Benj Pasek, one-half of the revered songwriting duo Pasek and Paul, was alone at his home in New York in mid-March â reading tweets about how lonely Passover would be amid the coronavirus pandemic â when an idea struck him. He texted a few friends and started brainstorming ways they could virtually celebrate the Jewish holiday. After chatter trickled through social circles, Pasek had a creative team of quarantined professionals ready to work pro-bono.
âWe had a writers room full of comedians and people from TV who werenât doing anything, we had a bunch of songwriters who were trying to map out original songs and all of these actors who were looking for an outlet of where they could be helpful,â Pasek told HuffPost. âEveryone was just feeling so helpless at this time and all of a sudden this went from a very small thing that snowballed into something bigger than we would have ever imagined it to be.â
âSaturday Night Seder,â debuting on the fourth night of Passover, was a technical and theatrical triumph featuring two original songs (âDayenuâ and âNext Yearâ), sketches by comedians and writers including Alex Edelman and Hannah Friedman, and musical performances by Cynthia Erivo, Shoshana Bean, Idina Menzel and Ben Platt. Dozens of Jewish and non-Jewish celebrities took part in the digital get-together, including Fran Drescher, Tan France, Beanie Feldstein, Dan Levy, Billy Porter and Henry Winkler.
âBette Midler was also at our seder,â head writer Edelman told HuffPost. âLike, thatâs something so few Jews get to say.â
It took more than two weeks of 18-plus hour days â complete with writers rooms, rehearsals, recordings and edits â to make a 70-minute philanthropic Zoom production look seamless. During its initial stream on April 11, âSaturday Night Sederâ was viewed a million times on its personal website and BuzzFeedâs Tasty YouTube channel. And to date, it has raised over $3.5 million for the CDC Foundationâs Coronavirus Emergency Response Fund.
âThis holiday is all about telling the story of being in a place of confinement and going to a place of liberation, all while a plague is occurring,â Pasek said. âAnd so it never felt more timely, especially in the very early months of COVID.â
Jason Alexander got an email from Pasek toward the beginning of the brainstorming process. As a huge fan of Pasekâs songwriting work with Justin Paul, the actor was immediately interested in being a guest at the virtual seder. Little did he know heâd become host of the ceremonies, singing the original opening number âDayenuâ alongside non-Jewish personalities Darren Criss, Rachel Brosnahan and Josh Groban.
âIt turned out to be such a great slot to kick it all off and tie it all up,â Alexander told HuffPost. âAnd it really wasnât until Benj sent me the song that I thought, wow, they arenât kidding around! Theyâre writing, theyâre orchestrating, theyâre doing this whole production. I thought it was going to be more or less a Zoom conference, taped. And it was so much more than that. It was impressive.â
As a co-writer and executive producer, Pasek takes little credit for the feat his team pulled off. The pandemic-produced project was made with no studio or network backing and created by unpaid individuals using their own resources from home: Slack, Dropbox, Zoom and Google Sheets. Edelman said the crew would sometimes be on a video call for hours â with one even lasting an unbelievable 25 hours and 51 minutes. âWe closed it to watch the last cut. Our work wasnât even over,â Edelman said, laughing.
âI actually think it changed the way I feel about technology,â he added. âI now have extremely close personal friendships with folks that Iâve never met. I would say that there are people that I worked with on this who hopefully I will be friends with forever. I couldnât believe how fun and breezy the interpersonal parts of this was over Zoom.â
Fellow writer Friedman was proud to be a part of something so âunprecedented,â considering âSaturday Night Sederâ came out around the time of at-home late night shows but before other digital variety specials like âOne World: Together At Homeâ and Sondheimâs 90th Birthday Celebration.
âWe were crossing our fingers as things came together, hoping that this would not be a disaster,â she told HuffPost. âWe were juggling all these projects and these dream lists of ifs. âWhoâs going to do what? And what if we get such and such person, that would be incredible! What can we write for them in the next hour because theyâre interested to do it, but they want to know what it is?â It was really by the seat of our pants.â

Saturday Night Seder
That energy paid off, as âSaturday Night Sederâ is now part of the Emmy race.
The event was submitted for nominations in four categories: Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded), Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special, Original Music & Lyrics for âDayenuâ and Original Music & Lyrics for âNext Year.â And although nothing is official yet, any nomination would be groundbreaking for a quarantine-created, celebrity-led fundraiser. As the industry shut down amid the ongoing global crisis, storytellers like Pasek, Edelman and Friedman worked within a new format of entertainment to keep the artistic juices flowing â and now that worthwhile endeavor could go up against well-funded specials from the likes of Hannah Gadsby and Patton Oswalt on Emmy night.
It could also earn Pasek the final notch in his EGOT belt, as he and Paul have already won Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards for their work on the 2015 musical âDear Evan Hansenâ and 2016âČs âLa La Land.â
But Pasek would rather not think about that.
âIt would be crazy if something like that happened for a duct-taped together Jewish special,â he said. âBut awards aside, if that were not even a part of the narrative at all, it truly was one of the most joyful, communal things that Iâve gotten to be a part of. Getting to see everybody throw their talents behind something just to collectively make something meaningful, thatâs why you want to make things in the first place. It brings you back to that initial impulse of when youâre a kid at theater camp and you just want to play with your friends.â
Edelman and Friedman couldnât agree more. The Emmy chatter is the cherry on top of a lopsided layered cake that just so happened to earn a gigantic troupe of admirers â and millions of dollars for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
âItâs bananas, really,â Edelman said. âPart of me is like, âItâs so dumb.â But also part of me is like, âYeah! Awesome!â Because this isnât a network production. This is something that a couple dozen idiots made on their laptops in their basements and attics. In my mind, I have to sometimes remember not to refer to it as âThe Video.ââ
âBut even though it was just a video, it had some of the most talented stars and comedians, as well as great thinkers in the incredible rabbis and scholars Alex brought in to speak to the themes of the holiday and speak to the emotions of living through this terrifying moment together,â Friedman added. âWe didnât go into it expecting to have this kind of attention, but I think it spoke to the power of the message of Passover. We had gravitas and humor. We had Jason Alexander! And the fact that it evolved into this really complex variety show is just a testament to all of the people who are involved, and also to the power of that moment of trying to come together.â
For his part, Alexander is honored to be a part of something as daring as âSaturday Night Sederâ and thinks it landed at just the right time, given that it celebrates a story of renewal in which tremendous adversity was overcome by tenacity, ingenuity and perseverance.
âWhat was surprising and thrilling to me was how they took something that Iâve always seen through such a specifically Jewish lens and made it something that everyone could enjoy, whether they came for the spirit of it or the musicality of it or the storytelling of it. It just became something very universal,â Alexander said.
âTo have this specific Jewish story in Jewish tradition opened up and re-explored and made so accessible to such a grand audience. Wow,â he continued, âthat couldnât be a sweeter thing. And it couldnât be more timely because of COVID; it couldnât be more timely because of what weâre finding now in the divisiveness of our current political divide and cultural divide is all these nascent and not-so-nascent racist tendencies in our society. They are bubbling up and becoming exposed and becoming a raw nerve and the wonderful thing is that we are forced to look at it and address it and hopefully evoke real change.â
You can watch âSaturday Night Sederâ here.
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