Passover is probably the only holiday that I get truly excited about celebrating. Not only because its great food, but for its many little customs. The Seder takes place on the first night of Passover. A time to get together with friends and family, eat well, drink lots of wine, sing and tell the story of the Haggadah — basically a great opportunity to get together!
The ‘Haggadah’, a text read in celebrating households, was written around the 2nd century and deals with some of the basic notions of freedom. Those which we easily take for granted. Seriously, had the Hebrews not been freed from slavery we would be living in a dark, dark world -
no New York Bagels, no Goonies, Seinfeld and… well… leaving politics out of this one.
The Haggadah has been “open source” for centuries, as families and communities created their own versions and additions to the story – contextualized it, and made it relevant to their social circles. However, many were kept within closed doors, usually purely for geographic reasons. With the ease of online communication, it is amazing how many people have been sharing their Haggadah versions. Over the past week, I’ve heard personal stories about people who were asked by friends to e-mail out their version of the Haggadah (complete with subtext, images and pop-songs). We are getting so used to the notion of personalizing every thing around us. So why not read a more relevant version of this story? The idea driving this Passover custom is to be thankful for our freedom, and “never forget” that our ancestors were enslaved in Egypt.
Douglas Rushkoff began a web-based project called open source haggadah that lets you pick and choose which parts of the long text you’d like to read (actually, I have never managed to get to the end of the text… definitely not after wine+food). There is a standard Hebrew format, but many radically different translations and adaptations are used (best-of-the-bunch is the hardcore feminist Haggadah, with no masculine reference to g-d. With all the sizzling hot trends supporting open source-ness, this was a perfect chance to get a bunch of friends together over a .
(note to self: read through all of the Haggadah text before the Seder)…
Although it DID make out for a very entertaining evening… Especially after the wine started kicking in. Here’s one result – Souris managed to sign up for L_RD on twitter, and already has 22 followers – much easier being a twitter god than helping the Israelites out of Egypt :: Oh dear
Here are some pix from the Seder:
and a link to the Haggadah we used.
[tags]haggadah,jewish,holiday,religion,culture,technology,cultech,open,source,passover[/tags]