I had two excellent seders this year -- a first!

Monday night I was privileged to be invited to my rabbi's seder. (I have been wanting to experience that for years.) He and his wife hosted about 25 people, a mix of family and congregants with a strong personal connection to them. In addition to the main haggadah that they always use, they had copies of another haggadah with a lot of interesting supplementary readings (A Night to Remember, edited by Noam Zion and Mishael Zion); they had chosen certain readings from this book and assigned them to different guests to read. The assignments were thoughtful, fitting the interests of the individual readers well; this was no random doling-out of parts. We had some good questions and discussions during the reading of the haggadah, and more over dinner in smaller groups. It was easily the most fulfilling seder I've ever been to (and I'm not even talking about the excellent food :-) ).

And I've now seen and tasted shmurah matzah, by accident. All matzah that you can buy in the usual boxes is kosher for Pesach, but some observe an extra stringency. "Shmurah" means "guarded", and the idea is that this matzah was continuously watched by Jews from (if I understand correctly) the time the wheat seeds were planted until the time the hand-baked matzah comes out of the oven. This year the stuff cost about ten times the price of the usual matzah. My rabbi was in the store picking up a few extra bottles of wine on Monday morning and I guess they were having trouble selling it at that price: the proprietor just told him to take some, so he did (enough for the ritual three matzot at the seder). All matzah pretty much tastes like the cardboard box it comes in, but the shmurah matzah tastes like, I don't know, a different grade of cardboard.

Tuesday night I held a seder. There were some last-minute changes in attendance -- half of one couple got sick, the person who was going to drive in from New Jersey based on my posts on this journal (!) couldn't make it in the end, but someone who had initially declined was able to come after all, and the person who had emergency dental surgery that afternoon (ouch) made it and wasn't too loopy from drugs. We were eight in all -- a good size for what we were trying to do, and of course plans were flexible. After all, we say "let all who are hungry come and eat", so there's always the possibility that someone will, y'know?

We had great conversations. I asked everybody to come with questions and/or supplementary readings they wanted to share, and we did not lack for things to talk about. I had copies of Hagada Mi Yodeya? and one of A Night to Remember, someone brought copies of an "atheist" haggadah, someone brought some writings from the Velveteen Rabbi, other people brought other books whose titles I didn't note... and oh yeah, there was a copy of the Santa Cruz Haggadah (very "hippie" in feel) that provided a lot of amusement, particularly with its illustrations. We asked questions, answered many but not all of them, compared translations, talked theology and philosophy (did the exodus really happen as written in the torah? If not, does that matter?), and had a jolly time. It was almost three hours until we got to the meal! (I had pitched this seder in part as "we don't care how late it runs", but I had no idea what would actually happen.)

We did lots of singing, and (possibly for the first time in my experience) actually sang through all the verses of Echad Mi Yodeya instead of singing the first two and then jumping to the end. (It's a counting song, so each verse adds one new line and repeats the rest, but I found I enjoyed the repetition, and it gave the people who were less comfortable with rattling off the Hebrew a chance to get it.) Somebody asked why the song stops at 13 and not at some other number; this made me chuckle because one of the running "things" on Mi Yodeya is to continue the questions -- it's up to, I think, "who knows 314?" right now. But since 13 are the attributes of God, that's a pretty good place to stop.

We definitely have to do this again.

I did a better job than usual of eating up the chameitz before Pesach, so there was not that much to pack away and sell. The dishwasher is running the last few days' worth of regular dishes; the kitchen is otherwise turned over, and I am about to sit down with the TV, a couple of cats, and the last bottle of beer from the fridge. This afternoon I did a big load of shopping (with lots of fresh produce to offset the matzah). Tomorrow I will go out for lunch. Then, prep for two seders -- guest at one, host for the other, and I'm looking forward very much to both.

Season of our freedom, here I come! :-) Chag sameach to those who celebrate, happy Easter week to my Christian friends, and happy spring (cough, snow?, cough) to everybody else.

In debates between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai the former almost always win. The g'mara on today's daf tells about a debate that lasted for three years, with each side saying "the halacha is in agreement with our view". Finally a voice from Heaven (a bat kol) announced: these and these are the words of the living God, but the halacha follows Hillel. Why did Beit Hillel merit this? Because they were kindly and modest, they studied both their rulings and those of Beit Shammai, and they were humble enough to mention the deeds of Beit Shammai before their own.

Another dispute between them lasted two and a half years, with Beit Shammai saying it would have been better if man had not been created than to have been created, and Beit Hillel saying it was better for man to have been created than to not have been. They finally took a vote and decided that it would have been better for man not to have been created, but since he already was, let him examine his past deeds (to make amends) and his future actions (before committing them). (13b)

Some questions arising out of this:

• What did Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai argue about for three years?
• What were the arguments for and against man's creation?<
• How were long-running talmudic discussions actually conducted?

Also, there was a lot of discussion in the previous post, which introduced the concept of an eiruv to my readers.