Hosting an Open Seder: “Let All Who Are Hungry Come And Eat”

One guest, Isaac Rabin, from California, made the preparation particularly joyful and easier for me. He offered to come on Wednesday before the seder to help clean my kitchen as well as shlep and kasher my pots at the local Chabad down the street. He had good organizational skills and fond memories of helping his mother annually prepare their kitchen for Passover.

I had spent far too much time alone the prior year, so I asked him if he would mind coming back on Friday to help me set the table, pick up the catering and prepare the seder plate. Isaac was my right-hand-man from seder prep on through to the last song and clean-up.

This past year, 2020, I and many were touched not only by loneliness but by death and illness as well. None of us sitting at the table took for granted the freedom to gather in a group and celebrate the rituals of Passover in good health. We went around the table and each shared something for which we felt most grateful.

One man was grateful for being welcomed into someone’s home and meeting like-minded, new people. One yoga teacher shared her gratitude for her breath and practice; another woman shared her gratitude for love, and someone else appreciated the many questions posed and discussed insightfully at the seder. I felt most grateful for my own attitude correction in 2020.

As a writer living in Israel, I came to understand that my firm commitment to my spiritual and creative values afforded me greater security and joy than mere financial success could provide. I just had to look around my seder table in Tel Aviv to see the fruits of my commitment to living a creative, Torah life in Israel.

I doubt hosting one’s own family could be more fun and rewarding than, at the tail end of a modern plague, opening your seder table to eighteen hungry “strangers.”