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On Kibbutz, Secular Seders Stray from Tradition Modernizing Passover throughout Israel l BY BEN SALES, JTA
T
he families surround long tables covered by white tablecloths. Festive decorations line the walls, and the kitchen is free of chametz, the leavened foods forbidden on Passover. Seder plates sit in front of hungry participants. But instead of someone reading the Haggadah or reciting the kiddush over wine, the crowd sings a modern Israeli kids’ song about Passover: “Great joy! Great joy! Spring has arrived, Pesach is here!” So begins the holiday at Ramat Yochanan, an
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80-year-old secular kibbutz near Haifa. Many secular Israelis attend traditional Seders on Passover; as with American Jews, the Seder is one of Israel’s most widely performed religious rituals. Several of Israel’s oldest kibbutzim depart from tradition, however, and conduct secular Seders according to their own sensibilities rather than the dictates of the traditional Haggadah. At many secular kibbutzim, the emphasis is on the themes that motivated their founders to settle the land nearly a century ago: freedom, nature and the Jews’ return to the land of Israel.
Ramat Yochanan’s Seder does not “tell midrashim how many plagues happened at the sea, this and that,” Miri Feinstein, who organizes the meal, says. “Our conversation about leaving Egypt and guarding the freedom of the other is more important.” Its Haggadah features illustrations of landscapes and Jewish history drawn by a kibbutz member from the 1940s and includes biblical verses not found in the traditional text – from the book of Exodus as well as from “Song of Songs,” which is traditionally read on Passover.