So this year because I was at home I had to pay attention to the Haggadah more than usual.

In the commentary of the Haggadah I used it referenced the 4 children being in the Torah. So I looked it up... And I do not understand how we got to 4 children?

*pushes up glasses*

My other question is really more of a comment:

For a text that exhorts us to mentally place ourselves with the Israelites leaving Egypt it spends way more time centering rabbis who were not in Egypt.

Thus, the Haggadah, with its slight-of-hand, is A+ political organizing on behalf of Rabbinic Judaism.

Other observations from my Seders:

1) The Seder as a ritual dinner is very geared towards imparting historical Jewish memory to children. On the tradition v evolution questions one is inclined to place the meal on the tradition side, but look at the structure.

Were I to create a ritualistic Jewish meal today with no Seders as the point of reference my framework would be Russian meal rituals. A table filled with Zakuski (Russian appetizers). People standing up to toast. Let's say shots of wine instead of vodka because Jews can't drink.

My point is not to dispense with Seders but rather use it as a reminder of how what we often see as a binary between 'Jewish tradition' and the broader culture Jews find themselves in is anything but.

The Jews who created the Seders were very tapped into Hellenic culture.

2) "In each and every generation they rise up against us to destroy us. And the Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hands."

Read this as a political text rather than as a religious one. What takeaways do you reach? How does it inform your worldview?

The first time I read these sentences I was 20? But it hit me then as a truth I knew all along. Antisemites are gonna antisemite. 'They' always hate us.

It's a true-ism for a certain kind of Jewish sensibility informed by bitter experience. But it has limitations.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If Jews integrate and succeed in a society to the antisemite it is proof of our perfidy. If we isolate and stick to our tradition this too is proof of our perfidy.

The lines almost promote a kind of fatalism. And yet...

"And the Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hands."

You could read it literally. God intervened to save the Israelites!

But another way, one that has brought me comfort in recent years, is that the Jewish relationship with God rescues us from this paranoia.

I don't have to see the world on the terms of Jew haters.

I can view it through a Jewish-affirming, life-affirming way. The Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hands.