FIFTH GRADE SEDER

Our fifth grade classes traditionally celebrate Passover with a ritual feast called a Seder.  For the Jewish people, this meal marks the beginning of the Passover holiday. 

I missed a good deal of the feast, but between nursing duties I did manage some quick stopovers to see what was happening in Mrs. Swartley’s homeroom.  When I arrived the first time, two classroom mothers (Suzanne Gunden and Kym Jagiela) were scurrying about.  

They were preparing food plates, setting tables with items like bowls of salt water, and pouring grape juice. 

They placed 1 plate in the center of each table group.  The plates contained a small bunch of parsley, 1 spoonful of horseradish, 4 pieces of celery, and 4 spoonsful of charoset.

Charoset is a chopped apple salad which traditionally contains fruit, nuts, cinnamon, and wine.  Made by Carter’s mother, it looked delicious! Because the celebration was taking place in an elementary school classroom, there was no wine and there were no nuts! 

The charoset symbolizes the bricks and mortar the Hebrew slaves were made to produce during their time as slaves in Egypt.

In preparation for sharing the meal, classroom teacher Mrs. Swartley read to her students from a book about Passover.  She reviewed the symbolic meaning of each element of the meal.  Showing them examples of a Seder plate, she noted that the item they were seeing in the center of one of the plates was a horseradish root, NOT a carrot. 

Each student had a packet of papers for the celebration.  This was a 5^th grade version of the Haggadah, an ancient text containing the Seder order of service which tells the story of Passover.  The students followed along, taking turns reading the passages their teacher highlighted for them.

Unleavened bread symbolizes the speed with which the Jews were made to depart Egypt.  They could not wait for their breads to rise when they were fleeing slavery. The matzo is referred to as both the “bread of affliction” and the “bread of freedom.”  One student from each table group broke the matzo.

Another student was the designated person in charge of pouring, though the “wine” was grape juice and the carafe was a measuring cup.  There is an obligation to drink four cups of wine during the feast. 

At one point during this ritual meal, the storyteller reminds participants about the miraculous salvation of their Jewish ancestors through an enumeration of the ten plagues.  So in the case of our fifth graders, each time Mrs. Swartley named a pestilence, students dipped fingers into “wine”, each relocating a drop of fluid onto to his or her plate.

There was lots of tasting.  I’m not sure why our children can identify the flavor lawn, but one of the students noted that parsley tastes “worse than grass!”

There was a lovely song about God’s kindness. “Dayenu”, the words meaning: It Would Have Been Enough. The singing got a little livelier as the song grew to its finale with a resounding “HEY!”

The students had various shapes and sizes of cushions upon which they “reclined” during the feast.  For the purposes of the Seder, this comfortable position symbolized freedom.  Only free persons are able to relax while servants stand.  I particularly enjoyed Keira’s hot-pink fuzzy pillow.

Whether through touch, taste, sound, or visual experience, I admire the way our teachers work to transform unfamiliar concepts into something wonderfully tangible. Ideas leap from written page to fond memory by means of these unforgettable student experiences.