It’s bizarre to walk the rooms of a museum after the last visitor has left.
The high ceilings of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco seemed taller. The open spaces seemed wider. And my voice, which at times echoed through the halls, seemed louder.
But inside the blue steel-encased, diamond-shaped Yud Gallery, it was warm and inviting, spirited and electric — an atmosphere akin to that of my family’s Passover seders.
Though I missed this year’s family seder, I found myself in the midst of quite the substitute on March 31: the Out of Order Seder at the CJM.
This was the first event of its kind presented by the Contemporaries, the museum’s young professionals group. More cabaret than ritual, the seder featured innovative Jewish talent that ranged from comedian Nato Green and actor/rapper Dan Wolf to performance artist Amy Tobin and guitarist/composer John Schott.
In all, eight performers provided entertainment by putting their own spin on the story of the Exodus.
Prior to the seder, waiters with trays of kosher-for-Passover delicacies passed through the crowd of approximately 100 guests, who sipped white wine or orange- and ginger-infused rum drinks in the museum’s foyer during cocktail hour.
The crowd had come to revel on the third night of Passover, one of many clues that the forthcoming festivities would be anything but traditional. As Batlonim played its last note of the evening, participants ascended the white marble stairs to the Yud Gallery, where they took their seats at tables glowing with candles.
Our haggadah for the evening was a gray booklet with these introductory words: “We are commanded to drink until midnight, eat as if we have just been freed from bondage, and tell stories like they are a new invention.”
Master of ceremonies Ari Kelman, an assistant professor of American studies at U.C. Davis, ensured that would happen — and much more.
“We’re going to shake that order up, in order to reframe, recast and otherwise re-envision Passover and its meanings,” Kelman told the crowd. “Think of it like a smattering, a smorgasbord, a pu pu platter or even, dare I say, a seder plate of holiday offerings.”
He rattled off a list of seders — freedom, feminist, activists, artists, vegetarian — that, like the Out of Order Seder, have dared to stray from the conventional.
“Re-envisioning the Passover story is nothing new,” Kelman continued. “Each generation retells and recasts the story in its own image, according to its own needs.”
The needs of the group seemed simple enough: to enjoy creative interpretations of the Passover story that captured the young, hip vibe of the evening. Yet elements of the traditional seder were still apparent, such as the refilling of our wineglasses four times and the performances’ subjects — the 10 plagues, redemption, wandering and the Four Questions, to name a few.
Monologist Josh Kornbluth stole a poignant moment from the evening’s boisterous nature by recounting his experience of wandering in the middle of the night, only to encounter and attempt to prevent a man from plunging into the water beneath New York’s George Washington Bridge. Police intercepted the man before he could jump.
During a lighthearted part of the night, Sarah Lefton, a San Francisco writer, blogger and creator of G-dcast, played on the white wall of the Yud Gallery her latest Torah cartoon for young adults and teens, “The Passover Seder: With the Four Sons!”
Rabbi Dorothy Richman from Berkeley Hillel closed the evening by inviting all of us to scream, moan and holler at the top of our lungs to express anger for the mistreatment of Jews throughout history.
Not accustomed to raising my voice during a seder, I hesitated at first. But as the room filled with cacophonic noise, I had no choice but to join. After all, this was no ordinary Passover celebration.
“I feel better,” Richman said in a quiet and calm voice. Oddly enough, so did I.
Amanda Pazornik can be reached at [email protected].