The Story of a Seder Plate

Back in ancient times… that is when I was in high school… I attended the confirmation and high school program at Wilshire Blvd Temple. From one of the two (I don’t remember which at this point), I was given a metal seder plate as a graduation gift. When I went off to college, that seder plate came with me, and ever since then I have hosted my own seder.

Back then, of course, the haggadah of choice was the old grey Union Haggadah, and we never made it through much of it. So I prepared a cut down version — really cut down (like 15 pages). I also front loaded the service, because no one ever would continue with the post-dinner portion of the service. But as I learned more, I made a second version. I still have this: Edition 2.0, March 1981, with 19 pages. I learned more, and the haggadah grew. My next version, with a dot-matrix printed cover and cut and pasted from the new Baskin haggadah was 30 pages, and dated March 1988. I soon was adding supplemental pages to it.

Version 4 was my first one done entirely on the computer, in Wordperfect 6.0 for DOS. It had continued to grow, and was now 48 pages. This version came out in 1994 (and I believe copies may be on the net somewhere).

When we moved to our new house, I continued to revise it. Version 5, dated 2003, was updated to WordPerfect for Windows, and combined four different pathways through the document. It was now standing at 68 pages (and we still had never done the post-dinner portions!). But there were spelling errors and such, and I had only printed 10 or so copies–not nearly enough.

Why do I mention this? Because I’m closing in on completing Version 6. Tonight I just received a correction to the “Orange on the Seder Plate” portion, and reworked the ritual to address all who have been marginalized in Judaism. It turns out the original story had been about lesbians in Judaism, and the ritual was coopted by some to focus only on women. I’m now standing at 78 pages (an almost 5MB PDF file), and the document contains not only text but pictures and comics (yes, snarfed from various websites, especially the Dry Bones Blog and SomeEECards (due to this, I won’t post it on the web, but if you really want a copy, drop me mail). Hopefully, I’ll go to press on it next week in preparation for Pesach at the beginning of April. I’m still trying to decide how I want to cover and bind it.

This all goes to show the impact that a single gift can make. When my daughter goes off to college, I plan to pass that seder plate on to her (and if she wants any of the older editions, I have a cabinet full of them!)

Music: Annie: 30th Anniversary Production (30th Anniversary Cast): Easy Street