Ritualizing the Seder

Abstract

IN THE STUDY of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, the principal problem is how to transcend written texts. Since the texts constitute the only source that directly attests the activity of the rabbis, it is difficult to place the rabbinic trends within a larger historical or religious context. Moreover, since exploring and commenting on the Written and Oral Torah were central acts of rabbinic piety, scholars have tended to maintain that religious developments were shaped heavily by a dynamic of the encounter with the text instead of by non-textual and nonexegetical factors. The case of the post-mishnaic (200-500 C.E.) revisions of the Passover seder, however, indicates that the rabbinic interpretive stance, in this area, at least, may be attributed not primarily to a response to a text but to a ritual process. To appreciate the ritual expansion of the rite, let me clarify the core meaning of the celebration. The Mishnah (ed. ca. 200 C.E.), which sets out the rite's basic framework, transforms a biblical sacrificial meal that had centered on the passover offering and that, at least since Second Temple days, was a pilgrimage festival celebrating the national redemption from Egypt as a national day of independence. In response to the Temple's loss, mishnaic rabbis made the seder independent of the sacrifice and, by reaching back to biblical accounts that predate the centralization of the cult, turned the celebration into a kinship gathering in the home instead of in the capitol city. In this transformed rite, the unleavened bread (massah) and bitter herbs (merorim or maror) became central objects and not just appendages to a sacrifice, as specified in Ex. 12:8 and Num. 9:11, and the meaning that they represented was raised to the cognitive level. A major ramification entailed the shift in the notion of redemption, for now the festival's traditional significance contradicted the social reality of living in an unredeemed world. Hence, the celebration became an opportunity to reaffirm that the message of redemption was ongoing. Israel was redeemed from Egypt by God, it continued to benefit from that divine act, and it owed God an expression of apprecia-