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No matter what kind of seder I'm hosting or attending, be it Upper West Side formal, Crown Heights casual or Bushwick non-traditional, I bring Manischewitz. For those unfamiliar with Manischewitz, let me explain: it's a kosher concord wine that costs $5-7.99 at any given liquor store, and it's usually on the bottom shelf alongside Taylor Sherry and a Sangria mixer. (You'll understand this strategic store placement once I tell you about how it tastes.) Bringing Manischewitz to a seder is like bringing guacamole to a BBQ: not essential to the occasion, but hastily consumed anyway.
Manischewitz tastes like Welch's Grape Juice meets Port meets the blood of our forefathers; there's definitely something "afflicted" in the flavor. At 11 percent ABV, it's the kind of sticky sweet wine that gets glugged like juice at the dinner table, resulting in a collective morning-after headache for everyone involved.
All the same, Manischewitz is ingrained in Jewish culture. So much so, in fact, that there's even an expert on it. And I decided to ask him why, despite its cloying sweetness, hangover-inducing notoriety and a bevy of better options, Jews still deign to have Manischewitz at the seder table.
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...thinking about how Jews have perceived and interacted with "people of other faiths" (or gentiles, or non-Jews) in the South and in the rest of the country. Since Jews have become so socially integrated into their communities, we are more sensitive to the feelings of non-Jews. If we sense that "gentile" might offend, we no longer feel comfortable using the word. Yiddish words like "goyim" and "shiksa" and the more genteel "gentile" were once commonly used when Jews were talking to each other, but now that we are just as likely to be talking to non-Jews (as friends, and as family members) we need a new term. For now, the consensus here seems to be that "non-Jew" is perhaps the best term.
