Book Review: 'Tis the Season for Haggadot

Ah Passover! What a time of year, right? You get to spend hours cleaning your house of all that chametz (leavened goods made of barley, wheat, spelt, rye, and oats) and other shmutz that might have accumulated over the past year, while also meal planning the most amazing chametz-free week of food that won't fill you full of potato starch, potatoes, and more starch.

Preparing for the season, I've lamented that our books are all packed up and leaving on a barge for America today. I also don't have all of the haggadot that I used when I was living in the U.S. (because I sold them ... sigh). We don't have many things laying around that offer Pesach-season inspiration, unfortunately, so I've been blessed with the most amazing seasonally inspiring books from Mosaica Press, including Darkness to Destiny: The Haggadah Experience by Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein.

I'll admit right off the bat: The cover is cheesy in the style of so many pieces of Judaica these days, which is off-putting if you don't spend a time reading books of the Feldheim/Artscroll variety. But please, give it a chance!

One friend commented that the haggadah "seems a bit 101," which in truth is the way you want a haggadah to be. Sitting at a Passover seder table is not the place to be knee-deep in midrash, folks. It's small morsels of awesome, inspirational thought that will get you through the seder and allow you the option of participating by providing the other guests with some fun facts, tidbits, and takes on different aspects of the seder "service."

Reading through Darkness to Destiny, I was inspired to pursue a few topics and even wrote about them on About.com. I had zero clue that the four cups of wine were in any way remotely related to the dreams that Joseph interpreted in the Pharaoh narratives. Curious by this morsel shared in the commentaries in the beginning of the haggadah, I ended up writing up a look at the different reasons for the four cups of wine at the Passover seder for About.com. That led me to considering the three matzot and the reason for having three instead of, say, four (as is the theme of the seder with the cups of wine, the sons, and so many other things).

And this, folks, is what you want in a haggadah: Questions that raise more thought-provoking questions. The theme of Passover is, of course, "Why is this night different than all other nights?"

So if you're still considering what haggadot to have at your seder, may I suggest this mix-and-match selection for the diversity of your guests that includes this very easy-to-read take on the classic.

Book Review: A Dynamic Approach to the Seder

Sitting down to write this blog has, for some reason, been incredibly difficult. I'm not sure if it's because I'm not in a book-review mode, or if it's just that I'm so busy in my work life that I dread having to do anything that isn't sleep. But since I'm staying in tonight at TribeFest (more to come on this, including my awesome encounter with the hilarious Rachel Dratch), I figure if not now, when?

I received a copy of the New American Haggadah -- which people are incorrectly calling the "Jonathan Safran Foer" haggadah -- for review, and I have to say that I'm a fan in some respects and a critic in others. But that's why you guys read my reviews, right? Despite this being a freebie, I do my best to be as honest and forthcoming about my opinions, so here we go.

The unique thing about this haggadah is that it offers a multi-facted approach to the Passover experience --  there are beautiful, visual pieces and images throughout the book, fascinating historical notes, and big questions for big conversation.

I appreciate the introduction, written by Jonathan Safran Foer (who also edited this new version of the classic text), which declares that "This Haggadah makes no attempt to redefine what a Haggadah is, or overlay any particular political or regional agenda (v)." The emphasis of the creators of this haggadah is on the always-evolving and creative nature of the haggadah, because with a changing time and lifestyle comes new versions of haggadot with new artistic interpretations and question-inspiring conversation pieces.

There are a lot of graphics issues with the font spacing throughout the haggadah, which really bothered me. On page 6, for example, the "e" in Exodus appears on a different line than the rest of the word. It seems that there was a rush job or someone jacked something up at the last minute resulting in some really weird issues like this.

I do like that throughout the haggadah are little sections (that annoyingly require a turning the book sideways) that approach a significant issue from four perspectives: Playground, House of Study, Library, and Nation. I'm not entirely clear what each of the categories is geared toward, but Playground tends to be pretty loosey-goosey and cute, although sometimes they seemed a little too flippant (like the Four Children and there being Four Parents). One of the sections I really appreciated was on the idea of the significance of bread, the matzo bread.

Without bread there is no Torah. (Mishna, Pirkei Avot 3:2)

and

This is the bread of affliction. All who are bent with hunger, come and eat. 

The Nation section discusses this but misses the point. It's too literal. I won't spoil it for you, but I will say that as a note for Passover, when we're told that all who are hungry should come and eat, it is not meant to be literal. Hunger -- like the blindness experienced during the book of Exodus -- is multi-facted. To be hungry is to yearn, to need to fill a void. This might be physical nourishment, but I believe that the idea here is to fill the spiritual void, the neshama is hungry! Don't you think?

I'm also perplexed by the translation of Elo-enu as "God-of-Us." I know that translations are peculiar, but this is one that I've really never seen and I'm not sure what the significance is of not saying "Our G-d." What is your take on this?

A page spread, the design done by Oded Ezer.

The art is strange, and although I don't understand much of it, I appreciate the illumination of certain prayers and powerful words like "And they did us evil, those Egyptians, and they tortured us, saddling us with punishing work" (in the Hebrew of course). Some of the images resemble fractals -- beautiful, brush-stroked fractals.

I want to share so many of the interesting and bizarre historical details, but I don't want this post to be too long and, of course, I don't want to spoil things for you if you plan on buying this specific haggadah. The truth is, I really like this version of the classic, but I don't know how I feel about the aesthetics. Having to turn this large book to its side to read the topical breakout pieces or the historic pieces is quite the pain, and I can't imagine how difficult it would be at the seder table.

However, I think this version will be most excellent for throwing morsels of knowledge around at the seder table! (One I'm excited about is the Livorno Haggadah that was printed for former Conversos.)

Meeting notes!

For your entertainment and my need to catalogue every thing that happens during my meetings with the rabbi ... here is a brief entry of "Things I Learned While Talking to the Rabbi." Enjoy!

A short note: Gematria is sort of the number-izing of the Torah. Each letter corresponds with a number, Aleph is One, Bet is Two, Gimel is Three, and so on until you get to Yod, which is 10, and then you bump up to 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, etc. so that the enter alphabet corresponds with a number, much like roman numerals. The rabbis take words with similar sum totals among their letters to show interesting and sometimes marvelous things. I posted one of these nifty things using the gematria of "chametz" and "blemish" not too long ago. I recently heard of gematria referred to as fascinating, but "impractical rabbinics." I dig that. 


And now, here we go!

• The reason Haredim and Hasidim and whomever else does (or maybe doesn't) abide by the rule of not getting your matzo wet on Pesach is because of the fear that there might be some leftover flower that didn't make the cut in the matzo and by getting it went you'd start the process of leavening and if you happened to drip some H20 on something and didn't eat it for 18 minutes it might become chametz! Oy! So I asked the rabbi if the 18-minute time limit for something to go from un-chametz to chametz having anything to do with 18 being the gematria for the word for life -- chai (חי) -- but he said no. Anyone know otherwise? The flour would, technically, come to life. An interesting tradition, but I like my matzo with cream cheese and jelly too much to go that route. 
• Tradition has it that when you sleep, this is 1/60 of death. When you dream, it is 1/60 of prophecy. I sure spend a lot of time prophesying. I mean, really. Every night. Vivid dreams aplenty.
• In the Passover Seder, there are four sons. One of the sons -- perhaps one of the most controversial at that -- is the Wicked Son. It's ordered that you knock out the teeth (more or less) of the wicked son. So why do you do this? Well, the gematria for wicked son is 570. The gematria for teeth is 366. If you knock out the teeth from wicked son, you come up with 204, which happens to be the gematria for a tzadik, a wise man. Sometimes gematria makes me go "yeah, right, okay" and sometimes it makes my jaw drop and forces me to go buy books on gematria and bible codes ... 
• There are THREE types of handwashing. I didn't know this, and I didn't know that I was doing the handwashing on Shabbos before the motzi WRONG. Yes, I have been living a lie for a long, long time now and I didn't know it. What are the three types of handwashing?
• In the morning, when you rise, you say the modeh/modah ani and you wash your hands with al natilat yada'im. The way you wash is to fill up the cup, and pour it on the right, then the left, then the right, then the left, then the right, and finally the left. Three times on each hand, alternating.
• In the pre-motzi washing, you say al natilat yada'im, but you fill up the cup and throw water on your right hand twice, then on your left hand twice. Curses! I was doing the morning washing routine before bread!!
• The third Pesach-centered hand washing is during the seder when you wash, and you only throw water on each hand once. I never got a really keen answer on why it was only once, but hey, it works. 

So, now, on my Amazon Wish List I will add two one stellar books related to my evening with the rabbi and others. [Unfortunately, one of the books is completely and totally in Hebrew (it's called Gematricon -- גימטריקון), so that won't be added.] The really interesting book is the Polychrome Historical Haggadah for Passover, which breaks down the traditional haggadah by when various portions of it were written/developed/etc. It color coats each period of when certain bits of the texts derived -- the early rabbis, the medieval period, etc. Fascinating stuff! Too bad actual copies appear to be in the $300+ range. Yikes!

At any rate, an early Shabbat Shalom to one and all!

A Seder Recap

Sigh. Chag Sameach friends and foes and bloggers.

So the boy and I headed up to Temple Sholom on Lake Shore for a first-night, community-wide young adult seder. Ian didn't stay because of outerlying factors, but I have some thoughts in general on the evening, because truth be told, the evening was a bust.

1) This was a young adult seder, aimed at people 22 to 40. There were 250 people signed up, and it was held in a gigantic room at the temple with tables seated for seven. It was open seating and ... there was NO MICROPHONE. Now, it started at 7:30 on a Monday. That means most people came straight from work or shortly thereafter. It's the beginning of the week. You don't have a microphone. People were RESTLESS. Talkative. Antsy. The rabbi was talkative, not loud enough, and this caused people to leave before the meal was even served. We hadn't even touched the second cup of wine when dozens got up and left. Why? It was 9:30 and we weren't anywhere close to dinner. Finally, the rabbi speeded it up and the evening ended around 10:30. A three-hour seder with a group of young adults? Most of whom likely were twice-a-year attenders? Ridiculous.

2) The haggadah (The Feast of Freedom edition) was ... well ... wordy. It's a great haggadah, and I've seen longer, but there was no transliteration. There was English and Hebrew, but NO transliteration. This meant about 10 people sang everything with the rabbi and the rest sort of hummed the tune. It isn't like services -- it happens once a year! Because it was a community-wide seder, there were Reform, Conservative, (Orthodox?), Conservadox, Reconstructionist -- you name it. A little help would have been STELLAR. It sucked to not be able to participate, because I could read the Hebrew quick enough. I mean, I can do it ... but not that quick, darn't!
See, there's the English on the left there and the Hebrew on the right ... but nothing else! I will admit that this haggadah WAS sort of nice because it had gleanings and explanations and insights on the margins of both pages to offer tidbits on what was going on. The weird thing, however, was that it sort of ... well ... skipped things. We never ate the egg. Well, our table did, anyhow.

3) Tables were doing their seders willy nilly. I sort of supported this, because it was going along so slowly and everyone was so hungry that it was almost necessary. The problem? Our table wasn't, so we were just hanging out as all the other tables noshed on matzo and charoset. I would have supported two large groups or tables to run their own. The shul I went to last year in Omaha did a great job with the large crowd ... but they had a mic. Then again, there was children there last year.

4) The dinner was not warm by the time we got it, unfortunately. The great thing about it was that there was this great matzo farfel kugel ... man. It tasted like bread pudding, really. Which was sort of a treat, of course. The rest of the food was pretty gross. Luckily, the gefilte fish was DELICIOUS with the horseradish. The charoset was pretty subpar, unfortunately. And we never got through the four cups of wine. Somewhere along the line, a few glasses just didn't appear in the haggadah. Sigh. A bust, really.

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So basically, by 10 p.m. after dinner, there were about 50 people left. I felt really bad for the rabbi (who seemed pretty young himself), but the way things were going, it was inevitable. There was a woman going from table to table around 9 p.m. asking for someone to go tell the rabbi to quit his yabbering. If anything, I felt bad for the rabbi. It made me think ... would I be willing to keep schlepping through it all in hopes of getting to a few people if I were a rabbi? I don't know, really.

I'll end my first-night Pesach seder rant by saying that I did have some great people at my table (a recent film student grad, three med students and a fellow who is a counselor on Birthright trips as well as works for a company that promotes Jewish environmentalism for youths ages 11-13). I got some info from the latter on a great Birthright program and from one of the med students I got an e-mail address. It was nice to meet some other Jews -- hoorah!

I don't know if I'll make it up to Temple Sholom for Passover services tomorrow morning. Maybe I'm a horrible person but something about the bust of an evening sort of makes me want to sleep (although that's what I did pretty much all day, ugh). Tomorrow I will, however, be making charoset. I'm pretty stoked -- considering it's my first time throwing it together.

I hope your seders managed to work out great. I wish I had another to go to tomorrow ... last year's seders were absolutely fantastic. Next year, there will be a seder at home. I want to make it work, and I will.

Shalom and laila tov.