Seder

[lethargic_man]

So I'm now back from spending Pesach in Gibraltar with my parents (having put my foot down about accompanying the rest of the family back to Eilat for the nth time *shudder*). We went on one of those prepackaged deals where the hotel (or part of it) is taken over and rendered kosher le-Pesach; I thought there would be a communal Seder, but it turned out to be done on a table-by-table basis.

So, at the beginning of the evening, I said to my table, "Who's going to be our leader, then?", and they all replied, "You are." Which was my first time leading the Seder, which was an instructive experience—I hadn't noticed beforehand such fine details as when the מַצוֹת are covered and when the bottom one is put down, etc. (The latter probably to reduce the number held to the customary two.) It also hadn't occurred to me that the reason the head of the household washes his hands at the start, despite any hermeneutical or mystical explanations later attached to it, was probably originally because it was going to be him that would be handling all the foodstuffs on it.

Anyhow, if wein_glass hadn't happened to have also been in Gibraltar for Pesach, and at my table, I would have ended up as not only leading the Seder, but also the youngest person at our table and asking the Four Questions. Even so, after wein_glass flaked out and left early on the first seder, I ended up the youngest person and having to find the Afikoman that, in my role as leader, I had hidden myself. <whisks Afikoman out from hiding place> "That was easy!" :o)

Comments

[zsero.livejournal.com]

In my family everyone asks the questions. First all the children ask the questions, one at a time, order by age ascending, and then all the adults ask the questions together.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

That is a nice compromise.