The drashas about the 4 cups of wine isnt just stam drash. Its from the Talmud
For those that only drink rov reviis, its not a problem.
For those that do drink a reviis, since kiddush is bemakom seudah, the bracha on the first cup can extend due to the elongation of the seudah.
How does making a BA help? Dont the poskim say we should have the maror in mind when he say the BR? If the maror requires a BR, and you say a BA after the karpas, youre missing out.
Why isnt eating the karpas a hefsek in the maggid?
You over simplify the 4 parts of the seder. Your so called beg of the meal isnt just a beg, it is also karpas which isnt really part of the meal. Thats the whole point - that its not part of the meal. Maror also isnt part of the regular meal.
In fact I like the song. Makes the festive meal a real treat.
But I have a Q about it - how long does everyone actually say the part of the Hagadah before they forget or skip it? We usually get thru yachatz and then lose the announcements.
Regarding your own text at the Seder - based on the Rambam as understood by rav Chaim, dont forget the Qs and As !! Or else its just Zechira and not sippur. Also, why should I base it around mikra bikkurim? Why cant I just say my own version of events? And without the "chazals" added, you miss out on many many points of the whole story.
Also dont forget the other mitzvah brought down in the Rambam - you must feel as if you yourself left mitzraim on this night.
the commercialization of Pesach in Israel, in which Eliyahu ha-Navi has basically become the Israeli Santa Claus. He goes from Seder to Seder on his white donkey, asking kids what they want for afikoman.
?!?
wow, glad i missed that when i was in israel.
Regarding the first cup of wine (and the third, for that matter) the Aruch Hashulchan discusses the various positions of the acharonim and suggests his own (in a nutshell, safek brachot l'hakel).
IIRC the Hagahot Maimoniyot do say to say a bracha acharona.
Perplexed: the amount of drink necessary to get one in a position of safek for bracha acharona is much less than a rvi`it. A rvi`it is the quantity to definitely obligate bracha acharona. (I don't have a ready source for this, unfortunately.)
perp-
great questions. you're getting to the core of the issue. karpas WAS part of the meal. it's the hors d'oevre. According to the mishna, up until we expect the main course to happen, everything proceeds as normal. then, when starting with the main course, there are some weird things that happen - the matza, the korban, and a 2nd round of chazeret (i.e., pesach matza and marror, ie, the original 'mah mishtana' of the mishna). that's what provokes the questions, and that's what instigates the sippur.
you're right. i forgot the q and a part.
the part about patturing the marror with the haadama on karpas is only a problem if you eat horseradish. if you use lettuce for marror, like the gemara says to, then there's no problem of patturing it with hamotzee.
marror IS supposed to be part of the regular meal. at least it was - the de-oraysa of marror is for it to accompany the korban (see the q and a about hillel). today it's a zecher, but integrated into the meal (i.e., after hamotzi).
there are a # of difs betw. zechira and sippur. suffice it to say 'narrative' = sippur.
i think it's important to use the vidui bikkurim (lav davka the sifri). can you be yotzei without it? probably. i wrote about that a few years ago. ayen sham.
'liros es atzmo' is part of the narrative - the narrative must become foundational.
Re: the 4 cups, to reiterate what perplexed said, both the bavli and yerushalmi have (different) derashos on the point but it is not a relatively new made up thing. The fact that there are four mitzvos (kiddush, sipur yetzias mitzrayim, bentching and hallel) is far from a compelling reason to have for kosos. Who said you need a kos for sipur yetzias mitzrayim? Now that we have one it makes sense to say that it is taun kos shel beracha. But there is nothing intrinsic about the mitzvah that requires a kos. Ditto for Hallel -- no other hallel during the year gets a kos.
I, for one, like my rabbis cynical.
Chag kasher veSameach!
When ADD said "drush", I don't think he meant it is a vort by some fly-by-night rebbeleh. I understood him to mean that the drash is a post-facto drasha, and not the halachic source of the practice. I don't think I agree, but that's another point.
I wsa about to write a comment very similar in content to "anon1" when I saw it had been written already. Find me another Hallel or Sipur Al Hakos. Yes, each cup has a step, but they seemed to be going for a four step/four toast event. And that could have been inspired by the psukim.
Apropos the cynicism, there's been a lot of it lately. And I know of two of your readers who find the trend disturbing. I hope everything works out for you...
anyone who has seen a bedouin make pita bread and how quickly it gets done during the de rigeur bedouin bread part of sitting in the tent on one of those desert jeep/donkey/camel treks offered in the negev, understands that the matza is soft and can be used to make a wrap. everything else is Ashkenazi anal retention.........
"Keep eating karpas all through magid."
Thats the coolest thing I've heard of yet! (But can't you get put in cherem for suggestions like that?)
BB - 'Ashkenazi anal retention' - figuratively and literally
Elli S. pointed out off line that the poem 'kadesh urtchatz' is earlier than 16th century.
He's right, it's 13th century France.
http://www.piut.org.il/textual/690.html
Thus, he basically took a lafa and put on some lettuce and roast lamb, wrapped it up, and chowed down.
Shwarma!
'figuratively and literally'
it hit me right after I clicked the publish button
Shwarma!
The Observer | 04.17.08 - 9:57 am | #
עם חריף
try going to a Yemenite seder - not only do they eat "soft matzah' (btw -it's not as good as a lapha - it's only flour and water - no sugar, oil, salt - pretty bland) but they literally do a replay of "yitziat mitzrayim" walking around the table with bags like displaced people then transforming into kings (some change their clothes) and continue with a celebration and feast... probably the way things were actually done way back when....
Elana - i agree that it's cool, but really don't think that's how it was done 'way back when'.
we tend to thing that those who our western ashkenazi sensibilities regard as 'exotic camel jockeys who skipped about a millenium of human history' somehow have become immune to the conditions which produced variation in other cultures. they were not.
Re: Shwarma - yes, that's the point. we should be chowing down on a shwarma in a lafah, saying 'zecher lemikdash ke-hillel'. you have got to admit that the man had some good ideas.
hey, shwarma and pruzbul? that's a solid contribution to mankind right there.
For this reason, I am makpid to have a schwarma the week before Pesach as a zecher.
In our family, we have another custom which is zecher l'zaydie Hillel, where we talk about what it would have been like to be a bootlegger during Prohibition.
Greg - y'know, I never knew that about Feter Hillel. Makes sense, though. He came over in, what, late 1920s? Does Bubby Susan remember any of it? She was, what, 8 or 9 at the end of Prohibition?
What's with this lafa business? Does anyone plan to bake himself some pita for the seder? On what basis is everyone saying that it used to be soft? Yes, of course you could bake soft matza, as the lechem hapanim was soft. But the Gemara says that the kulos accepted bimkom zrizin, where the meticulous care to avoid chimutz was done under the eyes of a beit din of kohanim and the sanhedrin, don't apply to every Tom Dick and Harry. Anyway, the minchas ma'afei tanur was matza and was crunchy; it was broken into pieces for kemitza, and the kemitza with hard pieces was called one of the hardest avodos in the Mikdash.
The truth is that what bothers me is the attitude that what we do is just nutty chumros. Who cares? Does someone want to resurrect the behaviors of a thousand or two thousand years ago? I don't really care what Ravina and Rav Ashi did. For that matter, I don't really care what Yehoshua bin Nun did. I only care about what my parents and my teachers did-- how they understood what the halacha is. That's my mesora. I'm satisfied with it; I'm proud of it: and I certainly don't go around bad mouthing it, saying it's collective anal retentiveness. Phooey on the people that do.
With, of course, all due respect.
Barzilai,
It's a good point, except when we become so focused on the details of our parents' mesora that we forget about the ikar of the mitzvah. The last point is a good example: If we focus on saying every word of the haggadah and forget that the point is to "narrate our founding story to our children" and ourselves, we've lost out by getting bogged down in "commentary" that is really just supposed to augment our ability to tell the story. When it overshadows the story, there's a problem, and that's why it's important to keep a broader perspective on things.
Now, that's a constructive suggestion. In fact, I wrote something very similar to what you are saying, http://havolim.blogspot.com/2007...e-lets-
eat.html ,and I intend to edit it to sharpen it by including your point.
I think it was either him or Zaydie Mendel, but I've definitely heard that from Bubbie Susan.
“This is what Hillel did”, on the very night that we ostensibly preserve and transmit our collective memory.
How many people saw what Hillel ate or how? To preserve or transmit a memory, that memory had to be experineced. nobody is claiming that anyone except a few saw what hillel did so whether the matza was hard or soft isn't a big deal. That wasn't a detail that my Bubby ever told me was important to focus on because her Bubby didn't tell her it was important either
Barzilai - it was soft. my proof? the word 'korech' means 'wrap'. you can't wrap a cracker.
there were five types of menachot. none were chametz. four were soft.
i did not call hard matza 'ashkenazi anal retentiveness', but just so you know, there are rishonim that explain that matza is 'the poor man's bread' because it's so slow to digest, that it fills you up for a very long time.
i think you're being very generous when you say that my ancestors did what they did because 'that's how they understood what the halacha is'. i agree that there is value to continuity, but it must be informed continuity, not an automatic sanctification of everything that was.
see:
http://adderabbi.blogspot.com/20...n-b-
yochai.html
I heard a shiur from Rav Mordechai Breuer z"l, where he connects the issue of the four cups and Eliyahu.
He also said that the reason for the four cups was the brachot and the rest is drash. But there was a machloket with the Tanaim about which Hallel should be said - Hallel Mitzrayim (what we usually call Hallel) or Hallel HaGadol (from Pesukei Dzimra on Shabbat). In the end we say both. So the question of which Hallel to say has not been resolved. Who will resolve the question regarding the bracha to say? Eliyahu. So the fifth cup - the one not drunk because we don't actually say the bracha - is Eliyahu's cup. And from there the whole Eliyahu visiting each house developed.
people have mentioned these things in the above comments but i don't think add has really answered them.
1. why on earth do hallel and magiid require a cos? we say hallel all year round without a cos.
it must be there are 4 cosos-and those are appropriate times to have them-since benching and kiddish would require one anyway, and those other things make good breaks for the rest.
(mentioned by anon1 above)
2. re-saying the whole haggadah-i think you forgot that the siippor must be done with shelah vi teshuva (mentioned by perplexed above) and must start with the bad and end with the good. since there is a machlokes about whehter the bad is slavery or spirtual lowness-you gotta do both of those too. reading the vidui bikkarim and pointing to the symbols wont make you yozi..although its true there is no reason to read the haggadah in full.
also-there is a bracca on the mitzvah of maggid at the end of maggid-im guessing its important to say that.
3. there are more parts of the seder than 4. yes, the song was invented late in history. so was the haggadah itself.
Have you read the chapter about 'היכר לתינוקות in Rav Breuer's Pirkei Moadot? I read it this year and it gives a whole new understanding about how the seder works. His basic idea is that in the time of the Mikdash and for a while after, the meal was eaten before maggid. This helps to explain the reasons behind washing, karpas, yachatz, etc.
can't people take a joke?
We commemorate this by eating horseradish on a cracker and saying “This is what Hillel did”, on the very night that we ostensibly preserve and transmit our collective memory.
I'm inclined to agree with your view here, particularly given my own exasperation with the opponents of Pesach hotels' constant references to "how Pesach was celebrated in Europe," as though Europe has any innate sanctity. (Being a descendant of Zaydie Mendel, I'm not at a hotel, of course.)
On the other hand, along with Hillel and his lafa, our "collective memory" now also includes crackers and horseradish and stricter rules on rice than on wheat, so maybe it fits in with the seder after all.
There is a fundamental disagreement between Raban Gamliel and the other sages as to whether the focus on the Seder night is to be a discussion of the halachot of the chag - i.e. is the focus on Halacha the best means to ensure national survival, or According to R. Akiva and Co. is it to be a discussion of the national liberation and our collective national memory.
Ultimately the baal hagada chose both - see the writeup on this in this past weekend's Makor Rishon Shabbat section.
A careful view of Jewish history will show that both are necessary and going to either extreme usually produced bad results
I had the same thought about karpas.
This pesach we had plenty of karpas on the table (carrot sticks, sliced peppers, cucumbers, etc) so people could eat all through magid. It's an excellent way to prevent hunger induced grouchiness and "can't we hurry up and eat already?" syndrome.
I am sure you were joking about the whole Earl of Sandwich thing. Obviously , just b/c it is named after him and not Hillel doesn't prove that hillel didn't invent the thing and the Earl just revived the art. I think your explanation of Korech makes sense though. But answer me this - ostensibly Hillel did create the first wrap ever - so why do we call wraps "wraps" and not "Hillels"? 
O
R. Reuven Margilios has a haggadah, and there he says that the 4 cups are not in the mah nishtana b/c they are not that different from the rest of year (in chazal's time): he cites a yerushalmi that 4 cups were drunk with every seudah!
We (partially) covered the topic of brachos at the seder in class at the Young Israel of East Brunswick (only through the opinions of the Rishonim). A review can be found at the shul website as Shuir11 (it's a bit long but there's a chart at the end) - comments welcome...
http://www.yieb.org/MoreDetail.a...tail.aspx?
Id=92
Yes, I agree that at one time matzos were soft even at the seder, not just when they came out of the oven. For whatever reason, perhaps out of excessive concern for the issur chametz or lack of confidence that we are doing it as well as our predecessors, or because of the dislocations we suffered which skewed the balance of mimetics, tradition, and textualism in halacha, or for whatever combination of the above, now our matzos are rock-hard. But until we develop a test for yeast activity by-products that we can use to develop alternatives to our matzos, that's what we have, and nothing is going to change by pointing out that it used to be different. Oh, one thing might change: the attitude that matza is an ancient symbol of tradition might be supplanted with a wry bemusement about how little remains of our tradition.
Actually, I would love scientific tests that replace asking shailos about mar'os niddah, about bli'as ta'am, about chimutz, about many things. But unless Avi Weiss and YCT have some free time, it's not going to happen.
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