arts & entertainment

A Haggadah

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Beth Kissileff
JointMedia News Service

N

ovelist Jonathan Safran Foer
recently published a Haggadah
that demonstrates how a whole
class of people without rabbinic train-
ing are empowered and committed to
creating a new Jewish text for their own
era.
Foer, author of Everything Is
Illuminated and Extremely Loud and
Incredibly Close, remembers that when
he was growing up, his parents used a
homemade Haggadah for the Passover
seder, put together from a variety of
sources. The family joke was that this
night was different from all other nights
because copyright laws do not apply.
It seems this spirit of creativity was
successfully passed down to the next
generation. Foer is the editor of the New
American Haggadah, published this
spring by Little, Brown and Company.
In a phone interview with JointMedia
News Service, Foer seemed unfazed by
the boldness of giving his text the same
name that Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan —
founder of the Reconstructionist move-
ment of American Judaism — took for
his versions of the Haggadah in both
1941 and 1978.
According to the 1978 introduction
in Kaplan's New American Haggadah, it
was meant to "inspire in the new gener-
ation the same devotion to freedom that
our ancestors gained from the ancient
Haggadah!'
There were no rabbis involved in
the making of the 2012 New American
Haggadah. This is indicative of how the
new American Jewish culture — per-
haps inspired by Kaplan's philosophy of
"Judaism as a civilization" — is increas-
ingly a product of fiction and nonfiction
writers, historians and professors. A
whole class of people without rabbinic
training are empowered and committed
to creating a new Jewish text for their
own era.
Foer told JointMedia News Service
that he originally envisioned an anthol-
ogy format for the New American
Haggadah, with contributions from 20
writers. But ultimately, Foer said the
writers "came to love the book we were

64

March 29 • 2012

working on" and realized that the best
contrasts between the shalem (whole-
way to engage readers was to present
ness) that is contained in the name
the material and "get out of the way:'
of Jerusalem with the necessity in the
rather than obstructing the text with
Chasidic tradition of being broken
too much overtly contemporary or
(tsubrokhenhayt in Yiddish) and the
political material.
possibility that as Jews, we are trying to
Therefore, Foer — along with Jewish
find "wholeness in brokenness!'
studies professor Nathaniel Deutsch
Newberger Goldstein writes with
of the University of California at Santa
astounding power of the need for the
Cruz — chose 10 moments for a small-
"tutored imagination" to involve our-
er group of four writers to comment
selves in the narrative of the Passover
on. This format hosts sections titled
story as we collectively "sanctify story-
"House of Study" by Deutsch, "Nation"
telling."
by Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey
Overall, the Haggadah's format of
Goldberg, "Library" by philosopher
highlighting different voices on a par-
and fiction writer Rebecca Newberger
ticular theme works effectively to con-
Goldstein and "Playground" by chil-
vey both a variety of ideas and a mod-
dren's author Lemony Snicket (Daniel
ern outlook on the text.
Handler).
The Haggadah's design
Each commentator
is by Oded Ezer, a mod-
has short
ern Israeli artist and
essays of
historian of typogra-
three or
phy. Ezer has not only
four para-
invented a number
graphs that
of popular Hebrew
are themed
fonts but also pro-
around an
duces art such as
examination
Typosperma and
of a particular
Typembra that
theme. Goldberg
give new aspects
asks questions
to letters by
like, "How do
merging them
we balance our
with other life
faith's demand to
forms.
care especially for
Ezer
our fellow Jews, and
describes
care especially for the
his work
entire world, at the
as "a great
same time?"
journey
Handler has an
to try to bring forms
eclectic take on the
from the past into the future
Mia Sara Bruch,
seder, discussing
and he incorporates fonts from
a fellow at the
such urgent mat-
different eras of Jewish history
University of
ters as someone's
in the Haggadah.
Michigan's Frankel
need to "check on the
Mia Sara Bruch, a fellow at
Institute for Advanced
food"—which actu-
the University of Michigan's
Judaic Studies, wrote
ally means "sneaking
Frankel Institute for Advanced
the pedagogical
a few bites"—while
Judaic Studies, wrote the
timeline incorporated
adding that "it is the
timeline at the top of many of
in the New American
muddle and the mess
the pages. The timeline is an
Haggadah.
around the order that
interesting pedagogical device
represent the freedom
shedding light on the forma-
that everyone deserves,
tion of the seder service, the
and that far too many people have been
languages Jews have spoken and where
denied."
they have lived around the world, and
Deutsch writes movingly about the
what percentage of the world popula-

Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer is behind
a newly published Haggadah, which

incorporates the work of authors, not
rabbis.

tion Jews have constituted at any point
in time.
Nathan Englander (What We Talk
About When We Talk About Anne Frank:
Stories, For the Relief of Unbearable
Urges, The Ministry of Special Cases),
who translated the Haggadah service
from Hebrew to English for the New
American Haggadah, told JointMedia
News Service that the task gave him
a "new identity and ownership of the
material."
Englander ended up spending three
years on a project that he had thought
might take six weeks. He found a part-
ner to study the text with in a chavruta
(one-on-one study) and examined a
variety of Haggadah texts. The result is
a translation that conveys the Passover
story's meaning to an English-speaking
audience in mellifluous, thoughtful and
fluid language.
"All who are expansive in their telling
of the Exodus from Egypt are worthy of
praise Englander reads from the New
American Haggadah.
Foer said that "the central trope of
the Haggadah, You yourself should feel
as if liberated from Egypt:" is a "radi-
cal" idea if taken seriously. The New
American Haggadah — intended to
bring Jews together around the notion
of shared memory — should help any
reader fulfill that obligation.

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