An active participation

BASYA LAYE

The Haggadah is a users manual, certainly, but it also serves several other functions at the Passover seder. Ideally, it should inspire dialogue between those gathered around the table – adult to adult, parent to child and vice versa – and elicit a sense of our collective imagination, tickling curiosities and expanding horizons. The Haggadah calls for Jews to actively remember and fully engage in the ritual experience. In fact, its exhortation to remember – to experience anew – the Exodus “as though you yourself went out from Egypt” is shared by all versions alike, among the thousands available.

One Haggadah that is receiving a great deal of attention is the New American Haggadah (Little, Brown and Co., 2012), edited by bestselling writer Jonathan Safran Foer, with translation by award-winning author Nathan Englander and illustrations by Israeli typographic artist Oded Ezer.

Published last month, Safran Foer has been promoting the Haggadah on several television programs and in print media, and wrote an op-ed explaining the impetus for the project, which was nearly a decade in the making.

“Our grandparents were immigrants to America, but natives to Judaism,” he writes in the New York Times Sunday Review March 31. “We are the opposite: fluent in American Idol, but unschooled in Jewish heroes. And so we act like immigrants around Judaism: cautious, rejecting, self-conscious and feigning (or achieving) indifference. In the foreign country of our faith, our need for a good guidebook is urgent.”

He asks, “Why did I take time away from my own writing to edit a new Haggadah? Because I wanted to take a step toward the conversation I could only barely hear through the closed door of my ignorance; a step toward a Judaism of question marks rather than quotation marks; toward the story of my people, my family and myself.”

As “a step toward conversation,” the New American Haggadah is a success. So, what makes this Haggadah different from any other?

In the introduction, Safran Foer writes that Jews gather at the Passover seder “in pursuit of a shared destiny,” and as “a protest against despair.” It may seem that the universe is “deaf to our fears and hopes,” it continues, “but we are not – so we gather, and share them, and pass them down.” Wrestling with the material is our primary objective on seder nights.

What makes this Haggadah particularly interesting – and useful – in this process are the 10 groupings of interpretive essays that are laid out, almost in talmudic fashion, horizontally across pages. Four commentators offer a short essay on his/her respective theme in each section, dealing with some of the major problematics and quandaries in the text. The contributors are University of California Jewish studies professor Nathaniel Deutsch (“House of Study”), political writer and Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg (“Nation”), novelist and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (“Library”) and children’s writer (and alter-ego to A Series of Unfortunate Events novelist Daniel Handler) Lemony Snicket (“Playground”). The essays are provocative and thoughtful in their brevity. It was a surprise and delight to take in the profoundly silly yet erudite humor of Snicket, alongside the more sober scholarship on offer.

This Haggadah is sublimely modern, yet staunchly traditional, both in its intention and its execution. Englander’s translation is poetic but highly literal, the quality stemming as much from the Hebrew-to-English accuracy as from any lyrical intent. Hence, “Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haolam,” becomes “You are blessed, Lord God-of-Us, King of the Cosmos,” a significant variation in translation of the start to most blessings, a small touch that many readers will find meaningful.

Though it follows the traditional Hebrew text and includes the basic seder instructions, at first glance, the New American Haggadah (named for the place in which it was created, like Haggadot before it, including the infamous Sarajevo Haggadah) looks and feels like an artbook. Its smooth, stylistic, Hebrew-laced hardcover and large size might initially betray some of the more scholarly flourishes contained within. However, its artfulness cannot obscure the reverent and respectful tone of the project – Safran Foer, Englander et al. do not attempt to break new ground, but to expand on what’s already there.

Designed and illustrated by Ezer, the artwork is elegant and dramatic, visually exploring the evolving Hebrew script through the ages, mimicking drops of wine at times, done in deep-hued watercolor and ink. Though Safran Foer has suggested that users can happily add their own splashes of seder wine to the book without worry, this user would be slightly less cavalier about sullying its beauty.

As well, Mia Sara Bruch, who has a PhD in Jewish history from Standford University, has contributed a timeline, starting from the years 1,250-1,200 BCE, when archeological documents have offered evidence for a slave escape into the Sinai from the Egyptian court, all the way through time until 2007, the year that marks the “publication of the first Haggadah designed for Jewish Buddhists.” Running along the tops of the pages, the timeline is a welcome addition of historical rootedness, and the tidbits of information are another jumping-off point for discussion.

Another Haggadah recently published is Wellsprings of Freedom: The Renew Our Days Haggadah, compiled by Congregation Dorshei Emet, a Reconstructionist community in Montreal under the aegis of Rabbi Ronald Aigen.

A project that came about over several years, its introduction clarifies what makes it unique: “Wellsprings of Freedom includes more of the original Torah story of enslavement and liberation than is traditionally found in the Haggadah, and draws from a wider treasury of rabbinic midrash (legends). We highlight the human actors in this drama, from Joseph and his brothers to Moses, and emphasize the role of women – Yoheved and Miriam, of course, but also Shifra, Puah and Bitya.”

Wellsprings offers a linear and practical seder, and its helpful transliterations will be welcome for those who are uncomfortable reading Hebrew text. It is laid out in what it refers to as a “split-screen format,” separated into the communal/spoken and the individual’s journey within, that latter of which is supported by Chassidic insights, quotations and questions to ask, also useful for generating discussion. As well, Wellsprings includes options for shortening the seder to appeal to younger participants, and bold type to indicate core elements. Passages that can be sung are indicated with a treble clef and there is a website (wellspringshagga-dah.com) that users can access for melodies. As well, its glossary of sources adds another way to glean information about the sages and texts, poets and musicians, to which this Haggadah’s text refers.

One particular virtue of Wellsprings is its explication of the seder’s Shefoch hamatchah passage, the point at which Jews throughout history “beset by persecution … opened their doors and recited the angry plea … ‘Pour out Your wrath upon the nations who do not know You.’”

This passage gives many Jews pause in its vengeful-sounding text and many of us choose not to recite it or uncomfortably mumble through it. However, Wellsprings offers a perspective that is unique and welcome:

“Our tradition teaches us that the anger and righteous indignation we feel against perpetrators of evil must be addressed,” it reads. “Unless we consciously rid ourselves of these destructive emotions, they will destroy us from within.

“Our tradition, however, has also taught us not to seek revenge…. From our own bitter experience of being slaves we learned, ‘You must not wrong the stranger, for you know the heart of the stranger, having been slaves in Egypt.’”

In addition to its suggestion to reorient ourselves to an acceptance-based reading of the passage, Wellsprings offers a companion plea, one from “the 16th-century Ashkenazi community where Rashi’s descendants resided,” it says. This additional passage follows Rashi’s exhortation that we must not abhor the Egyptian, no matter how badly Jews were treated, because “they were your hosts in a time of need.” The additional passage urges God to “Pour out Your love upon the nations that know You,” recognizing that there is “good and evil” in all human beings and that we must acknowledge “people in all their complexities.” The thought-question on this page asks, “Is it easier to hate what we do not know?”

Unlike the large-format, hard-cover New American Haggadah that some might find cumbersome at a crowded table, Wellsprings is soft-cover and smaller, but will likewise spark many meaningful conversations around the table.

Both Haggadot have the same kavanah (intention) and both are appropriate for a people who is constantly undergoing reinvention. Both acknowledge that there are countless Haggadot available and that theirs gives voice to a particular generation of Jews in a particular location.

Safran Foer explicitly hopes for his Haggadah to be replaced, as all Haggadot are replaced and will continue to be replaced, “until our destiny has been fulfilled,” he writes, “and there is no more need to say, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’”

Replacing Haggadot fits perfectly into the narrative of the holiday. As we sing in Avadim Hayinu (Once We Were Slaves) when we answer the Four Questions: “Whoever expands upon the telling of .”

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