Seder for a  New Social Order

The Kibbutz Passover Seder

 By Yadin Roman

 (ERETZ no 93. April-May 2004)

In 1904, a new breed of Jewish pioneer began to arrive in the Land of Israel: young, single, secular, educated, and with a social agenda. These immigrants viewed the act of settling in the Land of Israel as an aliyah (ascent), an uplifting experience that would create a better life.

For their predecessors, those who had arrived in the first modern wave of immigration, known as the First Aliyah (1882-1903), the Land of Israel was a place to create a Jewish way of life along the lines of the small Jewish communities they had left back home in Eastern Europe and Russia. They were storekeepers, suppliers of agricultural services, and in a few cases, farmers.

The young people who were part of the Second Aliyah (1904-1914) also came from Eastern Europe and Russia, but they had lived in cities and large towns and wanted nothing to do with the old world they had left behind. In Israel, they dreamed of creating a new life, a new social order, a new world. They, together with their successors in the Third Aliyah (1919-1923), would embark on one of Israel’s most interesting experiments – the kibbutz.

The kibbutz was not only a communal way of life and an economic entity. The groups that founded kibbutzim wanted to develop a new Jew, with a new spirit and culture. The new Jews would work the land, share in the proceeds of their labor, and – like the Jews who had dwelled in the Land of Israel in ancient times – be very close to nature.

One of the issues debated intensely by these groups was how to define their Jewishness. Old customs, festivals, prayers, the synagogue, were all part of the old world – the new world had to be connected to the new land, its beauty, and its nature.

The socialistically oriented pioneers celebrated many of the new workers’ “festivals,” such as May 1st. But as the groups began to settle on the land, the Passover Seder began to emerge as the main celebration of this new society. It was not the Seder they remembered from their childhood homes, but a completely new entity: old texts were given new meaning and a different ritual was devised. Rather than being geared to the traditional private family Seder, this ritual was meant to suit a public observance of the holiday, with the entire community gathering together for a meal.

The traditional Seder revolves around the reading of the Haggadah, which tells the story of the Exodus – the story of a people that had emerged from slavery in a land of plenty to freedom in a land that would provide milk and honey only as the result of hard work. However, most of the Haggadah consists of interpretations of the biblical text, offered by Jewish sages over the centuries. The story itself – the flight, the Jewish heroes, the sojourn in the desert, and arrival in the Promised Land – is not the main focus. There is no happiness, no great hope, as the slaves of Egypt regain their freedom.

For the kibbutz members, who saw themselves as coming out of slavery to freedom, the Exodus story was the main issue. They wondered why Moses and Aaron were relegated to second place behind sages of later times. They didn’t understand why the aspect of Passover as a festival of spring was given only very minor mention in the Haggadah. After all, rejoicing over the renewal of the land seems to have been a major part of ancient Passover observances.

From their first Passover in the Land of Israel, the people of the Second Aliyah had a different kind of Haggadah on their Seder table. Using the traditional text as a general guideline, they created a completely new text. It included readings from the new literature of Hebrew-language writers and poets, and references to contemporary events.

Their Seder also evolved into an annual meeting of all the members of the pioneering group – scattered around the country making a living for the group while they waited to be allotted land on which to settle. It did not always take place on the 14th of Nisan, the official date according to the Jewish calendar. Sometimes it was postponed to accommodate all of the members of the group. Kashrut was never an issue – bread was always served and matzot added if some of the members insisted.

As the groups settled on the land, the members’ feeling of emancipation intensified. They increasingly associated Egypt with the “Old Country” – the homes they had left in order to create a life of freedom in the Land of Israel.

The Seder was now a major ceremony for which preparations were made long in advance. The Haggadah readings and accompanying music and dance had to be planned and rehearsed. A venue large enough to hold all of the members of the kibbutz had to be found. The dining halls were inadequate for this purpose: they were so small that meals were usually taken in shifts. And so the Seder was held in a tractor shed, a chicken coop, or outdoors.

At first, children did not attend the Seder, because not everyone had children and the group did not want to split up into families for the event. When children did begin to be included, they joined the group as participants in the program and were later packed off to bed in the children’s houses while the kibbutz members concluded the evening with dancing and singing.

A great deal of thought went into decorations. Since the Seder would include a musical program, it had to have a stage that everyone could see, and since readings were assigned to various members of the group, the venue had to be designed in a way that allowed everyone to hear and see each another.

The Seder was preceded by the ceremony of bringing in the Omer – the first wheat from the fields. This event was first held at Kibbutz Ein Harod in the 1920s, at the initiative of violinist Moshe Karmi, and the text was written by the poet Moshe Tabenkin. The Omer ceremony spread very quickly to the other kibbutzim.

On Seder night, all the members wore clean white shirts, the tables were decorated with wheat and freshly picked wildflowers, and the community sat down together to read from its own special Haggadah.

Over 500 kibbutz haggadot were published between 1930 and 1960 – a figure that does not include those that have no connection whatsoever to the traditional text. If we take into account the fact that from 1482 – the date of the earliest known Haggadah – to 1960, a total of 2,717 haggadot were published, the body of work of kibbutz haggadot is remarkable.

Yuval Danieli and Muky Tsur have collected many of these haggadot and told their story in a book they completed just in time for Passover, a volume in Hebrew entitled Yotzim Behodesh Aviv – Pesach Eretz-Yisraeli Behaggadot min Hakibbutz (official English name: The Kibbutz Haggadah: Israeli Pesach in the Kibbutz).

The book is the second in a series of publications about kibbutz life that Danieli and Tsur are producing with the support of Yad Ya’ari (Givat Haviva), Yad Tabenkin, Yad Ben-Zvi, and the Ben-Gurion Institute.