OUR SEDER WITH SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

During Passover, it is traditional for Jews to hold a Seder (meaning ‘the order’), a ceremonial meal, on the first and traditionally on the second night of the holyday, to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt in biblical times. A special text, created by the Rabbis of old called Haggadah (“the telling [of the story]) is used before and after the meal.

The Seder is a family affair and is often held at home, even though some synagogues offer “congregational Seders.” The rabbinic text used during the Seder is called, Haggadah (namely, “The telling”), and recalls the past when “we were slaves in the Land of Egypt.” Then, according to the Bible, led by Moses, Jews escaped Egypt and arrived into the Sinai desert.  This year, because of Covid, the pattern changed drastically. Few people dared to leave their home to gather with other family members in order to celebrate freedom. So, many Jews resorted to zoom Seders, connecting with family and friends online.

This year, my wife and I had a dilemma. How will we hold the Seder? The Willows, where we live in Westborough, did not offer one. Most of the residents here are not-Jewish and, besides, they still do not encourage large gathering of people. We, therefore, decided to have one on the second night with our daughter, Debbi and our grandchildren, Avi and Talya, in their home in Milford, MA, about 15 minutes away from our apartment.  (Our son lives in California). But, what to do the first night? I thought, why not connect with our friends in Spain? In the past, on many occasions, Ines and I travelled to Barcelona during the summer, and I helped BetShalom, a small but vibrant Reform congregation, with some rabbinic work. This year, because of the virus, they were planning to hold a congregational Seder by zoom.

So, on the first night of Passover, March 27, 2021, we connected with Barcelona at 2 pm Boston time, and were happy to see that even our friends from Madrid, Spain as well as others from Portugal, had joined the Seder online at 7 pm, local time. In fact, the cantor who led the singing, David Alhadef, was from Portugal. We read the Haggadah, placed on computer screen, in Spanish and Portuguese, and sang all the traditional songs in Hebrew. Various people took turn in reading different passages and responsive readings. Even I chanted the “Ha Lanhma Anya” (“this bread of affliction”), almost at the start of the Seder, using a melody that I remembered from my childhood back in Turkey. At the end of the Seder, the group in Madrid held a congregational meal and the rest of us retreated to our own family dinners.

The entire experience, I felt, was surreal. I said to myself: Here we are a group of Jews, who are spread all over the world, connecting with each other for the celebration of a holiday that, at best, has dubious historical basis, but one that has been recalled through oral tradition from generation to generation for centuries. We are still reading and chanting the texts that have been part of our tradition for a very long time. So, year after year, when Jews get together in their homes or congregations, to tell the story of their ancestors’ liberation from bondage in Egypt, sometime around the 13^th century BCE, we can relive their experiences and prepare ourselves to face unknown challenges , like the Israelites apparently did when, according to legend, after leaving Egypt, they somehow crossed the desert to receive the Decalogue at the foot of Mt. Sinai as their constitutional chart. Then, they went on their way to establish themselves as a nation in the land of Israel for many years to come.

This year, through the miracle of technology, zoom made it possible for all Jews to enlarge the circle of families by connecting them online wherever they are, making our world even smaller but intimate. Now that Covid is about to end, we shall remember this interlude and build on it as we confront new challenges as individuals, families and nations.