How is this seder different from all other seders?

Spring is in the air, and we are just days away from celebrating Chag Ha’Aviv – better known as Pesach! For most, Pesach will look a lot different this year, with virtual seders taking over our normal family gatherings.

However, just because we are avoiding big raucous family get togethers, does not mean that our individual seders need to be melancholy or dull. In fact, this is the time to let our creativity shine and have a lot of fun with this holiday!

So because this year’s seders will be a little untraditional, I thought it would be great to explore some other FUN ways to make changes to your seders.

From table décor, to overall theme, to new and interesting Seder Plate items, here are some ideas to help you prepare your Seder

Decorating our Seder Tables

I don’t know about you, but I always decorate my Seder table with fresh flowers. But why not take this opportunity to make some of your own? Look below for some methods to create beautiful paper flowers.

For full video tutorials, check out our Instagram page @youthbethtikvah

Let’s talk Seder Plate: What is all this stuff anyway?

Why not consider some new and alternative seder plate options?

The Chocolate Seder Plate

Beitzah: Cadbury Mini Eggs are Kosher and make a

delicious Eggy replacement!

cv Chazeret: Let’s showcase the bright colours of spring Z’roah: Since with colourful candy-coated most of us use a chocolates chicken drumstick cv for the shank bone, why not replace with a delicious ICE CREAM drumstick?

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Maror: Don’t worry— Bittersweet Chocolate is still Karpas: Green apples make sweet and yummy for tart and tasty dippables- cv try dunking this twice in salted caramel

cv Charoset: Chocolate spread would make a GREAT mortar for building tasty pyramids

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Don’t forget about the Matzah! Try making delicious Matzah Crunch: Melt together ¾ cup butter with 1 cup of brown sugar. Once all of the sugar is dissolved, pour over sheets of matzah on a lined baking sheet. Once the caramel has cooled slightly, cover with chocolate ships and allow to sit for 3 minutes. Now the chocolate will be spreadble and you have a created a fantastic Pesach snack!

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Or maybe update your Seder plate with a tasty trip Around the world with some international versions of charoset…

Mexican Charoset Indian Charoset Syrian Charoset ½ cup coconut, shredded 1 large papaya, seeded and 3 lb large pitted dates 1 lb rose apples, peeled diced 1 tsp cinnamon and diced small 1 cup dried mango, diced ½ cup sweet wine or grape 12 oz banana, peeled and ¾ cup whole raw chashews juice diced Juice of 1 lemon 1 cup chopped walnuts 1 lb dates, pitted and ½ tsp grated ginger 1-2 tbsp matzah meal, as diced ¼ tsp cinnamon needed to bind 8 oz almonds, chopped 1/8 tsp cloves Place the dates in a 2 tbsp cinnamon 1/8 tsp cardamom saucepan. Add water to 1 cup pomegranate seeds Mix all of the ingredients cover and bring to a boil. 3 tangerines, diced together and serve! Once boiling, lower the 1 cup Riesling wine or Alternatively, you can heat and simmer until the grape juice grind all of the ingredients dates are soft. Pass the Quickly sauté the fruit together to create a dates through a strainer and nuts in a frying pan paste, like the mortar used or use a food processor. and add the wine. Cook by slaves to build the Add remaining ingredients. until the fruit has pyramids. softened but not broken down. Italian Charoset Greek Charoset Israeli Charoset 3 apples, peeled diced 2 cups pitted dates, cut in 4 Granny Smith apples, 2 pears, peeled and diced half peeled ¾ cup golden raisins ½ cup raisins 2 bananas 1 cup prunes, pitted and ¾ cup plus 2 tbsp chopped ½ cup raisins chopped walnuts ¼ cup almonds 1 1/3 cup dates, pitted and ¼ cup chopped pine nuts ¼ cup pistachios chopped ½ tsp ground ginger ¼ cup pecans 2 cups sweet red wine or ½ cup sweet red wine or 2-4 tbsp red wine or grape grape juice grape juice juice 1/3 cup pine nuts Blend the dates and raisins 2 tbsp orange juice ½ cup sugar or honey in a food processor until ½ tsp cinnamon 1 tsp cinnamon very finely minced. Optional ½ tsp sugar ½ tsp ground ginger Transfer to a large bowl In a food processor, puree Put all of the ingredients and add the walnuts, pine the apples, bananas, raisins in a saucepan and cook, nuts, ginger and wine and and nuts (to a consistency stirring occasionally for mix well. Cover with that you enjoy). Add the 20-30 minutes until the plastic wrap and chill 1 remaining ingredients and fruits are very soft (add a hour. chill. little bit of water if it becomes too dry) Additions to the seder plate

The items on our traditional seder plate offer great lessons, and remind us of an important time in our history – our slavery in Egypt. However, over the years, people have started adding items that carry a personal significance to them, and the trends have been catching on!

Professor Susannah Heschel began the practice of placing an orange on her family's seder plate and asking each attendee to take a segment of the orange, make the blessing over fruit, and eat it as a gesture of solidarity with LGBTQ Jews and others who are marginalized within the Jewish community. They spit out the orange seeds, which were said to represent homophobia.

Miriam’s Cup celebrates Miriam’s role in the deliverance from slavery and her help throughout the wandering in the wilderness. Place an empty cup alongside Elijah's cup and ask each attendee at the seder to pour a bit of water into the cup. With this new custom, we recognize that women have always been – and continue to be – integral to the continued survival of the Jewish community.

In 1991, Israel launched Operation Solomon, a covert plan to bring Ethiopian Jews to the Holy Land. When these famished, downtrodden Jews arrived in Israel, many were so hungry and ill that they were unable to digest substantial food. Israeli doctors fed these new immigrants simple boiled potatoes and rice until their systems could take more food. To commemorate this at your seder, eat small red potatoes alongside the karpas (green spring vegetable). Announce to those present that this addition honors a wondrous exodus in our own time, from Ethiopia to Israel.

Fair Trade certified chocolate and cocoa beans are grown under standards that prohibit the use of forced labor. They can be included on the seder plate to remind us that although we escaped from slavery in Egypt, forced labor is still very much an issue today.

Rabbi Wesley Gardenswartz started the tradition of adding cashews to the seder plate to honor American troops. The idea came from a sign at a drug store that asked customers to consider buying bags of cashews to send to troops stationed in Iraq; an employee whose son was serving abroad explained that the salted cashews provided sustenance and hydration in Iraq's desert climate.

What would you and your family like to add to the seder plate? Perhaps it is something different that I have not included yet! Send me a picture of your updated seder plate, with the story of why this item is important to you and your family ([email protected]) and I will include it on our Instagram page!

What about your actual Virtual Seder? How can we update this to add a little bit of extra fun? Here are a few suggestions that can easily be added into the Seder!

A Seinfeldian Karpas Skit: Before saying the blessing over Karpas, have your family join you in reciting this fun play!

INT. JERRY'S APARTMENT

ELAINE

Now do we eat? I’m starving.

KRAMER Sort of. Next up is the Karpas. Who wants to do the Karpas? Yael?

George's love interest Yael replies:

YAEL

I’d be honored. For the Karpas, we dip fresh green vegetables into bitter, salty water. It symbolizes the celebration of a painful moment in Jewish history, by combining a metaphor of tears and slavery, the salt water, with one of spring and rebirth, the green vegetable, in this case, the big salad Elaine brought.

YAEL DIPS SOME OF THE BIG SALAD INTO THE SALT WATER. SHE BITES THE VEGETABLE.

YAEL

Mmm.

YAEL PASSES THE KARPAS TO GEORGE. HE TAKES THE BIG SALAD AND SALT WATER NEXT, DIPS, AND BITES.

GEORGE

Mmm.

YAEL SMILES. HOWEVER, GEORGE THEN RE-DIPS THE BITTEN VEGETABLE INTO THE SALT WATER AND TAKES ANOTHER BITE.

GEORGE

Mmmmmmm.

YAEL LOOKS AT GEORGE. SHE’S DISGUSTED.

YAEL

What are you doing?

GEORGE

What?

YAEL

You just double dipped the Karpas?

GEORGE

Excuse me?

YAEL

You dipped the Karpas. Bit it. And dipped it again.

GEORGE

So?

George's Father, Frank, yells at him:

FRANK

It’s like putting your whole mouth in the Karpas, George!

GEORGE

I didn’t get enough salt water the first time. I like to really feel the tears of our people. Is that so bad?

YAEL

There’s no double dipping. In general. Of anything.

George's mother criticizes him:

ESTELLE

Who raised you to double dip? We didn’t raise him to double dip. I can tell you that.

FRANK

I’m sorry you had to see that, Yael.

GEORGE

Can we just say the prayer already?!

EVERYONE:

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha`olam, bo'rei p'ri ha'adama.

Praised Are You, Our G-d, who creates the fruit of the earth.

Ma Nishtana: The Suessical Version! Add some rhyming and silliness to the usual 4 questions

Why is it only on And on all other nights thousand tails of the Passover night we never we devour vegetables, Yakkity-birds that are know how to do green things, and bushes hunted in Wales, and dip anything right? and flowers, lettuce them in vats full of that’s leafy and candy- Mumbegum Juice. Then ‘Cause on all other striped spinach, fresh we feed them to nights we may eat all silly celery (have more Harold, our six-legged kinds of wonderful good when you’re finished!) moose. Or we don’t dip bready treats, like big cabbage that’s flown at all! We don’t ask your purple pizza that tastes from the jungles of advice. So why on this like a pickle, crumbly Glome by a polka-dot night do we have to dip crackers and pink bird who can’t find his twice? pumpernickel, sassafras way home, daisies and sandwich and tiger on And on all other nuts roses and inside-out rye, fifty falafels in pita, we can sit as we please, grass and artichoke fresh fried, with peanut on our heads, on our hearts that are simply butter and tangerine elbows, our backs or first class! Sixty sauce spread onto each our knees, or hand by asparagus tips served in side up-and-down, then our toes from the tail of glasses with anchovy across, and toasted a Glump, or on top of a sauce and some sticky whole-wheat bread with camel with one or two molasses- but on liver and ducks, and humps, with our foot on Passover night you crumpets and the table, our nose on would never consider dumplings, and bagels the floor, with one eat eating an herb that and lox, and doughnuts in the window and one wasn’t all bitter. with one hole and out the door, doing doughnuts with four, And on all other nights somersaults over the and cake with six layers you would probably flip greasy knishes or and windows and doors. if anyone asked you how dancing a jig without Yes- on all other nights often you dip. On some breaking the dishes. Yes- we eat all kinds of days I only dip one Bup- on all other nights you bread, but tonight of all Bup egg in a teaspoon of sit nicely when dining- so nights we munch matzo vinegar mixed with why on this night must instead. nutmeg, but sometimes it all be reclining? we take more than ten

Dayeinu: an exercise in gratitude

Dayenu means "it would have been enough." And not in a kvetchy/sarcastic way! Dayenu is a sincere expression of gratitude, of the Jewish people's cup overfloweth.

There are many any verses in the Hebrew proclaiming how it would have been enough just to be brought out from slavery in Egpyt, to get the Torah, to be gifted Shabbat, etc...

In this version, you may sing some, all or none of the traditional verses, but then open it up so Dayenu can become a participatory song where everyone offers their own "dayenu" for the year. As in: It would have been enough if______, but also ______! Dayenu! Day-day-enu...etc...

For example:It would have been enough if I graduated high school this year, but I also got accepted to my top choice for University! Dayenu! (And everyone sings the chorus!)

This can be done at the Dayenu moment in the Seder or introduced earlier and then whenever someone is moved throughout the Seder to share their Dayenu moment, they can.

Had Gadya Emoji Challenge: Can your family decipher the song lyrics from this series of emojis?? It’s harder than you’d think! Make this a competition between all of your family’s households! Who can decipher it quickest?

And if at the end of the day, you just want to get through Magid nice and quickly and get to your delicious meal, here are some quicker options for telling the Passover Story:

Another speedy option: The 2-Minute Seder

Opening prayers:

Thanks, God, for creating wine. (Drink wine.)

Thanks for creating produce. (Eat parsley.)

Overview: Once we were slaves in Egypt. Now we’re free. That’s why we’re doing this.

Four questions: 1. What’s up with the matzoh? 2. What’s the deal with horseradish? 3. What’s with the dipping of the herbs? 4. What’s this whole slouching at the table business?

Answers: 1. When we left Egypt, we were in a hurry. There was no time for making decent bread. 2. Life was bitter, like horseradish. 3. It’s called symbolism. 4. Free people get to slouch.

A funny story: Once, these five rabbis talked all night, then it was morning. (Heat soup now.)

The four kinds of children and how to deal with them: Wise child—explain Passover. Simple child—explain Passover slowly. Silent child—explain Passover loudly. Wicked child—browbeat in front of the relatives.

Speaking of children: We hid some matzoh. Whoever finds it gets five bucks.

The story of Passover: It’s a long time ago. We’re slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh is a nightmare. We cry out for help. God brings plagues upon the Egyptians. We escape, bake some matzoh. God parts the Red Sea. We make it through; the Egyptians aren’t so lucky. We wander 40 years in the desert, eat manna, get the Torah, wind up in Israel, get a new temple, enjoy several years without being persecuted again. (Let brisket cool now.)

The 10 Plagues: Blood, Frogs, Lice—you name it.

The singing of “Dayenu”: If God had gotten us out of Egypt and not punished our enemies, it would’ve been enough. If he’d punished our enemies and not parted the Red Sea, it would’ve been enough.

If he’d parted the Red Sea—(Remove gefilte fish from refrigerator now.)

Eat matzoh. Drink more wine. Slouch.

Thanks again, God, for everything.

SERVE MEAL.

If you would like to explore a BOARDGAME version of the Pesach Seder, print the final two pages of the YYF at home package, find a set of dice and playing pieces from a game at home, and have fun!

There’s no Seder Like Our Seder Our Passover Things (Sung to “There’s No Business Like (Sung to “My Favourite Things”) Show Business”) Cleaning and cooking and so many There's No Seder Like Our Seder dishes

Like no seder I know. Out with the hametz, no pasta, no knishes Everything about it is halachic Fish that’s gefilted, horseradish that Nothing that the Torah won't allow. stings Listen how we read the whole These are a few of our Passover things. Haggadah- Matzah and karpas and chopped up It's all in Hebrew, 'cause we know charoset how. Shankbones and kiddish and Yiddish There's no seder like our seder neuroses We tell a tale that is swell. Tante who kvetches and uncle who Moses took the people out into the sings heat; These are a few our our Passover things They baked the matzoh while on their feet. Motzi and maror and trouble with Pharoahs Now isn't that a story that just cant be beat? Famines and locusts and slaves with wheelbarrows Let's go on with the show! Matzah balls floating and eggshell that

clings

These are a few of our Passover things

When the plagues strike

When the lice bite

When we’re feeling sad

We simply remember our Passover things

And then we don’t feel so bad!

Take Us out of Egypt Just a Tad of Haroset (Sung to “Take me out to the Ball (Sung to "Just a spoon full of sugar") Game”) Chorus: Take us out of Egypt Just a tad of haroset helps the bitter Free us from slavery herbs go down, Bake us some matzah in a haste The bitter herbs go down, the bitter Don't worry 'bout flavor-- herbs go down. Just a tad of Charoset helps the Give no thought to taste. bitter herbs Oh it's rush, rush, rush, to the Red go down, Sea In the most disguising way.

If we don't cross it's a shame

For it's ten plagues, Down and you're out At the Pesach history game.

The Four Sons "So we follow their example, (Sung to “Clementine”) And 'ere midnight must complete, All the Seder, and we should not Said the father to the children After twelve remain to eat." "At the Seder you will dine, You will eat your fill of matzoh, Then did sneer the son so wicked, You will drink four cups of wine." "What does all this mean to you?" And the father's voice was bitter Now this father had no daughters, As his grief and anger grew. But his sons they numbered four, One was wise, and one was wicked, "If yourself you don't consider, One was simple and a bore. As a son of Israel Then for you this has no meaning, And the fourth was sweet and You could be a slave as well!" winsome, He was young and he was small, Then the simple son said softly, While his brothers asked the "What is this?" and quietly questions, The good father told his offspring He could scarcely speak at all. "We were freed from slavery."

Said the wise one to his father But the youngest son was silent, "Would you please explain the laws. For he could not speak at all, Of the customs of the Seder His bright eyes were bright with Will you please explain the cause?" wonder As his father told him all. And the father proudly answered "As our fathers ate in speed, Now, dear people, heed the lesson Ate the Pascal lamb 'ere midnight, And remember evermore, And from slavery were freed" What the father told his children Told his sons who numbered four!

This room is The Game SederClean Night

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SederClean Night Start Getting started: You need a dice for the game, and a game-piece for each player. Here's the Seder table! Put the game pieces on Kadeish.Each player in his turn for tosses the dice and moves along the path according to the number shown on the dice. If you land on a square with instructions - proceede accordingly. When you land on a square with a cup of wine, of the 4 cups we drink at the Seder – you stop and wait 1 turn (to drink the cup!) Pesach The first player that finishes the Kadeish the Seder - from Kadeish to Recitation of the Yom Nirtzah (the last square) - is the winner! Tov Kidush over wine 1st Cup

You fell © Club.com asleep! Move forward to open the Go back to door for Eliyahu the Prophet Start

Please, DO NOT Go back to say t Urchatz Pesach, Matzah u'Maror zafun Ritual Eating the bring properly hand washing Afikoman Chometz into This room. maggid Karpas Thank you! Telling the story and Recitation of the Yom history of Pesach Yachatz Tov Kidush over wine Breaking the middle matzoh

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