[Avodah] The Yeshivas and the Seder

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Yitzchok Levine wrote:

> From the gemara it seems to me that younger children are not
> supposed to know very much about what to expect at the Seder.
> ... They not only know what will happen, but,

One could make an argument to the contrary, that they do indeed know what to expect. How else do the children know, already at the start of Maggid, that there will be a second dipping? (I've seen this question elsewhere, and don't recall the answer.)

> [the rabbi] was upset one year when a group of guests at his
> seder table were learning rather than paying attention to
> the proceedings.

It's not clear what you mean by "learning". Inattention to the proceedings certainly sounds rude, but isn't it true that learning Hilchos Pesach counts as Sippur Yetzias Mitrayim in this context?

All the above notwithstanding, I'd like to note that I do agree with RYL's sentiments that the trend towards kids running the seder should be reversed where possible. I think the development of this trend is easy to identify: Originally, a child's *entire* chinuch was from the parents, but long ago this was turned over to professional educators. Or at least the bulk of it was, while some portions remained in the parents' domain. In the past century or so, for various reasons, even these last vestiges are being turned over to the schools. This is true both in our world and in the world at large -- think of sex education in the public schools, or ethics courses in business school.

It seems to me that similar things are happening with Sippur Yetzias Mitzrayim. We have collectively abdicated our role as mechanchim and turned it over to the Hagada. I bet you thought I was going to write "to the schools". No, I suspect that we're dealing with the whole textualism/mimeticism thing here. Specifically, consider this: Why does anyone other than the leader of the seder have a Hagada in their hands at all? I wonder if this very act, of giving each attendee his/her own Hagada, might be part of the root of this problem. Of course, we give them a Hagada to help them follow along. But that does at least two negative things: (1) Being able to follow along makes it tempting to slip into a less attentive mode. (2) Perhaps even worse, having one's own hagada empowers a person to want to participate and even lead the seder, in exactly the manner RYL bemoans.

My family has always read Maggid by going around the table, each person taking turns reading a paragraph at a time. I had always thought this to be a great idea, enabling everyone to do the mitzva of *telling* the story. But more and more, I'm coming to appreciate the price we're paying for it, in the loss of this parent to child mesora.

Akiva Miller

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