I did a lot of random googling last night.

[conuly]

You learn stuff that way, I guess, but is there any value in it?

You know what I learned? I learned that, apparently, Sephardic seders are, in many small ways, very different from Ashkenazi ones. No to hiding the afikomen, yes to carrying it in a bundle and re-enacting exodus as a one-person show.

It's like the day I found out that, as a rule, Catholics don't generally confess in little confessionals anymore! My world is ever-so-slightly rocked. I don't know that much about Passover, not being Jewish, and now I find out that what I do know is only right for some people?

Well, now I know better. That's something.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

We use more of the Ashkenazi traditions, but more of the Sephardic recipes. My mother's ancestry is mixed, and she used to make charoset in both styles, but she found that the Sephardic charoset was regularly being consumed and the Ashkenazi charoset was generally being more widely ignored, so she just started making a larger batch of just Sephardic charoset. Then my sister's temple did a Sephardic-oriented Passover meal and found a chickpea meal her family really liked and got the recipe, so that got incorporated into our seder too.

[conuly]

We use more of the Ashkenazi traditions, but more of the Sephardic recipes. My mother's ancestry is mixed, and she used to make charoset in both styles, but she found that the Sephardic charoset was regularly being consumed and the Ashkenazi charoset was generally being more widely ignored, so she just started making a larger batch of just Sephardic charoset.

It occurs to me that one of the advantages of having two seders (it is two, right?) is that if you have conflicting traditions with whomever you're having your seder with you can always do one way the first day and another way the second. It's got to be easier than trying to coordinate Easter and Passover together, anyway.

[leora.livejournal.com]

True, as long as you're not close enough to Israel to only have one seder. Although my family only does one seder these days. When I was growing up, we did two seders every Passover, but then it was my immediate family. It's still my parents and those of my siblings that can make it, but now myself and my siblings are adults and it's also spouses and children (and children of children are now invited too since one exists and I'm waiting on the birth of the second literally any moment now or maybe she already is born and I haven't been notified yet or it could be a few days or whatnot, you know how these things are, but so far we haven't had the great-nephew to seder yet). But it's a lot more coordination, and we're only doing one. I am definitely not holding my own seder at home for my household. One per year is definitely sufficient for me.

Mainly we've been trying to base our seder off of our family tradition. My father leads it, but my sister hosts it. Her husband was raised Christian and has no seder traditions, so there's no conflicts. But we make small changes and add things or modify things to make things work better for everyone. My sister has added the modern tradition of putting an orange on the seder plate, which greatly pleases me. We start earlier than is traditional, but it makes it much easier on the children, and when anyone from my brother's side of the family drives in, it's easier on them, because if they are driving back that day then it's better that it not run too late. And so forth.