Seder I: Traditional

A few bullets, a la Phantom, about Passover so far:

• Curious Girl and I had a very nice time last night at a traditional seder: our hosts had written their own haggadah (and yes, Phantom, even if you have to host the family, it will be better to have your own haggadah than the Maxwell house one, which I have to admit to never having read it, but I believe all the criticisms of it I've ever seen). There were a good number of children, the hosts are excellent and vegetarian cooks, and the hagaddah had music in it so the musically-inclined guests could at least learn melodies and sing along. CG survived the disappointment of not finding the afikoman (at her preschool, the teacher had hid enough pieces of matzah for everyone to find one, so she found the notion of there being only a single piece of matzah to find rather hard to process). Still, the roll of Pesach stickers she got was lots of fun.
• CG gasped at several points during the story part of the seder, which was cool to see. That was bad! or The baby might die! were a couple of her comments. The hosts invited us all to contribute to telling the story, and people chimed in as they were so moved. It was a neat and participatory way to tell the story, and most of the narrative was carried by the 7 year old son of the hosts.
• I am really thinking hard about Yocheved this year. She's Moses' mother, and many of the haggadahs--especially those with an interest in children--mention that Miriam arranged for Yocheved to nurse Moses after Pharoah's daughter (the PRINCESS! Curious Girl keeps saying. Princesses are very interesting to four year olds) finds him in the bulrushes. This is usually presented as a reasonably perky and clever move on Miriam's part, which it is, I suppose. But I wonder about the pain it would cause a mother to see her child floating down the river, picked up by another woman. As my last entry indicates, we're doing a lot of talking about birth mothers and adoptive mothers and preganancy and baby-care-taking these days. And I am thinking about Yocheved, and what it would take to make a world in which more women--more parents--could care better for their children.
  
• Politica and I thought this was a pretty interesting read on dietary restrictions and the meaning of Passover.
• Politica's award-winning shingles are preventing her from going out to Seder 2 (large, energetic, with unconventional haggadah written by me and Politica) this evening. But CG and I are heading out, and I'll let you know about this one tomorrow.
  

Happy holidays to all who are celebrating them this week(end)!