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Lively
Seders
1
Ideas can spark
discussion and fun.
N
I
of long after the last
hamantashen of Purim is
consumed, Marc Sussman, 64,
and Lynne Avadenka, 60, begin to plan
their seder. It starts with a letter mailed to
guests who need to be prepared to bring
something to the table — and they don't
mean a side dish of hard-boiled eggs.
Sussman may assign a guest to write a
poem about the significance of parsley or
find a contemporary reading about slav-
ery. This year, he will ask guests to bring
one new item for the seder plate that can
signify the holiday's themes of spring,
slavery, deliverance and redemption.
Like Sussman, many Jews seek to
banish the boredom of seders past by
engaging their guests in this most ancient
of Jewish ritual meals. Some begin the
evening seated on floor pillows before
they progress to the table. These evenings
should be anything but tedious.
"Because the holiday focuses on the
transition from slavery to freedom, the
seder itself should be liberating and fun"
said Rabbi Mark Robbins of B'nai Israel of
West Bloomfield. He uses Tell Tale, a pic-
ture card game, so guests can creatively
retell the Exodus story.
"The seder should be an experience
where we are free to express our person-
alities as a way to enhance the retelling,"
Robbins said. In past years, guests at the
his seders offered modern interpretations
of slavery. Graduate students expressed
feeling enslaved by their dissertations,
while cancer survivors spoke of their lib-
eration from illness.
For Jews of older generations, child-
hood memories of seders include attempts
to sit still at the table with mischievous
siblings and cousins while the family elder
mumbled the entire Haggadah in either
Hebrew or Yiddish. Now, families try to
make the experience lively and interactive
with stories, multisensory cues and, of
course, lots of singing.
"Think of seders as the ultimate in
dinner theater experience," said Cantor
Daniel Gross of Adat Shalom. He said it is
fitting that the Hebrew word for mouth,
or peh, is in Pesach, a holiday that engag-
es all the senses. "With our peh, we each
tell the story, eat the symbolic foods and
sing the beautiful prayers and songs."
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38 April 2 • 2015
JN
Stacy Gittleman
Contributing Writer
Inviting All
10703147
Every year, Amy Seidman and Tim
Zimmerman of Farmington Hills invite
some 20 guests to their seders. In the
At a long-ago Sussman seder, Dena
Roth and Eli Sussman dressed as
travelers leaving Egypt and per-
formed a rap about the Exodus story.
mitzvah of inviting all who are hungry
and those who may be strangers, they
have hosted medical and graduate stu-
dents and others who find themselves far
from family on Passover.
One year, they started the evening in
a Bedouin-styled tent pitched in their
living room. To fill their four cups, they
sampled and voted on several varieties of
Israeli wine. Another year, Seidman asked
guests to bring kitchen gadgets and tools
to use as props to retell the journey out of
Egypt; these items then would be donated
to Yad Ezra or a JARC adult group home
where she is an active volunteer.
"Opening up our seders to new guests
each year adds much insight to the holi-
day because each looks at the seder from
a different perspective she said. This
year will be different because it will be
their first as grandparents.
"I don't know how much sitting I will
be doing; I will be very busy with my new
granddaughter" she said.
Sussman said he will miss using his
homemade Haggadot and Passover games
created in the style of Wheel of Fortune
and Jeopardy. Stored in his Huntington
Woods basement, last summer's floods
destroyed these priceless Passover keep-
sakes. However, he still promises to keep
the evenings engaging and lively.
Perhaps he will again write a script
based on the chapters in the Torah that
tell the Exodus story "so guests can really
take part and imagine what it must have
been like to pick up and leave someplace
you have lived for a long time he said.
"I do my best to make sure everyone
is invested in making it as meaningful
as possible by doing a little reading and
sharing before we all do a lot of eating"
Sussman said. He and his wife started
doing creative seders when their sons
were young so they would stay enter-
tained and learn something at the table.
Now that they are in their 30s, the chal-
lenge will be to keep them focused on the
moment and away from their cell phones.
"We need freedom from the digital
world" Sussman said. "I promise to give
back the cell phones as soon as the seder
is over"
❑