What Made This Seder Different From Any Other Seder?

One of the few genuine pleasures I can recall from the five years I attended three-day-a-week Hebrew school in Northeast Philadelphia was the model seders—child-friendly, radically slimmed-down versions of the annual Jewish celebration of our people’s deliverance from slavery and subsequent Exodus from Egypt. The food served during these events was lighter than my mother’s notoriously heavy cooking (even her matzoh balls were “sinkers”), while the presence of my school friends provided opportunities for horsing around undreamt of during the strict recitation of the entire Haggadah (in Hebrew) by my father and uncle.

Yet over time, the full-fat version of Passover I had once yearned to escape became my favorite Jewish holiday. Maybe it was my mother’s desserts—still not light, but very tasty—or the chance to hang out with my older cousins. Or our loud singing, both of traditional seder songs like “Dayenu” and “Chad Gadya” and also of the spiritual “Go Down Moses.” By the time we got invited to a model seder at Union Temple in Brooklyn, where my oldest son was in nursery school, I was happy to go.

But that was over 30 years ago, and although our family eventually developed its own set of rituals for the holiday—Sephardi lamb instead of Ashkenazi brisket, abridged versions of the Hebrew songs—and even our own Haggadah, I assumed my model seder days were in the past.

Until Monday, when I learned that Mayor Zohran Mamdani would be attending an adult version—a Downtown seder—at City Winery that evening and asked if I might come along. City Winery owner Michael Dorf, who has been a macher in New York’s arts scene since he founded the Knitting Factory in 1987, has been hosting these gatherings for over 30 years. The event was once described by The New York Times as “a cross between a Jewish summer camp in the Catskills and a progressive jazz concert.” Past incarnations have featured Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Lou Reed (cast as “the wise child” in the Hagaddah), and Peter Yarrow. The lineup this time included the indie rock trio Betty, David Broza, Jesse Malin, Meg Okura and Yola, economist and podcaster Stephen Dubner, and, in a video reprise of his in-person 2024 appearance, Al Franken singing “Go Down Moses.”

But it was the political performers who provided the draw for many of those present: Besides former CNN host Don Lemon (offering a riff on the Four Questions, which, as the 60-year-old YouTuber noted, is a task traditionally assigned to the youngest person present) and Mamdani, Council Speaker Julie Menin and former NYC Comptroller Brad Lander were also on the program.

Not everyone was thrilled to see the mayor. On the way to my seat, a woman, noticing the media badge around my neck, asked me which outlet I was from. When I told her, she asked if The Nation had supported Mamdani’s campaign, and when I confirmed we had endorsed him, responded, “So you’re one of those Jews who supports antisemites!” At least she had turned up; Mamdani’s mere presence was sufficient to prompt the Israeli-American Orthodox comedian Modi Rosenfeld, also listed on the program, to withdraw from the event. (I will leave it to more skilled Talmudists to explain how to square the Torah’s condemnation of gay sex with Modi’s life as a married gay man.)

In the event, the mayor’s drash on “the broken middle matzo, a physical reminder of the ruptures that have defined so much of Jewish history, a physical reminder of how much of our world today remains broken and incomplete,” was both respectful and timely.

Condemning “the rising tide of antisemitism [that] has caused enormous pain for so many Jewish New Yorkers,” Mamdani called on his audience to “build a city where every New Yorker is accorded the dignity of rest. Where even the poorest among us know their cup will be filled. And we all know that if they seek shelter, they will find it. If they are hungry, they will be fed.”

“There is a crack, a crack in everything,” he concluded. “But as Passover teaches, and as Leonard Cohen sings, ‘That is how the light gets in.’ Though things may be broken, so too do they become whole again.” Heckled even before he started speaking, Mamdani handled the interruptions deftly, quipping, “We know that if there was complete decorum anywhere that we were, we would have to ask ourselves if we had left the city that we love.” By the end of his remarks, Mamdani drew warm applause from the room.