red one in your first favorite and the green one on your second favorite so first of all they're making the choice it's not like we only have time for two so tell me the first two things you learned in school and we don't have time for the rest no you think about what these say which two do you which two are your favorite now favorite means different things to different types of people for an intellectual kid favorite might mean what's the most intellectually stimulating for a more emotional kid favorite might mean it has the best story that's what you're trying to do you're trying to reach their individuality through this experience you so you put one for one and one for the other sometimes we'll say okay put two and two and if we but but prioritize which one is your favorite favorite you know and if we can get to two we'll get to two because one of the things that we try to do with the seder is we try to keep it moving um i'm not a big fan of the post seder you know who stayed up to four o'clock in the morning um we try to keep it moving and we try to keep it moving by um choreographing to some degree at least what's going to be said from a quantitative standpoint and then trying to leave space for interaction and discussion so it's not just everybody coming to the seder with their own sort of like narrative that they're just going to share um what do i prepare for the savior so i prepare probably three or four insights that i say the same every year and that's pretty much become like a family moment um that you know when the kids were younger they enjoyed as they got older they rolled their eyes by the time they're teenagers they're completely cynical about and once they grow up it's like the greatest memory in the world that's what family moments are you know it's the same every year absolutely no no it's coming they know it's coming you know you know why do they keep hitting the frog and the kid's like like literally like it's it's painful are they bad jokes or are they tired of our thoughts both um the same torah the same joke but what it does is it it it binds us together as a family because it's it's a family moment and they know that family moment and by the way when they've heard these different torah in different contexts let's say a speaker is coming to speak in parish's bow you know they hear it there's a smile that comes on their face because they're like oh that's my dad's you know so i have a few of those and then i prepare some questions um if i feel like there's not enough interaction i think about you know different questions um but the questions i always try to raise as something that would be of interest you know to them um and we try to keep it moving we try to keep it moving um i when the kids were much younger i said the text of like say lamad really quickly really quickly sometimes later in the night i would actually go back to it and learn through it a little more um on my own um but what'd you end up with no i would learn it with one of the periods yeah for my own like i wanted to feel like i connected to see pts mitzrayim through the lima torah of you know the goddess but when the kids were too young to you know be patient through it i mean that was it we got from manishtana you know today like i wanted them to feel like the sata was moving um and i would land on things that were more um meaningful for them so we did a lot of that um [Music] i think the other the other thing to think about is you know this you know pesach is a is a seven day or eight day holiday with lots of different themes and ideas seder knight has a particular goal you don't have to concentrate every relevant theme and idea of pesach into this one night you know so you know like i've i have um seen people so they'll you know the kids will share what they want to share and then the person leaving the seder has like some very profound idea from rabbi sax from rabbi salvatic from you know from one of these like a very grandiose like profound idea and the kids are like kind of sitting there like listening to this and i think you have to think about like there's a minimal amount of time you have to capture their attention especially in today's world you have to think about what you want to do with that time and how much of it you want to spend on themes that resonate with you that don't necessarily resonate with them and and sometimes as kids get older or if you have a broader group at the seder you do want to bring in some of those themes but what i never ever do is like i don't have like to me other than the family ritual devre torah i don't have i don't walk in with like pedagogical you know required goals of things i want to share like to me if there's space that i can fill with a nice idea that's more philosophical or higher level i will if i feel like the momentum isn't there and the space isn't there there's some catching there's some uh people are tired this year won't say shabbos gonna start later i can't prepare until after shabbos you know if i feel like i'm losing them then you know we switch to more experiential things more interactive things you know you could speak to plenty of people we do all of the puppets and all of the yeah these plagues we absolutely do stick we're so overboard i've never dressed up at the seder no we don't go overboard with it um little little froggies the we do the frogs and we do the and we do the plagues you know and we do i would say we do it in a more measured way um you know because again um as opposed to some other context of of jewish life i don't see the goal of the seder is just for them to have a good time you know what i'm saying um you know it's like when the kids come to school for shabbos and they're very very young you know so i wanted to play games i wanted to i want them to associate show with having a good time candy you know to me like the golden seder is not for them to just walk out and say i like the seder i like the seder because someone behaved like a goofball and because uh someone gave me lots of candy to eat and to sort of buy their spiritual affection for the holiday um i think that i would want i would use those tactics as um triggers to try to get to what i'm really trying to get to you know what i'm saying which is i want them i want it to come from them i want them to feel connected to the seder i want them to feel um you know and so therefore to me it's not as much of a performance as much as how do i pull the questions enthusiasm thoughts ideas or even just curiosity out of them um so still performance is just that they're also performing yeah exactly get them going that to me that's the you know that's the best i i'm just a little i i it's hard for me i i don't connect to like the i wouldn't say that we're the biggest schick seder i have no critique of it at all i think it's amazing i think it's great if it works for your family it's great but i like them to walk away from the cedar also feeling a little more of the malhouse and the formality of the experience i think that's important um it's not camp you know um it's it's it's a sacred experience and that should be part of it you know so to figure out how to balance those two things and i think for different families it's it's different things um we also try to have the parts of the seder that don't have to schlep move along this is like a very pragmatic piece and that is that if you want to make space for the parts that are more meaningful then you have to think about the time that you have and how to manage that time so for many many years one of the things that we do is we try to prepare a lot of the measurements of the mozza and the motor and stuff in advance so it's just handed out and eaten so we don't waste a lot of time you know you know you want a half a fourth a fifth or whatever you know with those kinds of things the meal this is a big thing in our house the meal is one course we do not do soup we do not do meatballs we do not do fish we do not do we we get the shogunara all the foods on the table with the dessert we do dessert everything's on the table eat what you want for 15 minutes because we're looking for the afrikomen you know and uh and then we're moving it along soup is eaten very slowly because it's hot and it has to be served it has to be cleared it has to be washed you have to bring out the next course you extend the meal a lot you know so we've always tried to keep the meal as short as possible um and all these different like logistics of the seder um as um you know smooth as possible so that we could so that we're not hitting your cell with the songs at one o'clock in the morning we're hitting it in a more reasonable hour and everybody including us this is not just about keeping kids awake we're also exhausted by the time we hit the seder including us that we can feel excited and and uh and built up and and those kinds of things um so that's that's a that's a big piece i think family traditions are are beautiful at the same arts just think about you know the family recipe for flarosis the family dishes that you use for different things um something that we've done in the past on the sit on saturday night and also in on yomtov in general sometimes like we have from mostly from my wife's family um like dishes that were from europe and you know from like early early early in the family so these are not dishes we would necessarily um like eat meals off of they're like family heirlooms so you know we'll we'll bring them you mean literal dishes yeah don't mean like yeah i have over there on the mantel a plate from the 1700s and it's it's engraved with hebrew names and and with the date literally from the 1700s it's it's some sort of metallic um item so you know we'll bring the new fruit for rosh hashanah to the table and you know on these dishes like these kinds of things like bringing the past into the you know into the future like create certain family um rituals and moments you know that that become you know part of the experience in a meaningful way uh so i think seder night is a very beautiful night for those kinds of moments so while we're all always looking for innovative ways to make our seder better um and i think that's true i would not discount some of the things that even if you don't think they're the most ideal approach they're your family seder that's what your family sater does you know and it's it's sort of a ritual my mother-in-law um leo shalom made me a uh crocheted pillowcase of the manustana you know for seder night and every year you know that's that's the pillowcase for say tonight and there's there's a connection there's a connection to the past there's a connection to you know even certain family jokes um my father-in-law allah used to come to all of our saddaram and he was a lady so whenever i broke the middle matzo you know he would say ouch you know when the kids were very little they would laugh at this you know they thought it was most hysterical thing in the world because you're breaking the the the matzo start calling later and you throw so he would say ouch and as the kids got older he kept doing it and and even when they they're teenagers and and you know 18 years old he kept doing it and it just it just became that's part of our seder you know and and uh and it becomes ritualized and it's uh it's meaningful so i think the the seder is an opportunity for family moments like that and well uh well you're right we're always looking for different things to do there's something to tradition um as a part of what the savior is trying to accomplish you know um satyr's trying to perpetuate a story by including people in that story so you know your family also has a story and you know how does that story manifest itself in the seder and those kinds of things so that's been also a large part of what we've done this morning's daf this is my favorite kumar it's someone else's favorite gemara it's this tiny little story um abaye is is little a by his nickname you know that um at robert's table and he asks why they it's embarrassing it's only this morning well they took away them yeah why they took away the table after karpas and uh rob says we don't have to say manisha anymore meaning the whole point of manish donna is just to get a little abaye to ask a question about a asked question so how do you balance that that drive that's like obvious to shas um that that's the point of manish donna is to get little ability to ask a question i need to balance that with perpetuating traditions and giving yourself your children like a shared sense of you know abused var torahs and the family shtick and and saba or zaidi's you know ouch thing what's the balance yeah i think the sentiment expressed in that gemara is exactly the point we're making that the text of the haggadah while it's absolutely essential to fulfilling the mitsubishi pesach no one's suggesting that we tamper with or skip or you know omit the text of the haggadah um it's a means to an end it's not a text that was ever intended to be simply you know read the text and and understand the text and you're done um the mitzvah every single day is not to say the three paragraphs of shema and then add what you think would be meaningful expressions of faith and commitment in the context of those sukim as a more expansive expression of that mitzvah the mitzvah read this text which is probably why we've habituated to relating to texts in that way and relating to the god in that way i think what the gemara is telling us is that that's exactly the point the text of the haggadah is there to evoke certain um thoughts ideas questions interests most importantly a sense of initiative from the people you're trying to reach at the seder so i think the balance is of course you read manishtana of course you asked the question but i think the way to look at the haggadah is thematically you you and for different seders and different families different themes will pop out you know um for a family that just made aliyah maybe the themes of redemption in the haggadah are very powerful and and very central and that's where you'll land you know more um for the families that are sitting in gullahs maybe you know anyone is a landing point that's more pronounced and more significant um you know i think different families relate to different themes and different things resonate with different people and that's why the haggadah covers a tremendous span but you know i would say you you you look at the haggadah as a multiple series of themes that you could draw different things out you know every kid at some point at the seder will have the story of kibben shivam shanang why is it quebec shivam shana because he was really much older and uh and there was a miracle and then and in order to substantiate his leadership and for other people to respect him made him look older you know that's a fascinating shot um it's a nice insight it will be shared at almost every seder what does that have to do with you see us miss ryan what does it have to do with superintendents right um is anyone even asking the question whether or not that's a good thing that people didn't appreciate his leadership for what it was what it was and needed the externalities of um gray hair in order to project that sense of authority you considered tying your hair maybe that right maybe that should be you know the conversation so maybe it is a place to land maybe it's not a place to land but there are certain debris torah that have just become part of the momentum of the seder i think where the intentionality comes in and where the choreography comes in is you figuring out look where do you want that to happen and that's i think what we try to do before the seder try to figure out like where are the the spots where we want to land so we don't end up you know 17 minutes about you know why moshe is not in the haggadah if that's not one of the places we want to spend our time and then once you figure out where you want to spend your time then you create this elasticity of okay what do you want to say what do you want to say what do you want to say what kind of questions do i have that could trigger conversation and in my back pocket what's a profound thought and idea from a gutter that i saw that if the context is right um you know i can share you're you're choreographing this but you're also reading the room and reading the room means you're watching people's interest level you're watching people's engagement level you're watching people's exhaustion level and you're you're um you're pushing and pulling on all the levers in order to keep the engagement and in a in a meaningful place i think that's what it means to create an inter-generational experience look if you have children and you have older guests at the seder you're going to need a plan of how you're going to balance that you can't sit there and share adult profound debris toro the whole night while your kids are miserable and perhaps you can't only relate to your kids and not have these people walk out of the seder with some of the fundamental core ideas that are part of the seder so you're gonna have to figure out a balance that some people balance that by simply saying no the experience of the seder i want to show you is this intergenerational experience and that's what we we have done that when we used to have um public school kids from ncsy and jsu at our siddharam i told them beforehand i said we're not gonna translate everything i gave them i went through the haggadah i gave them in english i gotta said i want i want you to see what this is i want you to see it real that's what we did and we we our kids were young and they shared things and it was incredibly inspirational for them did they understand every single thing that was happening no did they walk out with rabbi salovey chicks duality of matzah no my kids are seven years old they're not dealing with duality of anything so that's okay that wasn't my goal my goal was to show them what it means to perpetuate a story of our history and our tradition and our heritage to the next generation that was the ideal i was trying to share different people have different goals i'm not saying that has to be the only goal maybe you're you have a different goal maybe you want to balance the two the key is to be intentional about it the key is to be thoughtful about it and the key is to be planful um with it we always used to say when we would run shabbatonim that sometimes we wanted to schedule spontaneous rua you know like something would happen at a shabbaton that no one planned and it was so amazing and it was so cool and it was so powerful and then the next shavatone you would be like okay let's let's plan for that and schlepping like everybody like didn't you know like nobody uh it didn't have the same fire there's a certain fire when things are spontaneous when things are and and you don't want to um extinguish that or diminish that by over programming and over structuring the uh the seder but i really believe that if you just take a step back and you you know take a piece of paper and you just sit down and give some thought to who's at the saver what am i trying to accomplish what do i want to do and then how do i want to uh structure this so that there is opportunity for all of this um i think you'd be surprised like how smooth it could go yeah it is a balance it is a balance of structure and individuality all of yaddus is a balance of structure and individuality um we don't believe in the in the extremes of either of those we don't believe in in a robotic religious um uh lifestyle and we don't believe that everybody should just do isha yoshibai enough everyone should just do what they want it's always a balance of infusing individuality into structure and the seder is a great example of that but khazal didn't give us the haggadah to limit the experience they gave us the haggadah as a guide to expand the experience that's why it has stood the test of time that's why it can animate a seder in as well as it animated seder a thousand years ago because that's not what it's trying to accomplish it's not what it's trying to do as opposed to other other holiday rituals which evolve in certain ways so i think uh i think there's a lot you could do i think uh the seder is awesome yeah um as jen all of our starting will be as awesome as your seder thank you so much for cutting out the time to it's a pleasure it's a pleasure it's a pleasure have reasonable expectations of ourselves and by the way let's just say a couple other things and then we'll end um you know they're still kids there are tantrums there are frustrations there are fights it's still a shabbos table like give yourself a break the seder does not have to be from the first moment it starts to lash on baby shalayim this like perfect um expression of familial religious bliss um it's normal for there to be challenges and tensions and these types of things the way to deal with that is to acknowledge it and to simply move on to have like a momentum that's moving forward but have reasonable expectations of yourself and your family i think that's also people struggle with that i know i've struggled with that that you know you sit down and all of a sudden you realize like hey the kid's a little more cynical now than they were you know last year and they're a little bit rolling their eyes they're a little bit like and then you lose confidence and you lose that sense of oh this is going great um the seder leaders leader leaders set the tone and the tone should be positive movement enthusiasm and it's okay if there are you know it's it's it's not artificial it's it's it's real it's your family and it's okay if if not everything goes perfectly it's okay if there are parts that don't end up being as meaningful and as as connecting as other parts um islam is as a whole it's a collective effort to create this moment of connection um with each other and with our past and as a shame with our future