As the coronavirus pandemic began to spread around the world, the private sector started to shut down.

Then governments and public institutions offered quarantine and social distancing guidelines.

But as it happens, the Jewish community was

placed in a unique bind. That's because Passover, the most widely observed holiday in the Jewish

world, the holiday in which many families and friends traditionally gather for the Seder, was just

around the corner. It's not just that the liturgical center of the Seder

revolves around the obligation of one generation to tell the next about God's miracles

for the Jewish people in Egypt, thereby connecting the youngest Jewish generation with their

parents and their parents and their ancestors all the way back to the women and men whom God led out of

Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. There is that sacred obligation, but there's also

a social dimension to pass over. It's like what Americans have for Thanksgiving. It's a touch

point in the life of a family, and with the religious obligation to convene and the

heartfelt desire to convene, both conflicting with the medical necessities of public health,

we had to ask what the Seder in this plague year was going to look like. Now, the liberal denominations

of Judaism responded quickly, providing guidance

on how to use the now ubiquitous video conferencing technology to host Zoom Saders. But the Zoom

Sater was not such a simple answer for the Orthodox. They refrain from using electrical devices

and other technologies on Shabbat and holidays.

Then, in late March, a group of Sephardic and Mizrahi Orthodox rabbis issued a lenient ruling,

permitting the limited use of Zoom on the Seder night.

That ruling was rejected by the majority of the Orthodox rabbinic

establishment who ruled against the permissibility of using Zoom on holidays. Now, how could the

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