Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, I know a Chocolate Seder sounds a little ridiculous.

You dip green apple slices into melted chocolate. You remove gummy worms from a bowl to represent each of the Ten Plagues. You build a matzah sandwich with dark chocolate and cocoa-based charoset. This is not your grandfather’s Seder. In fact, if your grandfather walked into a room where people were blessing cups of hot cocoa and belting out a chocolate-themed “Bohemian Rhapsody” parody he might walk right back out.

From a Chocolate Seder in 2025 at Temple Beth Ahm Yisrael in Springfield, N.J. Courtesy/Gigi Schwartz

And yet, behind the playfulness, the cocoa and the candy, something very real is happening.

Because the Chocolate Seder isn’t a gimmick. It’s a gateway.

Joy is a legitimate Jewish strategy

As Jewish professionals, we often feel the pressure to make our programming deep, serious, text-based, and, well, “authentic.” But authentic doesn’t have to mean heavy, and joy is not the opposite of meaning.

Passover itself is proof of that. We tell the story of liberation through food, song and symbols. We encourage children to ask questions. We ask adults to recline like royalty. The Haggadah reminds us that ritual should be embodied, participatory and layered.

So, when we lead a Chocolate Seder — with symbolic sweets, storytelling prompts and a healthy dose of laughter — we’re not stepping away from the core of Jewish tradition. We’re stepping directly into it.

A tool, not a substitute

To be clear: the Chocolate Seder is not intended to replace the traditional Seder. It’s a supplemental ritual — a tool educators, clergy, and parents can use to draw people in. It’s a pre-Passover classroom activity, a family engagement event, a conversation starter. It’s a low-barrier, high-connection moment that can happen before the holiday and extend its reach beyond the formal dining room.

Over the years, I’ve heard of preschool teachers leading Chocolate Seders with tiny hands and big questions; religious school students reflecting on what bitterness and sweetness feel like in their own lives; synagogue leaders using it as a bridge for interfaith families; and parents who’ve never led a Seder before starting here with cocoa, graham crackers and curiosity.

You can call it sweet. You can call it silly. But you can’t deny that it’s helping people engage.

What Jewish professionals already know

We know that meaningful Jewish experiences aren’t always built on the length of the text or the depth of commentary. Sometimes, they start with a moment—a feeling, a flavor, a question.

Sometimes, they start with a bite of chocolate.

And from there? We can go anywhere.

We can talk about empathy through the candy plague ritual. We can explore struggle and liberation through a dark chocolate maror. We can reflect on brokenness and wholeness through the Afikoman.

This is the work we do every day as educators and community builders: creating on-ramps to tradition. The Chocolate Seder just happens to be one that’s delicious and sticky in all the right ways. But behind the chocolate is a serious pedagogical strategy: Meet people where they are, connect ritual to real life and make the Jewish experience something people want to return to.

This is because when we talk about engagement — real engagement — we’re not just asking how many people showed up. We’re asking: Did it matter to them? Did it make them curious? Did it spark a memory, a conversation, a connection?

The Chocolate Seder is built to do exactly that. It’s multisensory. It’s emotionally resonant. Students don’t just hear the story; they taste it. Families don’t just read about freedom; they experience a symbolic version of it through rituals that blend the familiar with the unexpected. And that blend of tradition plus imagination is what opens the door.

This isn’t about dumbing anything down. It’s about scaffolding: offering an entry point that is joyful, experiential and rooted in meaning so that people want to take the next step. That’s what good Jewish education does. That’s what great ritual design makes possible: Once someone feels like there’s a place for them at the table, whether it’s covered in fine linen or sticky with chocolate, they’re more likely to come back — and that, at its core, is the real goal.

So go ahead: Dip the apple in the chocolate. Remove a piece of candy for each plague. Ask big questions. Sing loud. Make a mess.

Just because it’s coated in chocolate doesn’t mean it’s sugar-coated.

And if it helps someone feel welcomed, curious and proud to be Jewish… Well, that sounds like serious engagement to me.

Ben Vorspan is the author of The Nonprofit Imagineers and The Chocolate Seder Haggadah. For over 20 years, he’s helped Jewish organizations transform engagement from dry matzah to something delightfully dipped and family-friendly.