Thinking of skipping your seder this year?

By Rabbi Ralph Dalin

SAN DIEGO — This year many will be sitting down to a seder table alone, or perhaps with another person with whom they share a home. People who have never conducted a seder themselves may find that they now need to. Even for those who are comfortable with utilizing technological devices on a holiday and open to the idea of a virtual seder via FaceTime or Zoom, the usual schmoozing, singing, learning, and eating among family and friends may be replaced by sitting alone at a table with a seder plate, a haggadah and a laptop computer.

Some might say to themselves: “It just won’t be the same. It will be awkward and frustrating, if not depressing. So maybe I’ll just skip seder this year.”

The response to this understandable thinking comes from one of the more esoteric paragraphs of the Haggadah, which many individuals skip and numerous less traditional haggadot omit:

Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said, “Behold I am like somebody seventy years old and I did not merit to understand why the Exodus from Egypt should be mentioned at night until Ben Zoma explained it to me through this verse: ‘In order that you remember the day of your departure from Egypt all the days of your life’ (Deuteronomy 16:3); ‘the days of your life’ indicates only during the day, ‘all the days of your life’ includes the nights as well.”

To which some might react: “Who cares?”

Nighttime can be a metaphor for darkness – when you can’t see what is in front of you, what lies ahead. Night can be a metaphor for depression and worry. Elie Wiesel’s stark rendering of the Holocaust is entitled Night. Indeed, the tenth plague of the Passover story – the death of the firstborn – took place during, and is associated with, nighttime.

It’s sometimes hard to celebrate in the night times of our life – especially if we are without family and friends who provide us solace and companionship.

But that does not mean we can or should take a “pass” on seder this year. For the lessons of Pesah, the teachings of the seder, are not simply that we once were slaves. Rather, they also remind us that, with Divine support, we went mi’yagon l’simha, mei’eivel l’yomtov, umei’afeilah l’or gadol – from sadness to joy, from mourning to holiday, from darkness to great light. We need that hope, we need that faith – especially this year. Our Rabbis taught that the seder is intended not only to remind us of past redemption, but to assure us of future redemption, of getting through and beyond the darkest of times, the nights of our individual and communal existence, to arrive at a time of liberation from confinement and from fear of illness and death. May that day come soon.

Both personally and on behalf of Federation, I wish you all a meaningful and, yes, joyful Pesah.

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Rabbi Ralph Dalin is the San Diego community chaplain.  This article was distributed by the Jewish Federation of San Diego County.