Livre d'Or

Yeah, I think emphasizing which parts are the actual liturgy and which parts are personal/familial tradition will be very helpful, because going to different people's Seders can almost be like going to a different celebration. I think people coming from a Christian background aren't used to the same ritual being that different for different families when the people doing it are from the same sect, have similar worship practices, and so on-- a lot of Christian churches have in my experience really standardized the order of service and the things they do at holidays, so that you can go to different churches in the same denomination and get exactly the same service, except for the sermon and whatever incidental music the organist has picked. And Seders just don't work that way.

I'm not Jewish, but my in-laws are, and every year there are two different geographical clusters of the family at Passover. Same politics, same ideas about worship and the cultural role of Judaism, closely related people who interact with each other frequently. This year, for reasons, my wife and I wound up at the cluster we don't usually go to, and everything from the haggadot to the contents of the Seder plate were different. All of it in ways that make sense, like, one side is composed almost entirely of vegetarians and so they made a lamb shank bone out of clay and use it every year, while the other side uses a real bone, and I see how this happened; one side puts an orange on the Seder plate and reads antiphonally the Marge Piercy poem about oranges and the role of women in Judaism, and this is directly traceable to a women's studies class somebody took in the late eighties and so the other side doesn't do it. That sort of thing. But it could get very confusing to somebody without any related experience.

I note that both sides have found ways to integrate serving enough food within the service to keep everyone from keeling over, although they are different ways-- one side puts out veggies-and-dip beforehand, serves everyone two or three roasted eggs with the bitter herbs (parsley) if desired, and has the classic Hillel sandwiches of matzo, horseradish, and charoset at the time the charoset is discussed, which works pretty well; the other side doesn't serve appetizers but brings out the matzo ball soup when matzo is discussed, and leaves actually answering the Four Questions until after dinner. This also seems to work, though it will probably shift some when there are no longer small children. The important thing seems to be not having giant stretches in which there is nothing to eat at all.