Seder is experiential more than intellectual, because of the many inherent contradictions in the Seder’s composition. Rabbi Soloveitchik said the experience of the Seder was instrumental to his religious development, even more so than his intellectual capacity. 

Rambam’s Haggadah only told of the Exodus on the 15th of Nissan; all other stuff was deleted. The Mitzvah is only to tell of the exodus. So why does almost all of the Seder (of the Kadesh, Urchatz elements, only Matza and Maror are actually about the Exodus and this order, by the way, was set up by Rashi as a mnemonic) deal with extraneous points? The Korban Pesach, which was a central element, is not even part of our Seder today. The East Europeans eat boiled chicken to be as far as possible away from eating something approaching roasted lamb (the Sefardim do eat this).

Side Story: In old Jerusalem, people ate the Korban Pesach in one day and quickly. All came to Jerusalem to shecht it at the temple and then eat it in 2-3 story buildings, switching floors as it could only be eaten on the ground floor, that floor being holy. And you thought today’s crazy real estate crisis was a problem with 5-star hotel prices in Israel....

Examples of Inconsistencies:

4 Cups of Wine: Reasons range from the traditional reason to the idea that Jews were enslaved by 4 nations, 4 cups of Pharoah mentioned in Genesis, and 4 kinds of plagues god will send to the Gentiles. Meaning there is no good reason, except that the Rabbis wanted a meal with lots of wine so they found a reason.

Reclining: Reasons vary: One should see himself as freed from Egypt (but nobody reclined in Egypt and if they did the rabbis had no way to know about it), God surrounded the people (Vayasev et Ha’am) and made them go circularly to Israel for 40 years and even a poor Jew must recline just as God “reclined” to the Jews; slaves ate standing up so free people sit down. (I have a photocopy of the text but it doesn’t identify the name of the book or author.) The Galilee rabbis saw that the Romans around them in Caesaria reclined, and they wanted liberation theology here, so they told the Jews to recline to feel liberated that night. Same with the wine; nobody wanted to say to act like Romans so they found religious reasons to couch it. The Shulchan Aruch, written 1550, quotes rabbis from the 1200's that said that nobody needed to recline because nobody likes to recline nowadays since people eat at tables instead of sitting on sofa chairs with trays set before them. 

Another luxury point: The Korban Pesach must have no bones. Because only poor people pick through meat to avoid bones.

The point being that the customs of the seders evolved to suit the contemporary visions of luxury to engender a liberating experience for Jews on the night of Passover. This sets the tone for the second half of the Seder or the answer to the last 2 questions (of reclining and dipping – also a luxurious act) because none of the second part of the Seder has anything to do with the Exodus. The songs at the end are all created in the last 500 years and have nothing to do even with Passover; they are zemiros for shabbat, holidays and passover that were inserted into the Haggadah. The cup of Elijah was created with a vision to explain the future because the 4 cups of wine all related back to Egypt in the liturgical explanation – what about the 5th cup, which was much more problematic to explain to people. Shfoch Hamatcha was created as a response to the crusades – if, upon opening the door and seeing there was no pogrom that night in response to the blood libel, then people said those words to invoke vengeance upon the Goyim. The idea of eating a meal arose only because people thought it was a luxury to do so. The idea of the second half of the Seder was simple – to have a good time. The first half of the Seder (the first 2 questions of Matza and Maror) are only to tell of the Exodus – most of the Maggid tells of other items than the Exodus itself – and indeed only Matza and Maror elements of Rashi’s Seder order are relevant.

2 Ivan Points:

1.   Jewish Week article about people borrowing money to go away for Passover, leaving the idea of preparing for the holiday in the dust. But in contemporary luxury terms, isn’t going to a 5 star hotel and being served the thing to do?

2.   There are many modern attempts to contemporize the Seder to keep it relevant. Artscroll made Jewish resources user-friendly using modern technology and kept it authentic. There is an overemphasis these days on trying to “get it right” rather than remembering that the essence of the Seder as designed was to celebrate something and to feel liberated. Many of the so-called reasons for the actual things we do at the Seder are not real reasons but made-up reasons to justify the celebratory aspects of the Seder. We are more comfortable looking backward than seeing contemporary explanations for the 5th cup, such as the fact that the Israeli state has not found any relevance to the Seder in our liturgy. We still say Next Year in Jerusalem, as if it doesn’t exist. We still recline for eating and drinking even though nobody thinks this is comfortable. We have turned Passover into rocket science making it so intimidating that everyone feels they can’t DIY and people will soon forget the traditions our grandparents grew up with and that the Rav was inspired by. Our 5th cup is for the Messiah, but we need to look at our own accomplishments, feel a sense of true luxury in the Golden Age we are experiencing, and make a Messiah that is relevant to us, instead of this idea of Elijah coming in on a horse someday and taking us back to a temple of animal sacrifices that Israel is putting on the discussion table with the rest of the world in a contemporary settlement of our national identity problem. We have to not use “get it right” as a crutch against thinking about what we are really doing and where we are going as a nation.