Introduction The tenth chapter of Pesahim is perhaps the best known chapter in the entire Mishnah, for it describes the Pesah seder, one of the rituals most-observed by Jews in the modern world. The laws and practices of this chapter form the basis of the seder and Haggadah to this day. Some of its texts will be familiar to us from their inclusion in the Haggadah. It has also been studied exhaustively by scholars, partly because of its importance to the Christian tradition according to three of the four Gospels, Jesus’s last supper took place on the eve of Pesah, the same time when we celebrate our seder. (Note that I did not say that Jesus’s last meal was a seder. I do not believe that this is an accurate statement.) I will make some introductory remarks due to the importance of this chapter. First of all, most scholars today do not think that a seder meal on Pesah existed during the Second Temple period, while the pesah was still offered. While the Temple stood, the meal consisted of the eating of the pesah, matzah and maror, and they were probably accompanied by some singing and perhaps drinking of wine, but there was no formal ritually ordered meal that accompanied them. The rabbis after the destruction of the Temple initially struggled to find a replacement for their cataclysmic loss. One replacement for the loss of the Temple and the pesah sacrifice was the institution of a formal meal on Pesah, one certainly modeled after the Greco-Roman symposium, the formal “high-class” meal with which the rabbis were familiar. The most notable aspects of the seder, the reclining, the wine, the hand-washing, the dipping of food, the types of food served and even the discussion surrounding the Exodus from Egypt all have parallels in Greco-Roman descriptions of the formal meal called the symposium. That rabbis borrowed Greek and Roman customs should be no more surprising to us than the fact that when Jews get dressed up to go to synagogue today they dress in the same clothes as do the other members of society. Therefore, rather than characterize the rabbis as borrowing Greek and Roman customs, a more accurate statement would be to say that when the rabbis looked to shape their own religious experience by establishing a formal Pesah meal, they did so in the way with which they were familiar. The seder continued to develop throughout the centuries and therefore what we read in the Mishnah is an early form of the seder and not all that close to that which we know and observe today. The first Haggadot, written texts, were not composed until the 8th or 9th centuries, the same time when the first siddurim were composed. With regard to the Mishnah itself, there are many later interpolations that have found there way into our text. These interpolations, almost all of which are liturgical, come from the Haggadah. As the Haggadah developed, people added to the Mishnah texts that they knew from their Haggadah or changed the Mishnah to match their practices. I shall note many examples as we proceed. However, the basic text upon which I will base my commentary is the version found in the common printed editions such as Kehati, Albeck, etc.
On the eve of Pesah close to minhah one may not eat until nightfall. On the eve of Pesah one should not eat from minhah time and afterward so that when it comes time for the meal one is hungry and one will eat the matzah with a good appetite. This is at the ninth hour, roughly speaking around 3 PM.
Even the poorest person in Israel must not eat [on the night of Pesah] until he reclines. In the ancient world formal meals were eaten while reclining on couches which lied close to the ground. One leaned to the left and a small table was placed in front of the diners. Usually there were about three diners per couch. Typically, only the wealthier classes ate in this manner whereas the poorer folk ate while sitting. On Pesah, according to the Mishnah, even poor people are to eat while reclining.
And they should give him not less than four cups [of wine], and even from the charity plate. The seder meal is structured around the drinking of four cups as we shall see in the coming mishnayot. Our mishnah states that when charity distributors are handing out wine to poor people so that they shall have wine to drink they should not give them less than four cups of wine. Others explain that the mishnah is addressing all Israelites when observing the seder they should not have less than four cups of wine, even if they have to take from the charity plate.