Didn’t We Do the Same Thing Last Year?

Do any of you have a similar reaction to the Seder?

As “Ma nishtana” is recited, I find myself wondering, “Didn’t we ask that last year?”

It’s true. Don’t we do a lot the same way we did it last year? Last generation? Last century?

Judaism encourages repetition.

The Talmud (Chagigah 9b) states: “Hillel taught: one who reviews one’s study 100 times is not comparable to one who reviews one’s study 101 times.” In Talmud study, we place a premium on chazarah, review of what one studies. It’s often easier to move forward, but one only masters the material by chazzering it.

We know from experience that repetition need not be tedious or without benefit. People watch the same shows and movies all the time. Nowadays, there’s a classic sports channel on which people watch old games when they already know who won. Of course, one can rewatch Seinfeld episodes countless times…

Cristel Antonia Russell and Sidney Levy, professors of business and marketing, researched repetition and published, “The Temporal and Focal Dynamics of Volitional Reconsumption: A Phenomenological Investigation of Repeated Hedonic Experiences.” They found four reasons people like reruns or repetitive experiences.

1. The simple reason. Whether it be a movie or an experience, people just enjoy the repetition.

2. The nostalgic reason. Some people feel good remembering the past.

3. The therapeutic reason. Sometimes, people want to watch it or do it again to get it right.

4. The existential reason. Repetition builds on the initial experience, making it more impactful.

We see these four rationales at the Seder. We enjoy the family traditions and the memories from Seders past. We tell the same jokes – that still get a laugh. We keep trying to get the matzah balls cooked just right. We are creating new memories as well as ensuring the next generation is steeped in tradition. We say, “Afilu kulanu chachamim, even if we are all wise.” There is always more to learn, experience, internalize, and grow from the familiar rhythm of the Seder.

Elliott Holt, an author, describes a practice he learned from a friend in which he reads the same poem each day for a month. He writes: “Repetition led to revelation…When you reread the same poem over and over again, you stop scrolling along the surface and dive deep beneath it.” Repetition is about more than quantity. Repetition helps elevate the quality.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says something similar about the Haggadah and the Seder experience.

“When I take part in a Seder service on Passover, telling the story of the book of Exodus, I am not engaged in a cultural act like watching a film or reading a book about it. I am enacting it, making it part of me. On Passover, the Exodus ceases to be mere history and becomes memory: not something that happened somewhere else to someone else long ago, but something that is happening to me, here, now. It defines me as part of that story, linking me to a community of others in different places and times. It changes me, for I now know what it feels and tastes like to be oppressed, and I can no longer walk by when others are oppressed. People who have lived the seder service are different for having done so, and the world is different because of them.” (The Great Partnership, p. 172)

This may be why, no matter how many innovations we may think to introduce to the Seder and Haggadah, you can’t beat the real thing.

In 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was invited to be the guest of honor at a dinner in New York hosted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin was there and witnessed the following exchange. During the dinner, the Prime Minister already looked bored as an unplanned presentation was added to the program. She was given a new copy of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan’s interpretation of the Haggadah. In this new version, the Egyptian slavery was replaced by the Holocaust, and the State of Israel was center stage as the Israelites travel in the Sinai desert. Mrs. Meir skimmed quickly through the Haggadah and returned it, saying “Thank you very much, but I’m not really interested.”

The American leaders making the presentation were shocked. “But you are not Orthodox, and this new rendition makes the story more relevant for a generation that experienced the horrors of the Holocaust followed by the creation of the State of Israel!”

Golda’s response was priceless: “No, I am not Orthodox, and I never will be. Nevertheless, I do host a Pesach Seder each year, especially for my grandchildren. What is most important to me is that my granddaughter at the Seder uses the same words that my grandmother said at her Seder.”

“How is THIS Pesach different from all other Pesachs?”

This year, it’s a question with a very definitive answer. We feel a heaviness and sadness after the events of October 7, the war against Hamas, tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the north and south, so many soldiers and civilians killed, the hostages, and, most recently, the attack by Iran. Pesach is not the same for so many that it must be different for all of us. While partaking of the familiar rituals, we will inject them with contemporary insights and feelings. Israeli President Isaac Herzog called on all Jews to have an empty chair at the table to recall the emptiness so many will experience - whether it be physically or emotionally - this year.

Infusing the familiar and repetitive with contemporary spirit is how we ensure Jewish continuity and relevance. Each time we do things the same way but a little differently, we fortify the foundation of our tradition to make sure it lasts forever.