I have mixed feelings about getting new haggadahs, as my dad was really proud of these. But I’ve never liked them. They are huge. They are full of interpretive readings we never read. They have aggressively ugly art. They don’t lie flat. So I’m looking for something new.
I’m comfortable skipping parts of the haggadah, so even though we usually do a 20 minute service (or so) i don’t mind if it’s longer.
I do mind if it has nasty parts i need to jump over. I grew up with humanistic haggadahs that emphasized “you were a stranger”, and i don’t want to be reading about killing the Amalakite or anything.
I’m also comfortable adding elements. We’ve been putting an orange on the Seder plate for years, and explaining why. (Slightly new twist this year, after talking to a guy who knew the woman who invented this custom.) But it would be nice if the text supported stuff like that.
I also like to have a bit of narrative about the Egypt story.
Anyway, maybe I’ll continue to use what i have, and just “roll my own”. But this seems like a good time to look for recommendations.
I am looking for a nicely printed and bound thing, not just a text on the internet. But I’d love to be able to read the text and look at the art before i buy something. I actually went to a Jewish bookstore recently, but they didn’t have a lot. Maybe it was the wrong season.
We did this at my sister’s house a few years back. (I think this is the right one). It is halachically complete. But it goes fast. Two of my mother’s friends were used to Orthodox seders. We were worried they would find fault with the 30 minute seder. They thought it was wonderful and a vast improvement.
Not a real recommendation, but if you like Dave Barry’s style of humor you will enjoy this haggadah.
This is the one I actually use. It’s very pretty but very traditional. I mostly use it as a framework and just bullshit my way through the seder with the intent of eating as quickly as possible.
That’s a good summary. A friend sent me a longer piece about it by Heschel, but he sent me a file. I’ve asked if he can find a link to it that i can post.
Anyway, in past years we repeated the folk version that erases her, and lesbians, and this year we gave a fuller explanation, and ate the orange. But, sadly, i bought a seedless orange, so my son didn’t get to spit orange seeds at the Seder table. Next year I’ll look for one with seeds.
Yeah, i actually have a few of those, and that’s bound, as far as I’m concerned. But I’d like something a little shorter and as little more progressive.
I did once do a ten minute service, excerpted from the Maxwell house haggadah, when on vacation in South Africa.
I’m just saying, oranges started being used to represent LGBT in Passover some time in the 1980s. Around the time Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was published. Seems like a pretty big coincidence if there is no connection in some direction between the two.
I suspect it’s also because oranges are a common, delicious fruit, and at the time, perhaps that only such fruit that American Jews associated with Israel.
From the text I’m trying to get a link to:
I wanted to celebrate being gay or lesbian as one of many great ways to be Jewish, and to mark the fruitfulness created in human society by the diversity of our sexualities. I also wanted to call attention to the links between the homophobia that made the lives of gays and lesbians so difficult, and the gender discrimination experienced by Jewish women.
So at our next Passover, I decided to place an orange (actually, I used a tangerine!) on our family’s seder plate. I chose an orange because it suggests the fruitfulness for all Jews when lesbians and gay men are contributing and active members of Jewish life. “Be fruitful and multiply” is the Bible’s first commandment, and we need to recognize the fruitfulness of gay and lesbian presence, and encourage that presence to multiply.
Early in the seder, I asked everyone to take a segment of the fruit, say the blessing over it, and eat it to symbolize our solidarity with Jewish lesbians and gay men, as well as others who are marginalized within the Jewish community. Since each tangerine segment has a few seeds, we had the added gesture of spitting them out at that seder, recognizing and repudiating the sin of homophobia that poisons too many Jews.
Heschel describes a very traditional, patriarchal form of Judaism in her childhood. In the last hours before Passover, she and her father were thrown out of the house as her mother’s stress was too great, making things ready for her father to preside over the Passover table.
I grew up in a much more integrated branch of Judaism. Our childhood haggadah talked about the four children. My father, who loved to cook, always took the lead in making the food for the Seder. It was a chance for him to show off some new, to exotic dish. (Yes, i know many people grew up with pot roast. We had something he called chicken Marengo for a few years because my dad thought it would be fun. Although looking up recipes now, it wasn’t a typical chicken Marengo. But it was some interesting recipe that caught his eye.) The children, male and female, were conscripted to set the table. While my father did lead the Seder, we took turns reading the leader’s portion, going around the table, men and women and children old enough to read. And when my father died, i became the leader of the service, since i cared more than my brothers, and my father had given the box of haggadahs to me.
But i like the idea of a calling out the importance of inclusion at the Seder. It is, after all, one of the moral rituals of the year. So i perch an orange on my Seder plate, and call it out after i call out the shank bone, matzo, and maror.
Hmm, it puts all the service before the meal (we usually leave two cups of wine and a bit more after the meal) and it doesn’t include “who knows one”, in which we compete to see who can recite the whole thing without pausing for a breath. Otherwise, it looks perfect. I like that it has a fairly complete version of the Passover story.
