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When I did my 15 min seder for my cultural class in grad school, or rather when I was reviewing my haggadah in preparation for same, I realized that it used the word "redeem" a lot, and that was one thing I absolutely needed to explain explicitly for my goyische classmates. That word has specific theological meaning to Christians: "you are excused of your sins and get to go to heaven now". Most Americans completely absorb that meaning, regardless of their religious upbringing. So I needed to explain that that is not what "redeem" meant in the passages they would hear.

The way I did it was thus. Before ever getting to any usage of "redeem", I addressed the issue explicitly, saying, "You're going to hear the word 'redeem' used a lot. But it doesn't mean what you're used to it meaning. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that in the Christian tradition, 'redeem'ing is something Jesus Christ does, and it means to save people from the consequences of being sinners, being forgiven for their sins and getting to go to heaven." Everybody nodded along with this and said that sounded right. I went on, "In Judaism, 'redeem' doesn't mean 'gets to go to heaven'. It just means 'rescued' or 'kept from harm' or 'freed'. So you're about to hear a lot about God, through Moses, redeeming the Jews from slavery under Pharaoh."

The surprised and intrigued reaction I got suggested this was a good thing to have pointed out. Since it was a class on cross-cultural counseling, the students were taken with this example of how this thing that is pretty culturally omnipresent had a different meaning to Jews.

I seem to recall I did quite a bit of that – well, I mean, it was 15 minutes – pointing out examples of differences between Jewish and Christian cultural assumptions. For instance, if a seder is not the place to explain that, in Judaism, children asking questions is considered a good thing, and that discussion and debate and difference of opinion and thoughtful if even spirited argument are valued by Jews, as evidenced by the fact that it got baked right into high religious ceremonies, than I don't know what that place is. :)

The class seemed to like it.