Remember this one?

“A six year old returns home from Sunday School. His father asks him what he learned. He tells his father that he learned about Passover. How God told the Jews they should leave Egypt, how He led them to the Red Sea (OK, the Sea of Reeds), and when they came to the shore, he sent atomic helicopters to take the Jews over the sea, while He used lasers and ray guns to push back the Egyptians, so the Jews could leave in peace.

The father says: Did they really teach you that?

The son responds: Well, not really. But if I told you what they really said, you’d never believe me.”

I have no opinion on the overall question as to whether or not the Exodus took place. Well above my pay grade. There is a long tradition connected to this story, of course, with Biblical origination. Although there has been no real evidence, as I understand it, that the Exodus took place, more and more of Biblical history has been found to be accurate, so I can’t categorically deny the Exodus. And in fact, I don’t really care if the Israelites (whomever they may have been at that time) lived in today’s Egypt, were enslaved in Egypt, or (one way or another) escaped from Egypt. I don’t care. Well, that’s not quite right. I care from a historical point of view – I don’t care from a religious point of view.

As most of you know, it is traditional, at a Passover seder, to read the Haggadah, so as to tell the story of the Exodus to the children at the table. The Haggadah, composed primarily from Biblical sources, was first put together over a thousand years ago by the Gaons in medieval Babylonia, today’s Iraq. It remained virtually unchanged for centuries until sometime in the 20th century, when it became common to modify it for various purposes. You could have a women’s Haggadah, a save-the-earth Haggadah, various children’s Haggadahs and so forth. I have never felt comfortable with any of the modifications, all of which I think distort the message of the holiday.

Not that I necessarily know what that message is, but I know it isn’t about what the modified Haggadahs turn it into.

So, do I like the “original” Haggadah? Not really. Parts of it are repetitive, parts make little sense. And parts I just downright disagree with.

For example – I know that the Egypt of the 21st century is not the Egypt of 3500 years ago. But the name is the same – Egypt in English, Mitzrayim in Hebrew. But think about it. When you hear the words “Egypt” or “Mitzrayim”, you don’t really differentiate. You think about the geographic land of today’s Egypt.

So, reverse things a minute. You are an Egyptian. And you know that every year the Jews, all over the world, have a holiday where they talk about being enslaved by Egyptians, by Egypt being beset with plagues by God, with God casting the Egyptian army into the sea and drowning them, etc. How would you feel? Wouldn’t your reaction be: hey, that’s my ancestors they’re talking about?

So, in my ideal Haggadah, the badmouthing of Egypt and the Egyptians would end. There would, for example, be no mention of the plagues.

Well, you say, the plagues are fun. Frogs jumping here and there and all that. But the plagues devastate the land, and honor the murder of Egyptian children. Yes, but you say, we dip our fingers into our wine and droplets of wine fall on our plate to show we have compassion and shed tears about this. Big deal!

We know that there was a Jewish kingdom that, in one form or another, lasted over 1,000 years, covering part of today’s Israel and part of the West Bank. That is history. We really don’t know who the Israelites and the Judeans were (they weren’t “Jews” yet), and how they came to be a distinct group. We don’t know how this group was expanded. There is a lot we don’t know. So the Bible, the same document that said that Adam was the first man and Eve the first woman (fashioned from Adam’s rib), tries to explain: Abraham went to Canaan, he went into a covenant with God, who promised the land to his survivors, there was a famine, some of his descendants went to Egypt (for a while, this is what Abraham did, too) and there (somehow) they became a “great nation”. It’s a terrific story, but at this point of our knowledge, that is all that it is. It may be true, somewhat true, just a bit true, or completely false. And we shouldn’t, in this day and age, make more of it than it is.

There are other things in the Haggadah that I don’t like. Such as the statement that in every generation “they” are out to kill us. But that God will protect us. History belies this on both sides – some generations have not been assaulted by others, and in some generations, God’s saving qualities have been starkly insufficient.

And then there’s Elijah. He comes, like Santa Claus (except he gets wine, not milk and cookies), to every seder. I really like Elijah – he is the precursor to the Messiah. And, boy, do we need a Messiah. But when we open the door to let Elijah in, why do we have to “pour out our wrath” and ask God to destroy the nations that don’t believe in Him? Ridiculous, I would say. Leave that out.

I will stop my criticizing here. I am not objecting to seders, per se, by any means. Getting everyone together with a rather ritualized meal is great. Having children participate, have them learn about their community’s history…..all to the good. But there are ways to do it, and there are ways not to do it. And too often we choose the second.

Now, if you really want to know what I think…….