A Yemenite Habani family celebrating Passover in their new home in Tel Aviv. Image by Zoltan Kluger/Wikimedia Commons

Over recent years, a curious tradition has cropped up in many traditional Jewish family seders: The recitation of the Four Questions in a variety of languages.

“Jewish children have been reciting the Ma Nishtana for about a hundred generations and…in many different countries,” writes Ilana Kurshan in her book, “Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?: The Four Questions Around the World.” There, Kurshan collects the Haggadah’s four questions in twenty-three languages — from Afrikaans to Yiddish, languages which some Jewish communities have traditionally spoken.

One speech technologist, Murray Spiegel, has taken this tradition of the multi-lingual Ma Nishtana to the next level, when he went on a mission to translate the Haggadah’s four questions into over 300 languages, for his book, “300 Ways To Ask The Four Questions.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Spiegel’s quest began with his stumbling upon an article detailing how a certain Klingon expert, Mark Shoulson, was translating the Biblical book of Jonah into the language of Star-Trek. Spiegel asked Shoulson to translate the four questions into Klingon. Ricky Stein, Shoulson’s fellow community member, overheard of the project — and wanted to get involved.

Fast forward, and in almost 35 years, Spiegel and Stein have culled contributions from 850 contributors in 102 countries. Spiegel calls his volume a “modern Rosetta stone” and it includes a CD of recordings of Jews chanting the Ma Nishtana in Judeo-Iraqi, Libyan and Kazakh. Other languages included in the book are Middle Egyptian and an Egyptian variant that scholars of archaeological linguistics believe would have been spoken at the time that Hebrew slaves could have been in Egypt.

Some of the most exotic languages included in Spiegel’s and Stein’s book are Xhosa, one of the most widely spoken languages in South Africa, and Malinke, a West African language which many slaves brought to America spoke. Spiegel solicited the Chabad center in Sitka, Alaska to gain a translation into Tlingit, and asked the first Mayan novelist to translate to Mayan languages.

“By reciting the questions in the language of smaller or extinct Jewish communities, Seder participants can become aware of where Jews have been around the world and honor the varieties of Jewish exilic experience,” Spiegel says.

What better way to be aware of the Exodus than to experience its dislocations in language?

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount