At our Seder, before we tackle the Haggadah itself, there are words — they change each year — that are intended to frame the proceedings. Here were some of this year’s introductory words: Any serious consideration of the freedom we celebrate at the Seder table is inherently political (as, obviously, was our rebellion against Pharaoh)….
Year to year there isn’t much change when it comes to my Passover Seder. Wine, matzo, and politics are always the dominant features. But this year I want to be conscious of the message the Haggadah provides and what it means to me. Searching for that meaning forces me to look back on the vastly…
New American Haggadah Edited by Jonathan Safran Foer Translated by Nathan Englander Little, Brown. 160 pages, $29.99 Wellsprings of Freedom: The Renew Our Days Haggadah By Rabbi Ronald Aigen Emet Press, 148 pages, $23 The Koren Ethiopian Haggada: Journey to Freedom Edited by Rabbi Menachem Waldman Translated by Binyamin Shalom Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 200 pages,…
‘Here I am, prepared and ardent [as in hineni muchan umzuman], allied and present, ready to perform the mitzvah of the first cup, the enactment of salvation’s promise…. You are blessed, Lord God-of-us, King of the Cosmos [eloheinu melech ha’olam], Maker of the fruit of the vine.” That is what Nathan Englander’s fresh, inventive, liberal…
The Passover seder is Jewish drama. Over the evening, a tale of slavery and liberation, despair and hope, narrow straits and open possibilities unfolds. We experience this drama through food. We lift high the matzah, the bread of affliction, for all to see; we taste the painful maror to remind us of embittered lives and…
Reporting on the new Haggadot of the year is among my favorite roles here at the Forward. Each year, a new trove appears. And each year, we learn something new about the American Jewish experience. It’s no surprise, then, that the most exciting new Haggadah of the year isn’t a book at all, but an…
To see the splendid new exhibit of caricatures and miniature drawings by Polish-born Jewish illustrator Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), on view until March 27 at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, you first have to walk through several galleries of religious paintings devoted to Christian saints, Madonnas with child, and Christ on the cross. Szyk’s pictures also…
Though it features illustrations of a menagerie of animals that carry Jewish symbolism, an ancient Roman mosaic discovered in Lod, Israel, in 1996, is not a religious work, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the fourth-century artifact is on exhibit for the first time until April 3, 2011. According to the museum’s press…
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