Why is this Haggada different?

By SHOSHANA ZUCKER

It’s fascinating to compare haggadot and see how different authors react to the same fundamental text and tradition. Box at end of text.

FOR nearly 2,000 years, the text for Pessah Seder, according to Jewish tradition, is the Haggada (literally "telling"), through which we recount the redemption from Egypt and celebrate our own freedom.

Since the traditional commandment for the Seder night is not to read a fixed text, but rather to tell the story in a way that makes it alive and real, it’s reasonable to assume that people have always expanded the printed text in many different ways. The last several decades has seen a profusion of new haggadot of every color, shape and size, with a plethora of explanations and readings intended to complement and/or replace sections of the traditional text.

It’s fascinating to explore and compare haggadot and see how different authors and editors react to the same fundamental text and tradition, on the basis of their own time and place. Some selections from unusual haggadot follow to get you started. Follow the links to uncover more riches.

* EARLY kibbutzim were among the first communities to make a focused effort to produce new holiday materials that reflected the renewal of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel and the people’s return to an agricultural lifestyle.

At Kibbutz Ein Harod in the 1930s-40s, for example, the children asked:

Why do people all over the world hate Jews?

When will the Jews return to their land?

When will our land become a fertile garden?

When will there be peace and brotherhood world over?

* In 1941, The New Haggadah, edited by Rabbis Mordecai  M. Kaplan, Eugene Kohn and Ira Eisenstein, also expanded the concerns of the Seder beyond the narrow limits of the Exodus from Egypt:

"Now we dedicate ourselves to the struggle for the freedom. Though the sacrifice be great and the hardships many, we shall not rest until the chains that enslave all men be broken. But the freedom we strive for means more than broken chains. It means liberation from all those enslavements that warp the spirit and blight the mind, that destroy the soul even though they leave the flesh alive.Men can be enslaved to themselves. When they let emotion sway them to their hurt, when they permit harmful habits to tyrannize over them — they are slaves. When laziness or cowardice keeps them from doing what they know to be the right, when ignorance blinds them Men can be enslaved by poverty and inequality. When the fear of need drives them to dishonesty and violence, to defending the guilty and accusing the innocent, they are slaves. When the work men do enriches others, but leaves them in want they are slaves."

* Several recent texts have returned to a literal meaning of slavery. In A Different Night: A Family Participation Haggadah , Rabbi David Hartman of Jerusalem recounts how he once explained to his 4-year-old son about what it means to be a slave:

"The boy had a birthday and Daddy couldn’t come. Then Daddy called and said, ’I’m going to come home.’ The boy invited all his friends to come and see his Daddy, because he loved him. He said, ’Abba is coming home’. He watched his Mommy cook kugel, his Daddy’s favorite. Just after his friends had come, Abba called to say, ’The boss won’t let me come.’ The little boy said, ’What do you mean, the boss won’t let you come? Tell him your son wants you home. Everybody wants you. We miss you!’"

Suddenly I could not help it, I started crying and my son started crying about the kid in the story. I created this dialogue of the Abba trying to explain to his little son: "I can’t make my own decisions. The boss decides my movements for me." We felt the loneliness of the little boy who wanted so much to see his father but who knew that his love is not enough to bring him home. That is what it means to be a slave. You can’t control your life.

* Rabbi Arthur Waskow portrays the 24/7 workplaces of the 21st century as a form of slavery:

Today we face a new kind of Mitzrayim,

the Tight and Narrow Place.

Freedom without jobs is a bitter joke —
yet many of us find our jobs dissolved, downsized, "disemployed."

Jobs without freedom are slavery —
yet many of us are forced to overwork

Until our jobs exhaust us.

Things of space seem far more permanent —
but as we seek to make such things into our servants,

Their very permanence may turn us into slaves.

When the Israelites went forth from slavery,

they sought for rest and self-reflective time:

They found Shabbat.

Rather than live under the tyranny of things and overwork,

We will in our lives set apart a time for freedom.

* Many haggadot never really answer the four questions. The Feast of Freedom haggadah published by the American Conservative movement considers that a good thing: "Questioning is a sign of freedom, proof that we are free to investigate, to analyze, to satisfy our intellectual curiosity. The simplest questions can have many answers, sometimes complex and contradictory ones. To see everything as bad or good is to be enslaved to simplicity. The Haggada challenges us to ask ourselves whether we are asking the right questions"

* Not surprisingly, the words of many Zionist leaders can add another level of meaning to our celebration of Pessah. These are quoted in Halaila Hazeh a brand new Hebrew Haggadah www.afikoman.co.il.

Testifying in 1947, before the U.N. Commission on the Partition of Palestine, David Ben-Gurion said,

"Three hundred years ago a ship called the Mayflower set sail to the New World. This was a great event in the history of England and America. Yet I wonder if there is one Englishman who knows at what time the ship set sail? How many Americans know? Do they know how many people embarked on this voyage? What quality of bread did they eat? Yet more than 3,300 years ago, before the Mayflower set sail, the Jews left Egypt.

"Every Jew in the world knows on exactly what date the Jews left Egypt and what kind of bread they ate. Even today, Jews worldwide eat matza on the 15th of Nisan. They retell the story of the Exodus and all the troubles Jews have endured since being exiled. They frame this evening with two statements: This year, slaves. Next year, free men. This year here. Next year in Jerusalem, in Zion, in Eretz Yisrael. That is the nature of the Jews."

Nearly 50 years later, President Ezer Weizman addressed the German parliament:

"I am no longer a wandering Jew travelling the world, immigrating from country to country, exiled from Diaspora to Diaspora. However, every Jew in every generation, is obligated to see himself as if he were there, in the times and places that preceded him. Therefore, I still wander, not on the back roads of the earth but through time, wandering from generation to generation, travelling the paths of memory.

"I was a slave in Egypt. I received the Torah at Mount Sinai. Together with Joshua and Elijah, I crossed the Jordan River. I entered Jerusalem with David, was exiled from it with Zedekiah, and did not forget it by the rivers of Babylon. When the Lord returned the captives of Zion, I dreamed among the builders of its ramparts. I fought the Romans and was banished from Spain I studied Torah in Yemen and lost my family in Kishinev. I was incinerated in Treblinka, rebelled in Warsaw and emigrated to the Land of Israel, the country whence I had been exiled and to which I return. I wander in the footsteps of my ancestors. As I accompany them through their times and places, they are with me here, today.

* Feminist and gender-sensitive texts are flourishing genre of Haggada texts. Many can be found at . The following poem by Chrystal Corces emphasizes the role of women in the redemption process described in the Torah:

Now the king of Egypt commanded Shifra and Puah

And he said,

"When a boy is born to a Hebrew woman you shall kill it!""

For the women were midwives,

Who helped the mothers of newborn babes.

But Shifra and Puah did not — would not —
Could not do as Pharaoh commanded.

Would not — could not — kill the sons of Israel —
Saved the children of Israel

From death decreed by Pharaoh.

That we may not forget, their names are inscribed in Torah.

And a woman of the tribe of Levi

Had a little son

And she hid him, that the soldiers of Pharaoh

Might not kill him.

Out of reed she wove a little ark

And waterproofed it,

And placed her little boy within

And set it among the bulrushes at the edge of the river Nile.

And Miriam the boy’s sister, hid among the rushes

To watch over him.

* In 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in West Los Angeles dealt with a questions that are very controversial in Israel today, such as the literal truth of the haggada.

"Are the biblical stories true? Does it matter?"

His comments were quoted in the 2002 New Israel Fund Haggada supplement www.nif.org. "We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. We know what it is to be slaves. We know what it is not to have freedom. That is true. Does it matter if that sense comes to us from something that happened 3,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago? Not at all. I have never been in Egypt, but I know what it is to leave. If you sat at the Seder table and you felt like a slave, and you ate the matza and you sang the songs and you were free by the time your Seder was over, then it is true. Then you don’t need to be afraid of the findings of the scientists or the archeologists because in your soul it is true. Pessah has been proved true in virtually every generation of the Jewish people. Don’t tell me that Pessah is not true."