His Business Is Booming in Haggadahs

Don’t ask Ira Steingroot to tell you which is his favorite. He’ll say, “Which of your children do you like best?”

Of course, we are not talking children. We’re talking Haggadahs, the book that contains the prayers, rituals and songs for the observation of the Passover seder. Steingroot presides over the seder table at Cody’s Books in Berkeley and boasts that the store carries more than 150 different Haggadahs, “the world’s largest selection.”

Tell me I’m dreaming . . . or in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) or Rogers Park (Chicago) or Fairfax (L.A.). Haggadahs? In Berkeley? How did the little town best known for a great university, weird people, nasturtium garnish and political chutzpah become the Haggadah capital of the world?

As Steingroot gives me his enthusiastic guided tour of the seder books table, the answer becomes clear. There is a Haggadah here for every conceivable persuasion, from the ultra-Orthodox to the ultra-unorthodox.

There are the Haggadahs you might expect to see only in Berkeley such as “Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb”--a vegetarian Haggadah; and “The Telling: A Loving Haggadah for Passover”--nonsexist; and “A Jewish Lesbian Seder” (from Bobbeh Meisehs Press in Cambridge)--what you might call a reformed version of the more orthodoxly feminist “San Diego Women’s Haggadah.”

You’ve also got your three-for-the-price-of-one “Shalom Seders” Haggadah put out by The New Jewish Agenda. This includes “The Rainbow Seder” (multiethnic), “The Seder of the Children of Abraham” (promoting Palestinian and Israeli reconciliation) and “A Haggadah of Liberation” (recognizing the power of women).

How far can you take this thing? “A lot of people come in and ask: ‘Do you have a Haggadah that doesn’t mention God--we don’t want God, we don’t want Israel, we don’t want the Jewish People--have you got something for me?’ ” Steingroot has: It’s “Haggadah for a Secular Celebration of Pesach.”

Gentiles accounted for a good deal of the $15,000 in Haggadah business Cody’s did last year. For that reason, the store stocks “The Passover Meal: A Ritual for Christian Homes.” Says Steingroot: “It’s a Last Supper kind of thing.”

The store’s seder table also features a number of Passover accessories to help bring Jewish strays back to the fold. A kind of PassoverLand for one-stop shopping.

There are tapes (“The Joy of Passover: The Video”), music books, a 65% polyester matzo bag (made in Taiwan) and cookbooks. And there is a no-cholesterol Passover recipe book and a “Passover Gourmet” cookbook, with such strictly kosher treats as Leek-Feta Patties, and Sea Bass in Sabra and Almonds.

Nouvelle noshing, already.

There is even computer software such as “HyperSeder for Macintosh” from “Davka--the Chosen Software.” This leads Steingroot and me into a Talmudic discussion as old as Lenny Bruce: Is the Mac really Jewish and IBM really goyish ?

Children’s items include books such as “Dayenu or How Uncle Murray Saved the Seder”; videos like “Crumb-Eater” (a PacMan-like game); and a set of Passover finger puppets in which, Steingroot enthusiastically points out, “the wicked Pharaoh puppet sits on the center finger.”

Whether he is showing me the $95 facsimile of a mid-4th Century Catalonian manuscript or a 60-cent pamphlet in Hebrew only, Steingroot exhibits a passion for all his Haggadahs. He describes himself as a collector of “Haggadahot”--trying to gather for his personal library many of the 4,000-odd printed copies of the book done since the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

Lastly, he holds up “A Pesach Haggadah in Memory of the Holocaust,” with its shocking images of ovens and piles of suitcases. “I don’t think you could sit at the table and eat with that,” says Steingroot. “It’s not joyous, but it’s beautifully done. I own this.”

He looks slightly ashamed as he adds: “We still haven’t gotten one in Russian. Or a gay one.”

But he has clearly answered the question: Why is this Haggadah different from all others?