Which Wines to Drink at the Seder This Year, and Why

Meir Soloveichik: The Function of Wine at the Passover Seder

What is the function of wine in the Passover seder, the ceremonial meal through which Jews tell the story of God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt? For our point of departure in thinking about this question, we begin not with a rabbinic text about the holiday, but with a wonderful essay by Leon Kass about the traditional Jewish toast l’ḥayyim:

You don’t have to be Jewish to drink l’ḥayyim, to lift a glass “To Life.” Everyone in his right mind believes that life is good and that death is bad. But Jews have always had an unusually keen appreciation of life, and not only because it has been stolen from them so often and so cruelly. The celebration of life—of this life, not the next one—has from the beginning been central to Jewish ethical and religious sensibilities. In the Torah “Be fruitful and multiply” is God’s first blessing and first command. . . . Indeed, so strong is this reverence for life that the duty of pikuah nefesh requires that Jews violate the holy Shabbat in order to save a life. Not by accident do we Jews raise our glasses l’ḥayyim.