No longer centered just on readings, many Passover Seders have creative twists But in today's distracted, competitive religious marketplace, even observant Jews are hustling to make Passover Seders more engaging, particularly for the young, but for adults as well. A recent pre-Seder training event at one of the D.C. region's biggest Orthodox synagogues found every person with some dramatic plan for Passover, which starts Monday at sunset. One person would have live frogs (one of the 10 plagues) in a cage on the dining room table, another's downstairs was tented to make it feel like the Egyptian desert, yet another recrafted the night as a "Jeopardy!" game. Exodus reenactments were plentiful, as were assigned readings from writers, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Alan Dershowitz. But they know they need ever-newer ideas. "My children are serious, intellectual people, and I see them drifting away," said Potomac physician Larry Goldkind, a father of four. To pull them in, he e-mailed them 150 pages of documents last week on the historicity of the exodus story, along with discussion questions such as: "Do you actually believe anything like the exodus happened? Were Israelites really slaves? And if you don't, what does that mean? The entire religion is based on revelation that was supposed to have taken place there. Did man write it? God? Do you trash it because it's not supernatural? "A lot of religions don't seriously engage followers in the modern era who don't take scripture at its word, and it ends up alienating people," Goldkind said. Goldkind was among about 350 men who on March 17 went to Beth Sholom Congregation in Potomac for a Seder-prep program. Although the Passover Seder has traditionally been led by Jewish men, Modern Orthodox men such as those at Beth Sholom live in more gender-equal homes, and the days of temple men's clubs and women's clubs have mostly disappeared. So the session had a "guys" night out" vibe, with tables of high-end scotch and kosher barbecue ribs. The program's key point: Modern Seder leaders need to innovate. Asking the right questions Most American Jews build their night around reading directly and methodically from the Haggadah, an ancient guide to the Passover tale of Jewish liberation from Egyptian slavery. But Rabbi Nissan Antine reminded the men that the point of the holiday, with its eight days of intense eating restrictions and long ritual meals, is to get Jews" attention so they ask questions. Namely: Why are we doing this? Or that? The ability to question, to challenge, Antine said, is the essence of being free. Judaism is a religion built largely around practices hammered out through centuries of rabbinical debate contained in books called the Talmud. So for observant Jews, breaking away from the text and going rogue can feel a little rebellious.