What will we talk about at our Pesach seders this year?
With antisemitic violence rising, Israel still under attack, and Zionism increasingly treated as radioactive, it is likely that the Haggadah’s warning—“in every generation they rise up against us”—will land with renewed force. In the United Staes we are not used to such a feeling of threat. Conversation may turn, inevitably, to an anxious question: Where are we, as a people? Are we at a hinge moment, standing on a precipice? And if so, what must we do?
Bret Stephens offered one approach in his recent “State of World Jewry” talk. Seeing the rise in Jew hatred, he suggested we must expand our investments in education and infrastructure. “What’s missing is the scale,” he said. We must go bigger, be bolder, reach farther, he argued. I hope this Pesach we might also consider another approach.
Go small, go local, go mundane, just like the first Pesach.
As the founder and CEO of Assembly, a Jewish a innovation lab, this is not the message I thought I would champion. The leaders we talk to regularly in JCCs, synagogues, and federations around the country are rightly focused on security and rising antisemitism, on big, overwhelming problems. But just beneath those real concerns lays another quieter one: the prevailing model of Jewish life is fraying. In many places we have reduced what it means to live in community to a set of programs and services provided. This model is not meeting the needs of a rising generation who feel inundated with information, isolated by technology, and anxious about what the future holds. How can we build richer, thicker forms of Jewish community to carry us through this volatile time?
One answer, I would suggest, can be found in the original celebration of Pesach.
The Torah describes that first Pesach as a household ritual. Each home prepared a lamb on the tenth of Nissan and tied it to their bedposts. This seemingly small act was one of great courage, openly challenging the Egyptian reverence for the lamb as a type of God. To sacrifice a lamb was to publicly claim one’s allegiance to the Jewish people over that of the prevailing culture.
The rabbis later expanded this idea beyond the household to become a ritual undertaken by a new entity called a haburah, or fellowship. A haburah was a small group organized around a shared mitzvah and a shared story. The groups were more formal than a household. Individuals had to commit, or sign up, with a specific group before the holiday to participate. There were rules about how much or how little one could eat, so no one indulged at another’s expense. What was once a holiday for the family of origin became a celebration with the family of choice.
After the Temple was destroyed, Jews looked back on the haburah as a model to organize communal life in the diaspora. No longer offering sacrifices, a fellowship group—or hevra as it was sometimes called—came to mean any group of local fellows committed to practicing a particular mitzvah together.
Instead of eating the Pesach matzah and telling the story, these new fellowships met regularly to do other mitzvot, to take on other practices of consequence. Some groups studied together. Some cared for the poor, or visited the sick. There were groups that took care of synagogue buildings and religious objects.
Across the diaspora, one finds hevrot, fellowships, in nearly every Jewish community for centuries. Hevrot were structured, consistent, and binding. Members showed up. Absence was noticed and responsibility was real. We know this from the by-laws and log books preserved over centuries that describe individuals trying to shirk their obligations and the immediate response of the fellowship.
Over time, each group developed its own culture. Some were rigorously pious, like a fellowship in 16th-century Tzfat that spoke only Hebrew on Shabbat and insisted on fasting regularly. Others, like a burial society in 19th century Russia, were more lighthearted, composing goofy songs every year for their annual dinners that lovingly challenged the pride of other fellowships. This history is not just interesting, it is instructive.
When we look to build innovative models of Jewish life today, we ought to look to hevrot. They provide a counterfactual to some of the core assumptions that animate our communities today. What are these?
First, hevrot privileged the mundane over peak experiences. These groups met regularly for a noble purpose, but their meetings were like meetings anywhere, often long and tedious. The records of hevrot describe the weekly gatherings of any small group of people who know each other all too well. Reading about the inside jokes, pettiness, larger than life personalities, and rituals that characterized Jewish fellowships, one gets an intimate picture of what lived Jewish life looked like at the ground level. It was about showing up for others and for God regularly, even when it’s hard. It was, in essence, about investing in the slow, relational work of shared responsibility.
Second, hevrot favored the local over scale. Although Jewish communities developed similar fellowships, there was no umbrella organization. Each community made an organization to meet its local needs. Being involved with others in a daily, granular way molds one’s sensitivity in a way that running a large organization cannot. The impact was not measured in reach, but in depth of relationship and care.
Third, hevrot were a privilege and an obligation, not a consumer choice. Membership came with expectations. Individuals had to participate regularly and pay special attention to the needs of other fellows. Records tell us that when a member got sick, others would not only visit but raise money to support the sick person’s family. When a fellow celebrated a milestone, the other fellows made special meals in their honor. When one died, they said psalms over their grave. The feeling of belonging was not ephemeral but a daily practice.
Small, local, and mundane.
As the Haggadah tells us, Jew hatred comes back in every generation, and it is here again with a vengeance. We have to meet this threat head on. We cannot, however, let it overtake the other lessons of Pesach. This moment in Jewish history is a precarious one not only because of antisemitism, but because of the profound loneliness and isolation filling so many Jewish lives. The way out of loneliness and into community begins by being called into relationship and responsibility.
The hevrot model we inherit from this holiday teaches us that the enduring feeling of belonging is created by showing up regularly, sharing meals, performing mitzvot together, building rituals, and fulfilling obligations. Hevrot remind us to think small and local. This is the animating idea behind Assembly: when we center Jewish life around authentic relationships, grounded in our deepest wisdom and traditions, we not only strengthen individuals, but reimagine how community itself is built. Assembly is trying to teach these skills and operationalize them in communities across the country.
It is not just a meal people are yearning for, but for company around the table. Not just to attend, but to belong. Let all who are hungry come and eat.
Rabbi Dr. Dan Smokler is the CEO of Assembly, an innovation lab for Jewish community. Dan is finishing a book on the social history of Jewish fellowships and their lessons for today. He lives in New York with his wife Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler and their three children Shalev, Nadiv, and Taïr.