Anticipating the Pesach Seder

[nili]

My four questions:

1. Do you have a favorite haggadah?
   
2. Do you allow kitniyot?
   
3. Do you add an orange to your seder plate?
   
4. What is the secret to preparing a great brisket?
   

[Chavak]

No favorite haggadah, the home I usually go to uses a variety of them, so any are okay by me.
No kitniyot.
No orange on the plate, I prefer a traditional seder without trying to impose modern politics into it.
Slow cooking the brisket...yummy!

[RabbiO]

First, a thank you to all who have expressed their concern and offered well wishes and prayers following my recent accident. It means a whole lot to me. Second, a status update - Arm and hand are still swollen and largely non-functional, but color has begun to return to something more human than the color of an eggplant. Pain is still a constant companion, but it looks like healing is taking place and surgery will not be necessary. Next week I begin physical therapy 3x per week for 4-6 weeks.

Now as to Jay's questions:
1) Base haggadah used is the Baskin Haggadah, a Reform movement volume so known because of the marvelous illustrations by Leonard Baskin. However, I am usually surrounded by several haggadot from which I draw material, including The Open Door, a more recent Reform haggadah.
2) We allow kitnyot.
3) Don't usually have an orange physically present, but usually discuss it when talking about the items on the seder plate. We also have a cup for Miriam with liturgy and ritual.
4) I don't know the answer to this. The rebbitzen has her secrets and I don't have security clearance.

[nili]

First, a thank you to all who have expressed their concern and offered well wishes and prayers following my recent accident. It means a whole lot to me. Second, a status update - Arm and hand are still swollen and largely non-functional, but color has begun to return to something more human than the color of an eggplant. Pain is still a constant companion, but it looks like healing is taking place and surgery will not be necessary. Next week I begin physical therapy 3x per week for 4-6 weeks.

Now as to Jay's questions:
1) Base haggadah used is the Baskin Haggadah, a Reform movement volume so known because of the marvelous illustrations by Leonard Baskin. However, I am usually surrounded by several haggadot from which I draw material, including The Open Door, a more recent Reform haggadah.
2) We allow kitnyot.
3) Don't usually have an orange physically present, but usually discuss it when talking about the items on the seder plate. We also have a cup for Miriam with liturgy and ritual.
4) I don't know the answer to this. The rebbitzen has her secrets and I don't have security clearance.

Take care, my friend.

[Channalee]

Do you have a favorite haggadah?
 
Not especially.  I do like the haggadot that we use in our congregation.  At last year's community Seder the theme was on slavery in the modern world. 
 
Do you allow kitniyot?
 
Yes, but not at the community Seder. 
 
Do you add an orange to your seder plate?
 
Yes.
 
What is the secret to preparing a great brisket?
 
Haha!  Everyone tries to get Meemaw's recipe, but she won't give it.  
 

[RabbiO]

Regarding the orange on the seder plate, below is a slightly edited piece by Rabbi Robyn Frisch regarding the origin of this fairly recent practice of some.

There’s another urban legend, one connected to the Passover seder, that I’ve believed for years. In fact, I’ve told this story many times at my own seders. It’s the story of the “orange on the seder plate.” And until this week, I always thought the story I told was true—after all, I’d heard it so many times, and read it in so many different places.

The story goes something like this: Professor Susannah Heschel was giving a lecture in Miami Beach, when a man stood up and yelled: “A woman belongs on a bimah like an orange belongs on a seder plate.” In order to show that women DO belong on the bimah—that women have the right to a place in Jewish ritual and in Jewish leadership—Heschel and others began to place oranges on their seder plates. (According to another version of the story, the man yelled: “A woman belongs on thebimah like a piece of bread belongs on the seder plate.” Wanting to make a point about women’s rightful place in Judaism, but not wanting to place bread, which is forbidden on Passover, on her seder plate, Heschel replaced “bread” with “an orange,” since the incident took place in Florida, “The Orange State.”)......

But recently I found out that the story I’ve been telling simply isn’t true. Here’s the TRUE STORY, in Professor Susannah Heschel’s own words, from an article that she wrote for The Jewish Daily Forward in 2013:
“At an early point in the seder… I asked each person to take a segment of the orange, make the blessing over fruit and eat the segment in recognition of gay and lesbian Jews and of widows, orphans, Jews who are adopted and all others who sometimes feel marginalized in the Jewish community.
“When we eat that orange segment, we spit out the seeds to repudiate homophobia and we recognize that in a whole orange, each segment sticks together. Oranges are sweet and juicy and remind us of the fruitfulness of gay and lesbian Jews and of the homosociality that has been such an important part of Jewish experience, whether of men in yeshivas or of women in the Ezrat Nashim.”

Heschel went on to write of the Miami Beach lecture urban legend:
“That incident never happened! Instead, my custom had fallen victim to a folktale process in which my original intention was subverted. My idea of the orange was attributed to a man, and my goal of affirming lesbians and gay men was erased.
“Moreover, the power of the custom was subverted: By now, women are on the bimah, so there is no great political courage in eating an orange, because women ought to be on the bimah.

“For years, I have known about women whose scientific discoveries were attributed to men, or who had to publish their work under a male pseudonym. That it happened to me makes me realize all the more how important it is to recognize how deep and strong patriarchy remains, and how important it is for us to celebrate the contributions of gay and lesbian Jews, and all those who need to be liberated from marginality to centrality. And Passover is the right moment to ensure freedom for all Jews.”

[nili]

I've always found the vector of what she calls the "folktale process" more than a little interesting (and disconcerting).

[Chavak]

Thanks for the true story Rabbi O. I always had heard the story mentioned in the article and thought it was true.

[nili]

And now, the Passover Story ...

[searchinmyroots]

Here is a great book with some different perspectives of the Exodus -

https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-You-Almost...op?ie=UTF8