The Seder is Tisha b’Av, But With Hallel and a Meal

A couple months after we made Aliyah, I was invited to join a weekly Talmud study group, a chabura. The one and a half to two hours every Friday morning spent learning with that close-knit group is a highlight of my week.  Several months ago we began studying the 10^th chapter of Pesachim.  Many of the ideas below were developed in those weekly sessions.

Were someone to ask you what the theme of the Seder is, what does it commemorate, I think the answer would be obvious.  The Seder is a ritual centered around a festive meal commemorating and celebrating the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, as told in the Bible.  A more expansive response might also include something to the effect of the Seder marks the beginning of a process in which the Israelite peoples merge and unite into becoming the Israelite nation and ultimately the Jewish people.  But is that answer complete?  If that all the Seder remembers?

Before considering what takes place at the Seder itself or the composition of the Haggadah, let’s consider a brief and seemingly unimportant discussion in the Talmud which hints to us that there might be more to the Seder than just the exodus.  The first Mishne in the tenth chapter of Pesachim states that one ought not eat on Erev Pesach from close to the time of Mincha until it gets dark:

ערבי פסחים סמוך למנחה לא יאכל אדם עד שתחשך-פסחים י:א

The Gemara analyses this law and queries:

אִיבַּעְיָא לְהוּ: סָמוּךְ לְמִנְחָה גְּדוֹלָה תְּנַן, אוֹ דִילְמָא סָמוּךְ לְמִנְחָה קְטַנָּה תְּנַן? סָמוּךְ לְמִנְחָה גְּדוֹלָה תְּנַן — וּמִשּׁוּם פֶּסַח, דִּילְמָא אָתֵי לְמִימְּשַׁךְ, וְאָתֵי לְאִימְּנוֹעֵי מִלְּמִיעְבַּד פִּסְחָא. אוֹ דִילְמָא, סָמוּךְ לְמִנְחָה קְטַנָּה תְּנַן — וּמִשּׁוּם מַצָּה, דִּילְמָא אָתֵי לְמֵיכְלַהּ לְמַצָּה אֲכִילָה גַּסָּה.- בבלי פסחים קז:א

The Gemara returns to the mishna, which stated that it is prohibited to eat adjacent to minḥa time on Passover eve. A dilemma was raised before the Sages in the study hall: Did we learn in the mishna that it is prohibited to eat adjacent to the time of the greater minḥa [minḥa gedola], which is half an hour after midday, or perhaps we learned in the mishna that it is prohibited to eat adjacent to the time of the lesser minḥa [minḥa ketana], two and a half hours before sunset? The Gemara elaborates: Did we learn in the mishna that it is prohibited to eat adjacent to the time of the greater minḥa, and this is because of the Paschal lamb, lest one come to be drawn after the meal and spend a long time eating, as was typical for large meals, and he will end up refraining from performing the Paschal lamb? Or perhaps we learned this halakha in the mishna as pertaining to the time adjacent to the lesser minḥa, and the reason for the prohibition is due to matza. (this translation can be found here)

The Bavli, which was composed between four hundred and six hundred years after the churban haBayit, the destruction of the Temple, isn’t sure why we are bidden to stop eating from early in the afternoon on Erev Pesach.  Is it in order to insure that the first bite of Matzah we take tastes especially good, or is it in remembrance of when we ate the paschal lamb?  In other words, the Talmud seems to be asking: what, if any, is the place of the Mikdash, the Temple or yore, and the korban Pesach, the Paschal sacrifice, in our exilic Pesach Seder?

I don’t think this dilemma, one that goes to the core of what is the central theme of the Seder, began with the Bavli.  I think it began centuries earlier, in the first generation of Tanaaim post the churban haBayit.

The Haggadah tells a story of five Tanaaim, R. Eliezer, R. Akiva, R. Elazar, R. Yehoshua, and R. Tarfon, who gathered (presumably at R. Akiva’s home) in B’nei Brak, one Pesach night and spent the entire night retelling the story of the exodus from Egypt.  There is one figure, who appears in many other stories told in the Bavli about with these sages, missing; the Nasi, R.  Gamliel II.  Why is he not at this Seder?

This story has no earlier source in rabbinic literature.  That lack of an earlier source gives rise to the belief among many scholars (not all mind you) that the B’nei Brak Seder never actually occurred.  It’s fiction.  But if it’s fiction, R. Gamliel’s absence from the cast of characters becomes all the more glaring.  It’s not simply a matter that he may have preferred not to attend R. Akiva’s seder.  In leaving R. Gamliel out of the story, its author intended to make a point.

The story of the Bnei Brak Seder parallels a nearly identical story told in the tenth chapter of the Tosefta Pesachim about R. Gamliel II.  Per the Tosefta, R. Gamliel and the (unnamed) sages assembled in the home of Boetheus b. Zunin in Lydda one Pesach night and spent the entire night reviewing the laws of the Korban Pesach.

The difference between the two stories is obvious.  R.  Akiva and his guests spent the evening retelling the story of the Exodus.  They celebrated a seminal past event; the one that created Israelite or Jewish history.  That is what the Torah bids us to do at the Seder.  R. Gamliel however stayed up all night and learned the laws of the Paschal sacrifice.  He spent the night reflecting on an equally seminal past event; the loss of the central focus of the Pesach holiday, the sacrificed lamb that was eaten in a Jerusalem that was in his days becoming an ever distant memory.

The textual content of R.  Gamliel’s Seder, remembering the Korban Pesach, is not a “one of” for him.  In a number of places the Tanaaitic literature makes it clear that remembering the destroyed Mikdash and even re-enacting the offering of the Korban Pesach was central to his observance of Pesach.  The Mishne in two places records a dispute between R.  Gamliel and the sages about the permissibility of eating roasted lamb at the Seder:

אֵין צוֹלִין אֶת הַפֶּסַח לֹא עַל הַשַּׁפּוּד וְלֹא עַל הָאַסְכְּלָא. אָמַר רַבִּי צָדוֹק, מַעֲשֶׂה בְּרַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל שֶׁאָמַר לְטָבִי עַבְדּוֹ, צֵא וּצְלֵה לָנוּ אֶת הַפֶּסַח עַל הָאַסְכְּלָא.-פסחים ז:ב

One may not roast the Paschal lamb on the metal spit nor on a metal grill [askela]. However, Rabbi Tzadok said: There was an incident with Rabban Gamliel, who said to his slave Tavi: Go and roast the Paschal lamb for us on the grill.   (The translation can be found here)

אַף הוּא אָמַר שְׁלֹשָׁה דְבָרִים לְהָקֵל, מְכַבְּדִין בֵּין הַמִּטּוֹת, וּמַנִּיחִין אֶת הַמֻּגְמָר בְּיוֹם טוֹב, וְעוֹשִׂין גְּדִי מְקֻלָּס בְּלֵילֵי פְסָחִים. וַחֲכָמִים אוֹסְרִין:  ביצה ב:ז

Rabban Gamliel also said three things as leniencies, in opposition to the view of most of the Sages: One may sweep the room of the couches on a Festival, i.e., the dining room, where they would recline on couches to eat, as there is no concern that by sweeping the room one might come to fill in the holes and level the ground. And one may place incense consisting of fragrant herbs on burning coals in order to perfume one’s house on a Festival. And one may prepare a whole kid goat, meaning a kid goat roasted whole, with its entrails over its head, on the night of Passover, as was the custom when they roasted the Paschal lamb in the Temple. However, the Rabbis prohibit all three practices: (the translation can be found here)

Perhaps due to his colleagues’ staunch opposition to eating a roasted lamb on Pesach night, R.  Gamliel enunciated his Halacha, as quoted (albeit in modified form) in the Haggadah that one is obligated to recite and remember the Korban Pesach, matzah and marror at the Seder lest he not fulfil his ritual obligations of the evening.  There are other examples in the Talmud of how R. Gamliel placed remembering the Korban Pesach at the center of his Pesach observances.

It has been suggested (here) that upon the destruction of the Mikdash, with the reconstituting of Judaism to be a non-Temple centered rabbinic Judaism, there arose a dispute, simmering beneath the surface of all the discussion of how to choreograph the Seder, between R. Gamliel and the other sages around how to observe Pesach; how to best reflect that which the Torah requires of us.  The Torah clearly demands that we both retell the story of the Exodus, and that the event culminate with the eating of the Korban Pesach in Jerusalem.  The Seder was sandwiched between the offering of the sacrifice during the day and eating it at the end of the meal at night.  Thus the Korban Pesach was intended to be featured at the beginning and the end of the entire observance.  When the Mikdash stood and people could come on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, both requirements were easily met.  But what is to be emphasized once we no longer have the Mikdash, the story of the exodus or the memory of the sacrificial lamb?  R. Gamliel probably participated in offering the Korban Pesach  as a child and teenager.  That memory was front and center in his mind and he was determined to perpetuate it.  The sages, maybe understanding that notwithstanding how important an institution it was, active memory of the Mikdash would fade.  It would become an ethereal institution; perhaps a focus of belief and hope for the future, but not something with which people would corporeally identify.  Recounting our national origins, celebrating who we’ve become as a people and nation is the focal point the sages chose for us on Pesach.

And that’s why R.  Gamliel is not part of the Bnei Brak Seder.  The author of the story chose to omit him so as to highlight that dispute and which side ultimately prevailed.

But the story doesn’t end there.

I don’t think the dispute has ever been fully resolved.  It isn’t resolved in the Mishne, which provides the template for our Seder.  And the author(s)/compiler(s) of the Haggadah, the script and screenplay of every Seder, very subtly reflect that tension.  While on the surface the exodus predominates, R.  Gamliel’s commemoration of the Mikdash lurks in the corners.

Consider the main section of the Magid, the retelling of the exodus.  The Mishne instructs us:

וּלְפִי דַעְתּוֹ שֶׁל בֵּן, אָבִיו מְלַמְּדוֹ. מַתְחִיל בִּגְנוּת וּמְסַיֵּם בְּשֶׁבַח, וְדוֹרֵשׁ מֵאֲרַמִּי אוֹבֵד אָבִי, עַד שֶׁיִּגְמֹר כֹּל הַפָּרָשָׁה כֻלָּה (פסחים י:ד):

And according to the intelligence and the ability of the son, his father teaches him about the Exodus. When teaching his son about the Exodus. He begins with the Jewish people’s disgrace and concludes with their glory. And he expounds from the passage: “An Aramean tried to destroy my father” (Deuteronomy 26:5), the declaration one recites when presenting his first fruits at the Temple, until he concludes explaining the entire section.  (the translation can be found here)

The Midrash which the Mishne instructs us to recite in found in the Sifri Devarim, a Halchik midrash associated with R. Akiva’s bet midrash, most probably written after the destruction of the Mikdash.   When the Halacha to recite it at the Seder was first legislated, it was a comparatively recent work.  Clearly it was not part of the “traditional” way people fulfilled their obligation to retell the exodus at their Sedarim in Jerusalem when the Mikdash still stood.  Why does the Mishne instruct us to recite that Midrash?  If all we wanted to do was retell the exodus, we could open a Bible and read the first twelve or thirteen chapters of the Book of Exodus.

This Midrash, which is a homily on what’s known as the Viduy Bikurim, the confessional recited when Jews brought their first fruits to the Temple in Jerusalem, links that confessional to the exodus from Egypt.  And thus it connects the exodus to the Mikdash.  I can imagine R. Gamliel being quite satisfied with its selection for the Seder.

But, as a good friend has pointed out, there is a significant lacuna in that Midrash as applied to the Pesach Seder.   It doesn’t mention matzah, marror or the Korban Pesach.  So, R. Gamliel, who really wanted us to re-enact the roasting of the Paschal lamb, supplements the Magid with his Halacha requiring us to specifically mention and elaborate on them.  That Halacha and the author(s) of the Haggadah chose to place that recitation also serve to place the Mikdash and the Korban Pesach literally in the center of the Seder.

Remembering the Mikdash and the Korban Pesach and praying for their restoration, is not merely part of the narrative.  It’s liturgic.  The Mishne states:

עַד הֵיכָן הוּא אוֹמֵר, בֵּית שַׁמַּאי אוֹמְרִים, עַד אֵם הַבָּנִים שְׂמֵחָה. וּבֵית הִלֵּל אוֹמְרִים, עַד חַלָּמִישׁ לְמַעְיְנוֹ מָיִם. וְחוֹתֵם בִּגְאֻלָּה. רַבִּי טַרְפוֹן אוֹמֵר, אֲשֶׁר גְּאָלָנוּ וְגָאַל אֶת אֲבוֹתֵינוּ מִמִּצְרָיִם, וְלֹא הָיָה חוֹתֵם. רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא אוֹמֵר, כֵּן ה’ אֱלֹהֵינוּ וֵאלֹהֵי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ יַגִּיעֵנוּ לְמוֹעֲדִים וְלִרְגָלִים אֲחֵרִים הַבָּאִים לִקְרָאתֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם, שְׂמֵחִים בְּבִנְיַן עִירֶךָ וְשָׂשִׂים בַּעֲבוֹדָתֶךָ, וְנֹאכַל שָׁם מִן הַזְּבָחִים וּמִן הַפְּסָחִים כוּ’, עַד בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ גָּאַל יִשְׂרָאֵל: (פסחים י:ו)

Until where does one recite hallel? Beit Shammai say: Until “Who makes the barren woman dwell in her house as a joyful mother of children, halleluya” (Psalms 113:9). And Beit Hillel say: Until “Who turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a fountain of waters” (Psalms 114:8). And one concludes this section of hallel with a blessing that refers to redemption. Rabbi Tarfon says that although one should recite: Who redeemed us and redeemed our forefathers from Egypt, one who did so would not conclude with the formula: Blessed are You, Lord. Rabbi Akiva says that one recites a different version of this blessing: So too, the Lord our God and the God of our forefathers will bring us to future holidays and Festivals in peace, happy over the building of Your city and joyous in Your service. And there we will eat from the Paschal lamb and other offerings, etc., until: Blessed are You, Lord, Who redeemed Israel. (the translation can be found here)

The Bracha we recite at the Seder accounts for all the views cited by the Mishne.  As opposed to Sukkot which has elaborate rituals that were performed in the Mikdash (the Hoshanot and the Nisuch haMayim) it is on the more domestic oriented Pesach that we recite a specific prayer begging for the restoration of the Mikdash in order to fulfill the mitzvot associated with that holiday.

The Mikdash also occupies a central place in one of the central rituals of the Seder; eating the marror.  After we get our first taste of the matzah and we eat the marror, we go back and make a sandwich of marror and charoset on matzah.  Before we eat it, recite:

זֵכֶר לַמִּקְדָּשׁ כְּהִלֵּל. כֵּן עָשָׂה הִלֵּל בִּזְמַן שֶׁבֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ הָיָה קַיָּם,  הָיָה כּוֹרֵךְ מַצָּה וּמָרוֹר וְאוֹכֵל בְּיַחַד, לְקַיֵּם מַה שֶּׁנֶּאֱמַר: עַל מַצּוֹת וּמְרוֹרִים יֹאכְלֻהוּ.

In memory of the Temple, in the tradition of Hillel. This is what Hillel would do when the Temple still stood  he would wrap [the Pesaḥ offering] up with matza and bitter herbs and eat them together, to fulfill what is said: “You shall eat it with matza and bitter herbs.” (the translation can be found here)

The inclusion of this step the Seder is one fraught with Halachik difficulties.  The Talmud (Bavli Pesachim 115a) discusses Hillel’s Halacha and how to comply with it when we no longer have a Korban Pesach.  The issue is that without the sacrifice, eating marror is no longer a biblical commandment, but rather a rabbinic requirement.  There is a concept in Halacha of מצוות מבטלות זו את זו, multiple mitzvot performed simultaneously cancel each other out.  The Talmud states that the principle applies when a biblical commandment is performed commensurate with a rabbinic requirement.  Thus without a sacrifice, eating matzah and marror together creates a Halachik nullity. To resolve the problem, we first eat matzah, fulfilling the biblical command, we then eat marror, fulfilling the rabbinic requirement.  Then we make the sandwich to remember the Mikdash.   But that process creates another Halachik problem.  As the child asks in the Four Questions, reflecting yet another Mishnaic mandate, on Seder night, we dip twice, the karpas in salt water and the marror in charoset.  The addition of the “Hillel sandwich” seemingly necessitates an additional dipping of marror in charoset.  The commentators to the Talmud have spilled much ink trying to resolve that problem.

My point in getting so very far into the Halachik weeds is in order to consider the motivation of adding korech to the Seder.  I’m sure we could all imagine a very satisfying and enjoyable Seder without it.  And I wonder if the Amoraim and then the Geonim and ultimately the Haggadah inserted it simply so we could say זכר למקדש, that we remember the Temple, at the Seder.

These (not so) subtle homages to the Mikdash at the Seder do not end with Chazal.  The Geonim continued with them.  For example, why does the beloved piyyut כמה מעלות טובות, more commonly known as “Dayeinu” extend extolling G-d’s kindnesses to the building of the Beit haMikdash?  I think it’s because it was understood that the Seder is as much about remembering the Temple as is about retelling the exodus story. And finally, the medieval era rabbis added their contribution by adding in the hopeful proclamation of לשנה הבאה בירושלים, may we be in Jerusalem next year, as the conclusion of the Seder.

I don’t think it can be denied that R.  Gamliel succeeded in rendering the remembering of the Mikdash and the Paschal Lamb as essential to the Seder.  And we should be grateful that he did so. For in its own way, it’s a comfort to us.  We tend to associate the Mikdash with its destruction and the dirges of Tisha b’Av.  By forcing us to remember the great national celebration that was Pesach in a Jerusalem replete with the Mikdash and pilgrims excited to be there pouring into the city, celebrating and enjoying every moment of the festival, R. Gamliel created an image of the Mikdash we can hope will be restored to us, not merely an abstract and anachronistic memory over which we mournfully recite dirges.  He reminded us that prior to the tragedy, the Temple was a source of pride and joy, the place where we were able to approach the gates of Heaven.

 תּוֹרָה וּתְעוּדָה, וּכְלֵי הַחֶמְדָה, בְּצֵאתִי מִמִּצְרָיִם; שָׂשׂוֹן וְשִׂמְחָה, וְנָס יָגוֹן וַאֲנָחָה, בְּשׁוּבִי לִירוּשָׁלָיִם

Teaching and instruction, and precious vessels, when I left Egypt

The voice of joy and gladness, and mourning and sorrow shall end, when I return to Jerusalem. (the translation can be found here)

Wishing one and all a most joyous and kosher Pesach.