This year, we did 2nd night seder at our house. First night is very traditional, including the food, but since we do the whole thing over 2nd night, this year we decided to try to make it really fun!
We decided this year to have a “Road Trip Seder” since we go on so many road trips.
We actually started in the future, with Star Trek (Av did this for the intro: “Sinai. The primary frontier. These are the voyages of the Jewish people…..”). He did really great with this one. It got corny, but still funny.
Then, we traveled on to Star Wars, where Av was “Darth Seder”, which was hilarious! For the different sons portion, we did different Star Wars characters that corresponded with the attributes of the four sons.
For the plagues, we traveled back to earth and went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We gave out beads representing the different plagues, and had everyone guess which they stood for. We had really cute ones with squeaky frogs, red beads for blood, those huge white ball/beads for hail, I hot-glued a plastic grasshopper to a set of beads with lemons for locusts. For boils, we got one of the beads that had on it all the ingredients for a crawfish boil.
For the part where the different elements of the seder are pointed out, we went to Japan to the set of “Iron Chef”, where Av did the whole Chairman Kaga thing: “Allez Cuisine!……..maror.”
After supper, we went to Hawai’i for the Hallel and had a Hallel-luau. Everybody got one of those $.75 flowery leis from Party City, and that was fun.
We then went to NYC to the set of Conan O’Brien’s show and several of us took part in a ‘In the Year 6000’ bit. One of them was: “In the year 6000, the Chief Rabbi of Israel will throw up his hands and say ‘what’s the point of Passover rules’ when a line of Kosher for Passover doughnuts is announced by Krispy Kreme”. There were a bunch (funnier) others.
For the 4th cup, we went to a football stadium and (this is Av’s family tradition) did their school song in addition to the regular blessing.
We ended with the rest of the songs, including the fun (English) camp version of “Who Knows One?” and those of us who don’t do the Hebrew for Chad Gadya did the animal sounds. Everybody had a blast!
Next year we’re thinking of doing 2nd night all in retro television shows. Who knows?