the pesach seder

Seder was surprisingly fun. We ended up without any guests and the army never sent me the soldiers that I requested, so we were going to be alone. Seder is generally more fun with more people so we were a bit sad. We heard another family was without guests, so we invited them over. They turned us down and then invited us the next day. We agreed and invited them for lunch.

There are a number of different kinds of seder people. Some people read through the hagaddah quickly without commentary, other people discuss it, some people like to analyse every word and other families sing the whole thing. We like to discuss the hagaddah on the level of the children at the table, and the family we went to is more of a read it through kind. We didn't really discuss it, but we compromised as I interrupted the reading with questions and discussion points. I had prizes for the different age groups and the mixture of our 2 styles went very well.
I asked a couple difficult questions, one of which was partially answered by their teenage daughter who had been listening when I spoke to bnei akiva on shabbos. I hadn't given them the full answer, to the question I asked, but I was amazed that she was able to repeat what I had told them.

They brought a gift when they came for lunch and we hadn't brought a gift when we went to them, which is kind of awkward. Now we have to decide if we have to gift them back. The intricacies of human relations are always confusing.

One thing that is very different about where I grew up and where my children go to school is there is no focus on the hagaddah in my children's schools. I always came home with notebooks full of information on the hagaddah, as did my siblings. My children didn't know the first thing about it and I went through it a little bit before the seder with each of them so they would be prepared.