Are “Christian Seders” offensive?

Post Reply New Topic

Sunday, an image began circulating on social media of a challah loaf that had been braided into the shape of a cross. It was the centerpiece of a "modified Seder meal" that had been hosted by Carly Friesen, a Christian lifestyle coach, who served it alongside roast lamb, a lemon poppyseed cake and what appeared to be a Caesar salad topped with toasted croutons.

"Today we celebrated Passover in our own way for the first time as a family," Friesen wrote in an since-deleted Instagram post about the meal. "We had a modified Seder meal to start with a reading of the first Passover and recognizing Jesus as the final Passover lamb sacrificed for us."

Once the image hit Twitter, it quickly went viral. In part, it was because so much of Friesen's meal contained yeast. During Passover, Jews refrain from eating chametz, which is traditionally anything that contains barley, wheat, rye, oats, and spelt and is not cooked within 18 minutes after coming in contact with water. No leavening — like the kind used for the challah, cake and croutons — is allowed.

It's also customary to clean all the chametz out of one's house, by either cleansing the house, boarding up pantries or selling the grains to their non-Jewish neighbors to buy it back at the end of the holiday. "The ONE F**KING DAY your bread isn't supposed to have yeast in it, and the Evangelicals can't even get that right for their LARP," one Twitter user responded with an eyeroll emoji.

Although Jewish food writer Dina Cheney could understand the general appeal of Seder as a way of commemorating an escape from oppression, she points out that its celebration is tied to a unique experience. "The Seder is really about the Jewish experience — specifically the Jewish people's liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt," she wrote to Salon via email.

"The ritual foods and prayers that encompass it are also specific to that history; for instance, the haroset (fruit and nut paste) represents the mortar used by the (Jewish) slaves as they labored," she added. "So, overall, I would say it's strange for anyone who is not Jewish to conduct a Seder. Instead, I think it would make more sense for them to devise a ritualistic meal that speaks to their own cultural experience."

Robbie Medwed is a Jewish day school instructor who lives in Atlanta. He said that he finds the adapted celebrations to be "100% cultural appropriation" because Christians' celebrations of the Seder are ahistorical.

"The Seder itself is an event that didn't come into being until after Jesus died, so Jesus never participated in a Passover Seder,"

Most of the rituals that we know of from today's Seder were invented long after Jesus was ever even alive," Medwed said. "So, the main thing is that it's taking something that is now entirely Jewish without any Christian roots whatsoever — or any joint roots — and it's completely changing its meaning. I've seen a lot of people who turn the idea of the Passover sacrifice of the lamb and say, 'That's actually Jesus.' And when you take a Jewish symbol and completely transform it like that, it becomes incredibly offensive."

Many Christian seders also shift the meaning of other traditional elements of the meal. The unleavened matzo, for example, is reimagined as the body of Christ, which is traditionally represented through leavened bread during the Eucharist.

Medwed feels like social media has definitely contributed to the spread of the Christian Seders. There's of a growing number of Evangelical lifestyle influencers on social media who share curated images of their celebrations as content.

According to Kendall Vanderslice, a food historian who specifically studies the history of church meals, the practice of Christian Seders often largely emerge in Evangelical spaces where some of the liturgical rituals associated with traditional Christianity — feast days, for instance — aren't necessarily part of their faith practice.

"I think there is a longing for some kind of connection or tradition or tethering, which I think is a sort of very human longing, especially right now," Vanderslice said. "

Vanderslice said that, for some, there's also ignorance of how deeply Christianity has been used to harm Jewish people; while she doesn't believe that many of the Christians who are hosting these celebrations do so malevolently, "they're just totally overlooking 2,000 years of harm that's been done and shifts that have happened in both religions."

She said that looking back on it now, she feels a deep amount of "cringiness," especially because she went on to work as the assistant director of her town's Jewish Family Services.

Attending as a guest to a Jewish Seder is a vastly different experience from the people who are trying to replicate the tradition and assign their own meaning to it.

"I think that the desire to be interested in other cultures is not wrong," she said. "I just think that the way that people are going about it is very wrong."

It’s time to discuss the “Christian seder.” If you are having one this year, or are thinking about doing one next year, here are some helpful tips from Jewish practice: Don’t.

Please, we are begging you, don’t do it.

I’m not suggesting you not attend a seder if your Jewish friend invites you; take that as a big compliment and be a good guest.

But please don’t host your own, especially if you are trying to emulate Jesus or find parallels between Jewish ritual and Messianic Christianity.

There is a trend among Christians — mostly but not exclusively Protestants — towards observing Jewish ritual in general and the seder in particular.

One manifestation of this movement is the “Christian seder, ” a seder held by non-Jews, often inserting references to Jesus or Christian doctrine into the Haggadah.

I used to dismiss Christian seders as a curiosity, a funny thing some gentiles did

Now, however, they have become too common to ignore. With the Hebrew Roots practices in general and Christian seders in particular, a closer look past the veneer of appreciation for Judaism reveals something much more troubling: a superficial philo-Semitism that is inherently anti-Semitic, relying on pernicious ideas about Jews, whether its adherents admit it (or even realize it) or not. Those who engage in these practices don’t really care what Jews have to say; at the very least, are unaware that they should care what Jews have to say. There is no interest in our complaints that it can be very painful to watch Christians appropriate our holidays, because of the long history of pogroms tied to Jewish observance and the even longer history of Christian mockery of our customs. There is even less interest in the history of violence against Jews around Passover specifically, because of the blood libel, or the violence traditionally directed at Jews around Easter and Holy Week (and thus Passover) because of the accusation of Jewish deicide.

Play-acting in Jewish ritual space, in aid of a different religion, is a totemic fetishization of Jews. Even with the best of intentions, it is dehumanizing; basic decency, to say nothing of manners, means they should knock it off.

Are “Christian Seders” offensive?

Well I am a Christian who celebrates a version of Christian Seders called the Lord's Supper every first day of the week and I dont believe in Easter.I will take communion every week till my death regardless of what people think about it.Communion or the Eucharist or what have you is essentially a Christian Seder.

You can claim that its roughly equivalent to the seder. But its not a seder. you're partaking of the flesh and blood of Christ. Not reliving the exodus from Egypt in the Old Testament.

I'd be more concerned if they managed to ban the new ritual, and that's coming from somebody who barely values rituals at all.

I don't like hurting innocent people's feelings, but if they're going to take offense at the slightest little thing like that and to lobby for shutting it down, then it's oppressive of them.

"I used to dismiss Christian seders as a curiosity, a funny thing some gentiles did"

Translation: My ritual is sacred, your ritual is laughable.

More accurately: My ritual is a tradition, your ritual is an imitation of my traditions.

I wonder how many times a group has to repeat a ritual before it becomes a protected activity enshrined with a performance copyright? To my mind it's all simply behaviour, which, if it must be judged at all, is probably best judged on its own merits. Whether or not it's been copied from others or done since somebody's great-great-grandfather's time doesn't make it particularly silly or sacred. But then, I never did understand ritual behaviour. If it does no actual harm, I don't stand in its way and I might even take part if it makes the ritualists happy, but if it does actual harm then I'd rather boycott it or try to get it stopped.

I think a significant amount of the offence comes from feeling your sacred traditions are being mocked. While like you I don't particular get rituals, I can at least apply empathy to understand what causes some people to become upset.

That mindset isn't just limited to religious ritual, it's a big part of what drives the concept of a poseur.

Having said that, I'm not sure that these Christians are trying to make fun of anybody's ritual. It seems a lot of trouble to go to just to play a joke on another group.

I don't think they're doing it with the intention of mocking, it's much more about many Christians viewing Christianity as the legitimate successor to Judaism. Ironically, many of those same Christians get pretty peeved about Mormons and the notion that Christianity received updates or references to Allah being the God of Abraham.