invitation for commentary: a haggadah

[psocoptera]

So I want my family to do a Seder of our own next year, on the first night, in addition to Chaos's second-night Seder. I love Chaos's Seder, but the room of strange adults is intimidating for the kids, and I felt like Junie in particular was neither participating nor comprehending to the extent of her actual ability to do so, so. I thought about reading a bunch of family-oriented haggadahs (uh, haggadot, I guess) for research, but in the end I put this together from a) Chaos's existing haggadah (which she also wants to revise, but for adults, not kids), b) the Velveteen Rabbi's haggadah, c) Wikipedia, d) my own arrogant rewriting of your sacred texts, sorry Judaism!

No, seriously, I am aware that this is a somewhat problematic project, fostering my kids' Jewish heritage while not sharing it. My own Jewish ancestors very deliberately abandoned and suppressed their Judaism, so while I would love to learn what Seder was like on Curacao in the 19th century, there is no sense in which whatever I do now has plausibly evolved from that, unlike Josh's Seders as a kid, which were directly descended (if however much changed) from the Seders of his ancestors in Belarus etc. I did elicit input from Josh and Chaos and Betsy about their general thoughts about key elements of Seders before putting this together, although they haven't seen the finished draft yet (I figured I'd collect feedback in one fell lump), and I had a whole list of goals of my own, which I will mercifully omit (but if anyone actually wants to discuss this thing with me, I would be very happy to talk about what I was thinking).

pdf of draft of Haggadah for Small Smifts

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

As one of three kids with a mother who's even less Jewish than you are (my mom was raised midwestern Southern Baptist, although there's a rumor that her great-grandfather's mom was Jewish, unless that's the person who ws rumored to be Native American and I have it mixed up), I think it's awesome that you're doing this. We were grateful for every scrap of heritage our mom "fostered without sharing with us", and we kind of wish she'd done more of it — I think she and we would have both been happier, but there was a lot of anxiety about what my dad would think, partly due to his own conflicted relationship with his heritage.

That said, I am not in any way qualified to comment, because my childhood upbringing did not include seders. Sigh.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I can totally see the "anxiety over what the other, conflicted, parent would think" thing. At some point Josh and I are actually going to have to make the Hebrew school decision for Junie (like "is she going to prep for a bat mitzvah in the traditional fashion") which is like an unavoidable major referendum on How Jewish The Kids Are, and gaaaaah. It's a huge commitment, in terms of soaking up opportunity to do other extracurriculars, particularly since we really don't want to overschedule her, that sounds no fun for anyone. And, you know, heritage good, but music/sports/Scouts also good? Seder, in comparison, seems very doable ::grin::. (I know it sounds like I'm leaving Q out here - I think it would be weird for him to do something different with him than we do with Junie, so really we'll be deciding for both of them, it's just going to be time-critical for her first.)