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Avocado Seder VII Remake Intergrade

For the lucky seventh year in a row, the Avocado is hosting a live online seder. Seder is the traditional service for the Jewish holiday of Passover But as always, everyone, Jewish or gentile, is invited!

Passover is the eight-day-long holiday commemorating the liberation of our ancestors from enslavement, as told in the Biblical book of Exodus. Each night of Passover, we host a special dinner, the Seder (which means “the order of events”) recounting the story of the escape from Egypt and discussing the lessons we can learn from it. If that sounds like a boring sermon, though, you’ve got another thing coming. The Seder is a dynamic ritual with songs, stories, and even games, along with discussions of historical and current events with an emphasis on peace and social justice.

You don’t have to be Jewish, or even religious, to participate. In fact every year so far we’ve had more gentiles than Jews in attendance, and plenty of atheists either way. And because Passover is all about asking big questions, and because the seder is delivered from a Haggadah (“tale”), a book that includes an outline of the topics we discuss, you don’t even need to know too much about the holiday. And boy oh boy do we need you to participate this year, because due to technical SNAFUs we’re a week behind on actually setting this up!

If you choose to present, feel free to use selections from either, both, or ones you’ve chosen yourself. We do this in a fairly casual manner, more than most seders. Since you’re participating from your own home, every part of the celebration is opt-in and can be done in your own, special way. Make a seder plate if you want, recline if you want, drink wine if you want. Or if you don’t want, skip out on any or all of these. We do however have three rules that are expected to be followed at all times:

  1. Please keep your mic off when someone is performing a segment. You can still write in the chat—in fact, we wholeheartedly encourage typing comments—and we will have spaces after segments for discussion using voice chat, but just be respectful with your audio.
  2. Many of the members of our community are trans and nonbinary, so please don’t assign gender to another person in the Seder unless you know them.
  3. A general request to read the room and not be a jerk. I don’t expect anyone attending to need to know this, but I’d like to include it nonetheless.

Here’s the structure; each segment is performed by one member. You can prepare something more elaborate or extensive, but it’s perfectly fine to just read off the Haggadah we’ve included. Seriously, no judgment here. If you’re interested in hosting, please tell us in the comments what segment you’d like to do and we’ll add you. If not all of them are claimed by the time of the Seder, we’ll have to ask for someone to do them, but if you’re uncomfortable performing for any reason, we won’t ask you to put yourself out there.

  1. Exposition: how did the Jews come to be slaves in Egypt?
  2. Cleaning house: Preparing the house for Pesach
  3. The Seder table and plate
  4. The order of the night: Kadesh Urhatz, etc.
  5. Matzah—what the hell is it?
  6. The Appetizers: Maror, Haroset, Greens, etc.
  7. Mah Nishtanah—Q&A
  8. Optional History*
  9. The Four Children – LibraryLass
  10. The Plagues
  11. The Action Sequence: the Exodus, Moses at the Red Sea
  12. Dayenu, as if we hadn’t had enough already – Wolfman Jew
  13. Recap: Have We Explained Gamliel’s 3 things?
  14. Passover Themes in Modern Life: Modern Slavery, Refugees, Prisoners, and our Responsibilities

* Optional History isn’t an official segment. It’s a space that can be used to discuss some special bit of Passover history or its place in the culture. So far, we’ve had stories about Pesach in the Warsaw Ghetto, the first White House Seder, and years where it went unperformed. It’s okay whether or not we include it, but if you’ve got an idea you’d like to pitch, please do!

Between segments there will be opportunity for open discussion and questions of all sorts– asking questions is an important part of this holiday, and the seders have been a highlight of the brightness, wit, and curiosity of the Avocado’s community every year so far, which I expect to continue into the future.

After the Seder, as is tradition, we’ll also host a brief live Hyperbeam show, which may or may not be directly thematically related to Passover, at which all are also welcome.

If you’d like to participate, or you have any further comments, please sign up in the thread below. I am currently expecting the best time for the seder to be the evening of Sunday, April 5th at 8 PM EST/5 PM PST. DEFINITELY NOT SUNDAY BECAUSE I FORGOT THAT’S EASTER FOR THE GENTILES SORRY. That’s about three weeks and four days from the time this post will go up. However if that doesn’t work for prospective attendees we can definitely reschedule.