Leading a Passover Seder, Machiavelli, and Federalist No. 10. (On Factions)

At our family Seders, I’m typically the Leader, meaning that the people around the table look to me to lead them through the liturgy of the Haggadah (1). It’s up to me to set the Seder mood with a preamble, to choose which sections of the Haggadah to include, to call on people to read the sections labelled “Participant,” and to establish the pace.

Machiavelli said it was better for a ruler to be feared rather than loved. At our Seders, it’s almost entirely family who attend, and while I do not command my family’s fear, I think I can count on their love. In any case, I’m very far from being an absolute ruler, and so I must contend with various factions around the table.

There are factions with a pecuniary interest in the pace of the Seder; rumors abound of brisk betting on the over/under of how many minutes I’ll take with the Seder before the meal is served.

There’s a faction of talented hecklers (my brothers instigating my adult children) who will make the entire table, including me, laugh.

There’s a lonely, but highly influential faction (my wife) who will urge me to slow down.

And then there will be a faction––the silent plurality––who refrain from joining in the fray.

In other words, our Seder is like many Seders. Guided chaos.

My grandfather liked to conduct Seders. He was an imposing figure, seldom if ever disobeyed, and, unlike me, he commanded fear whether he wished to or not. My childhood memory of his Seders from fifty years ago is that everyone obeyed him without question, and that his Seders were agonizingly long.

Here’s a picture of me circa 1970 as one of those foreboding Seders was about to begin.

At my grandfather’s Seder, there were no hecklers, no laughter, no factions.

Here’s where the essence of Federalist No. 10 on factions comes in (I love the excerpt below, so I’ll use any excuse to quote it):

“There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires…

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.”

Leaders of Seders have to choose a Seder “lane.” Do we try to eliminate liberty and conduct our Seder like a dictator with complete authority, snuffing out liberty so no flames of faction can flicker around the Seder table? Or do we try to please everyone, knowing that each person will have different opinions about the type of Seder they want.

Both methods are sure to end in terrible Seders, at least for our crew. The authoritarian choice, even if possible, would put everyone in a sour mood, and when ending the Seder with the line “Next Year in Jerusalem,” everyone would instead be thinking “Next Year, please, anywhere but here!”

On the other hand, the “make everyone happy approach” will turn the leader into a hapless conductor without a baton, ignored by the orchestra whose instruments will make no music, just discordant, annoying noise. In that scenario, some of the most important rites and traditions of the Seder will likely go unobserved or disrespected. No one will leave happy, because it will have been a failed Seder, empty of meaning.

Especially unhappy will be those who took great care in laying out the table to make the Seder possible.

So, compromise is the best answer. It’s easy for me. The people in my family come to the Seder expecting both to fulfill the ancient traditions as well as to enjoy a humorous and loving time with one another. And while it’s convenient that everyone shares those two expectations, they do so in significantly different proportions. Hence factions, but with some common purpose and sufficient respect and sympathy for me, the leader, to make it all work.

I think the Founders who created the Constitution succeeded in steering a wise course between the crush of authoritarianism and the chaos of pure liberty; in doing so, they, too assigned varying proportions of virtue to liberty vs. authority, proportions which have largely survived for two hundred and thirty years.

By the way, my pick of which Founder would be the best Seder leader: Ben Franklin (2).

Bottom line: At our Seder, the goal is guided chaos. (Plus, no talk of current politics!)

(1)   A Haggadah tells the story of Passover and sets the order (Seder is the Hebrew word for order) of the rituals. There are countless editions of Haggadahs to choose from. We use the same one from the early 1970s that my wife’s family has used for nearly fifty years. It retains a faint hippie vibe­­––––lots of peace and love (but no granola!) and a shout out from god demanding sympathy for the Egyptian soldiers who drowned when the Red Sea came crashing down on them.

(2)   Franklin’s design for the official seal of the United States in 1776 depicted the Jews crossing the Red Sea. The motto around the seal read: "Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God." In the 1930s, a calumny about Franklin being an anti-Semite was circulated and has been vigorously debunked.