Coming soon: Hilarious, play- acting seder at Ner Tamid

By Rabbi Nadav Caine

POWAY, California — When I arrived in San Diego County in 2007 to serve Ner Tamid Synagogue, it didn’t occur to me to lead a First Seder at my synagogue.   “Doesn’t everyone already have plans with family for the First Seder?” I presumed.

It never occurred to me that San Diego might be full of Jews just like me:  I’m the unusual one in my family, the son who picked up from the East Coast and moved to California to make a family here.  All my siblings and their families are back East.  San Diego, I now realize, is full of such pioneers.

So instead of hosting twenty or so guests in my home for the First Seder, I decided last year to host a First Night Seder at my synagogue.  But I didn’t want it to be a cookie-cutter seder.  I have always felt too many seders are plodding and joyless.  Having two small children myself, I decided to put on the Seder of my dreams last year at Ner Tamid:  a “Rabbi’s Kid-Friendly Experiential Seder.”  I put the word out to a few people, and sixty people showed up.  This year we are expecting close to a hundred!

The event page can be found at: http://goo.gl/1wS8JK

As guests show up at the door, volunteers dressed as Egyptian taskmasters dress them in ancient Jewish garb and enslave them.  They are marched to a third of our sanctuary repurposed as the “Egyptian Construction Site.”  Using hundreds of bricks (which are actually Kirkland tissue boxes from Costco), they are commanded to build roads and buildings, with only occasional “ration breaks” where they are lined up for their rations of karpas, maror, and salt water (with blessings!).

Dressed as Moses, I foment a rebellion against the Pharaoh (who resides on the bimah barking orders), and we experience the plagues together as we challenge Pharaoh to let us go.  It’s hilarious as we turn water red, inundate the sanctuary with frogs, cover the taskmasters with boils (or stickers, depending on how you look at it), survive wild beasts (sound effects and a few people dressed in bear and lion costumes) hiding in our “Israelite Encampment” of camping and IKEA tents, and so on.  After all that fun, we sit on the floor and have our seder, eating, singing the Four Questions, and anticipating our liberation from bondage. After a delicious kosher meal, we sing Dayyenu, get Pharaoh to let us go, and bunny hop across the Red Sea while the taskmasters perish in the waves.

I’ve learned two things from the success of The Experiential Seder.  First, times have changed, and where once Jewish holidays were only about family, today they are opportunities for connecting to the Jewish community as an extended family in modern times.  And second, we have the opportunity to delve deeper into the meanings of the holidays by making them experiential, rather than mere family reunions.  We have a chance to experience the joy of redemption.

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Rabbi Caine is spiritual leader of Ner Tamid Synagogue in Poway.  He may be contacted via ravnadav@gmail.com