How did the Pesach Seder become a Family Affair?
This lecture will explore biblical, second temple, and rabbinic texts about how Pesach was celebrated in a diversity of ways in antiquity – as it is observed in many different ways in the present as well. We will think about how Pesach was imagined to originate as a family ritual, how it took a detour as a priestly and scholarly men’s endeavor, and then how it circled back in new ways to the family table. We will begin, though, at the 2018 Samaritan Passover sacrifice in Nablus, in order to consider as expansively as possible the various trajectories that Pesach celebrations have taken or could have taken since antiquity, and then go back in time to the book of Exodus and beyond. This lecture will be anchored in historical sources, but it aims to provoke us to think creatively and practically about how ideas related to time, memory, historical reenactment, and intergenerational rituals can be incorporated into contemporary Seders today.
This Rapoport Memorial Lecture, taught by Dr. Sarit Kattan Gribetz, is sponsored by Dr. Samuel and Sanda E. Rapoport.
It was originally recorded in 2019.
