How was this night different from all the other nights?

On the first night of this year's Passover, I was the youngest at the seder table of adults. Though I am also a grown up in years (if not psychologically), I performed the duty that my youthfulness dictated and recited the Four Questions. As I stood on the chair to recite them in Hebrew and noticed that the light fixture was so much closer to my head then I remembered it being when I had last stood to say them, I briefly considered the other four questions, the ones that ponder the difference between this year's seder and all the family ones I've attended over the course of my lifetime.

1. During all other seders, we read the Haggadah in Hebrew; this year we read it in English inflected with Borat, Bruno, cockney and peasant Mexican accents.

In years past, my family seders have been conducted exclusively in Hebrew with my cousin-rabbi at the helm. He was more than willing to answer questions in English. In fact, I doubt he could've responded in fluent Ivrit despite the years of Talmudic and Torah study since yeshivas don't really stress Hebrew as a spoken language.

At this year's seder held in New Haven, CT in the home of the fabulous Austin and Knoxville (the aliases are based on their respective hometowns), a gay couple formerly of the Upper West Side, most of the attendees could not read Hebrew so the majority of the text was read in English. At some point during the recitation Knoxville shifted into his best impression of Sascha Baron Cohen's Borat. ("She's got vagine like sleeve of wizard," he said, which I don't believe is found in the actual Haggadah.) While some may consider this inappropriate, a unholy mix of the sacred and profane, of the rabbis that debated when the story of Passover should be told and a man who nude wrestled another naked man till you couldn't tell where one man's balls ended and another man's face began, it is important to note that Baron Cohen is Jewish, which makes this accent halachically permissible for the seder.

From Borat, it was a short hop, skip and jump to Baron Cohen's other alter ego, Bruno though it didn't sound very different from his Kazakh cousin. And when we came to Rabbi Yossi Haglili's monologue, Austin broke out his peasant Mexican accent for the Rav we called Jose. (Austin has some Mexican ancestry and does hail from the Lonestar State so his portrayal could in no way be construed as racist or inauthentic).

2. All other seders last six hours (at least). But tonight we are done at midnight.

My family affairs tend to be large- 25 people on average- and long. Cousin-Rabbi insists that all the children asks questions and incentivizes this by handing out prize for each and every inquiry. While this is fun for the little ones, it grows tiresome for the adults. The first half of the seder can go on for hours as a result (This is especially annoying on the second night when many of the children recycle the questions from the first night. Those should not have been rewarded with a toy.)

But at a seder with no kids table everyone was on the same page, which was to get to the next page and the next one, as quickly as possible. We were all hungry after an hour so it fell to me to use my superhuman Hebrew speed reading skills to get us to the meal.

And not only did we get to the meal sooner, we finished much earlier than we have at any other seder I had been at, especially on the first night. On that night, we retired to the couches after dinner where bloggette Feta produced the weed and we all got high. And there endeth the night's rituals in a cloud of smoke and giggles.

3. At all other seders there is an egg and shank bone on the plate, but at this seder there is an orange, a beet, and a flower.

At a strictly Orthodox seder, the egg represents one kind of sacrifice (Haggigah if you must) and the shank bone represents the Pesach sacrifice. But at a vegan seder, the beet replaces the shank bone, the flower stands in for the egg (What came first, the flower or the egg?) and the orange represents feminism. That last one has nothing to do with veganism and everything to do with liberalism, which is not accepted at my family's seders. Oh, I'm sure if I had been there this year, I would've heard heavy quoting from Glenn Beck. Shudder.


4. At all other seders, we sing songs arranged according to the Aleph Bet. Or ones about the circle of death for a young goat. But tonight we sing show tunes!

Well we didn't sing show tunes, just parodies of them. And it wasn't we, just Knoxville who made made like Ethel Merman, well, at a seder.