A Christian at Passover, by R. R. Reno

By R. R. Reno, Frist Things, April 10, 2025

My first experience of Passover came the spring after our wedding. My wife is Jewish, and she signed us up for the Yale Hillel Seder, a large affair of one hundred or more participants. I was at that stage of life almost always hungry. That evening in the spring of 1987, I could think of little other than the meal that only comes after the long march through the Passover liturgy: various blessings of wine, ritual symbols elaborated upon, and the Haggadah (literally, the “telling”), which recounts the story of the Exodus in an extensive, indirect, and roundabout way. (Needless to say, I was starving toward the end.)

In subsequent years, my wife and I—and in due time, our children—participated in Passover Seders of many different types. Progressive Jews often prefer a liturgy that skips the indirection of the traditional approach and recounts the story of the Exodus as told in the Book of Exodus. Into that story, many Seder books interpolate snippets from feminist tracts and Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches, playing up the notion that Judaism is aligned with projects of political liberation. Count me among those less than satisfied with this approach. As my wife likes to say, when it comes to Passover, I’m a Maxwell House Gentile—a reference to the free Seder booklets that once came with each purchased can of coffee, and which feature the traditional Haggadah. …

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