Arbitration & Mediation

Negotiating Seder

By Victoria Pynchon

Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday and one of the few days of the year for which I'm willing to spend at least two days grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, buying flowers, and setting the table, not to mention printing out numerous Haggadahs from the internet for our dinner guests. 

All this activity precludes me from writing about Passover, which is why I'm giving you two sources and not my own thoughts this morning (something's cooking in the kitchen). 

First, from Jewish Current Issues Passover 2005:

Michael Tolkin writes in “Faith and Proof” that the story comes from a book that is beyond history -- “written over a thousand years by a thousand writers . . . proposing a model society of frail humans who need justice, sacrifice, joy, rest and atonement . . . . a collection of voices [that] is a hint of the sound of God.” It does not matter whether it is literally true:

If Abraham did not send Hagar and Ishmael into the desert, but we imagined it; if we had not been slaves but imagined it; if we had not been 600,000 strong at Sinai, but imagined it; if God did not let us cross into the land until a generation had died in the wilderness, but we imagined it; if David did not have Uriah killed so he could marry Bathsheba, but we imagined it; if we imagined the need for a land to create a light for the world . . . if all the contradiction and paradox were not dictated on Sinai in 40 days, but heard by us over those thousand years, and our errors written down and not denied or blamed on someone else -- then the book is all the miracle anyone should ask for, and to read it as literal is idolatry.

Less seriously, but to stay on topic -- the Passover negotiation story from an online Passover Haggadah from the Seder of the Seder here

Yachatz

the middle matza is broken in two, with the larger portion put aside for the Afikoman.

Here we are expressing the essence of Matza, the poor-man's bread: A poor person never knows from where and when his next meal is coming - he always puts a bit away for emergencies.

One of the well-known customs is for the leader of the seder to put the Afikoman in a small bag. The children of the house "steal" the Afikoman, and later they are promised a present for its return. Somehow, when I negotiated for a car it didn't work...

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on April 20, 2008 (boomark / email).