THE FOOD IS BAD NO MATTER THE SOURCE:

There's a reason the haggadah feels goyish: Formally speaking, it's Greek. It's a Judaicized version of a Greek genre called "symposium literature." You've read other examples in philosophy class. Plato loved the form. So did his fellow student of Socrates, Xenophon. The symposium enshrined the most appealing traits of the Hellenic personality: conviviality, Epicureanism, a love of good conversation.

Symposia came in many flavors. Some featured communal singing; some began with prayer. But all revolved around table talk, freewheeling discussions of everything from the origins of the world to the peculiarities of different kinds of fish, meat, and  vegetables. These conversations were recorded (or made up), says the Greek historian Plutarch, to further "a deeper insight into those points that were debated at table." For, he continued, "the remembrance of those pleasures which arise from meat and drink is ungenteel and short-lived ... but the subjects of philosophical queries and discussions remain always fresh after they have been imparted."

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