A YouTube Haggadah

Artists are hoping people will incorporate videos like “Maror,” above, into their seders.

Skirball project combines 14 short artistic videos for each section of the seder.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010. Sharon Udasin, Staff Writer.

An older man sits in his living room armchair, relaxing in striped button-down pajamas while crunching loudly on a raw root vegetable.

“Daddy, what are you eating?” asks his son, sitting on the sofa across from him, clad only in boxer shorts.

“Horseradish,” the balding father responds in a thick Israeli accent, shaking his right forefinger.

“Raw horseradish? Are you crazy? Uch. How can you eat that — it’s so bitter!”

The father-son discussion over the physical and spiritual merits of horseradish continues, as the black-and-white, two-dimensional animated film explores the significance of maror, the bitter herbs consumed in the eighth section of the Haggadah.

“The bitter herbs are the most important part,” the grandfather explains to his son, referencing the Garden of Eden as a place of both bitterness and paradise. “Without a choice, none of our decisions mean anything.”

Produced by artist Hanan Harchol, this animation is just one of 14 short films produced by individual artists as part of a collective attempt to explore the meaning of the seder through an online venture called Projecting Freedom. The project, funded by a grant from the Covenant Foundation, is the brainchild of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El in New York, an adult learning center that promotes art and diversity, under the direction of Rabbi Leon Morris.

Artists received a small $1,000 stipend and attended nine classes together over the span of a year. Complementing other creative ventures like the Artists’ and Writers’ Beit Midrash, Projecting Freedom aims to convey Jewish text through film, and create original visual commentary, according to Rabbi Morris.

“It’s about the power of having a broader group of people own Jewish sacred text. At its core that’s what Skirball is about,” he said. “In a way, these filmmakers and video artists added a commentary that only they could add.”  Continue reading…

Let My People … Tweet

Screenshot from last year’s Tweder, featuring a matzah background on Dan Berkal’s Twitter page.

Welcome to the Tweder. Can Twitter and the Passover seder coexist?

Last Passover, Dan Berkal spent the first seder dining with family and friends at the James Hotel in Chicago — chanting the prayers and songs of the Haggadah, sipping the four requisite glasses of wine … and updating his Twitter status.

“Suddenly four children enter the room,” he tweeted at 4:53 p.m. “Nobody seems to like the wise child,” he added a minute later, followed by the 4:55 p.m. announcement: “We tell the wise son, ‘No dessert for you!’”

And at 3:57 p.m. the following seder night, Berkal followed up, “This year we are slaves to Twitter: next year may we be free people.”

Clearly, that wasn’t the case. This year, loyal seder-goers are tweeting back for more.

Berkal, a 31-year-old marketing research consultant, will host his second annual Passover Twitter Seder — dubbed the “Tweder” — next week and hopes to attract many more followers than the approximately 1,500 he says attended last year. In 140 characters or less — the maximum character count on social networking site Twitter — Berkal tweeted each step of the Tweder, targeting an audience of 20- and 30-something diaspora Jews who are unable to attend a seder, regardless of location, age and mobility. During last year’s Tweder, Berkal said he constantly received messages about different elements of the seder, paraphrased them and re-tweeted them to his Twitter followers.

“I was tweeting [during] my seder from a laptop on the table. Everyone at my family was knowledgeable about what was going on,” Berkal told The Jewish Week. “[The Tweder allows us] to add a social element to Judaism to make it more relevant and more positive. It also allows those who can’t go to a seder to have a feeling of being part of a community.”

Berkal’s Tweder is just one of many new innovative approaches to the holiday, where Internet tools aim to connect households around the world through Twitter, video seders and Passover-friendly smartphone applications (see sidebar).

Bradley Dworkin, a 25-year-old film director from Toronto, followed Berkal’s Tweder for the novelty of it. “I chose to follow the Tweder initially out of general curiosity,” said Dworkin, who used to work with Berkal. “I’d seen it appear on some of my friends’ Twitter feeds, and I decided it made sense since I’d be missing my family seder.”  Continue reading…

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There’s An App (Or Two) For Pesach

Parents can use smartphone apps like iMah Nishtanah to help refresh their kids before the seders.

Sharon Udasin, staff writer

For Jews who already intend to partake in Passover festivities, there are several iPhone applications released within the past year that can serve as teaching tools, before and during the seder.

Before the holiday begins, families can prepare their houses properly by downloading the simplistically designed but informative black-and-white “apps” called “At Our Rebbes’ Seder Table” and “Pesach Guide,” both free and published respectively by Sichos in English in Crown Heights and JewishContent.org.

Parents trying to teach their children how to chant the Four Questions can purchase iMah Nishtanah ($0.99), a Behrman House Publishing app that sings the questions aloud while allowing the user to follow along, word-by-word. Meanwhile, virtual flashcards and an image match game give kids the chance to learn the meaning of each Hebrew word they chant.

“Already religious school teachers are telling kids to download it to their iPod Touches,” said Jeremy Poisson, the app’s developer, who sees iMah Nishtanah best used as an at-home “crash course” in preparation for seders. Poisson is also spearheading the release of Behrman’s customizable Family Haggadah ($19 for one, $11 each for 20 or more), where families can order personalized books according to their needs and interests.  Continue reading…