New Ways to Tell an Old Tale

Here’s what I remember about the Passover Seder of my childhood: an excruciatingly boring service that was not in English, dragging on while the adults yelled at each other because they wanted to hurry up and eat.

The Haggada--the book of prayers and stories meant to guide the evening’s meal--was a less-than-artistic booklet handed out for free by Maxwell House Coffee.

These days, it’s different. Now, families can practically design their own holiday, tailoring the rituals to meet their own interests.

And with all due respect to Maxwell House, it’s a prayer’s market out there for Haggadas these days.

“You find political versions, religious ideological versions, feminist, vegetarian, all kinds of versions of the Haggada,” says Ron Wolfson, a professor at the University of Judaism who specializes in Jewish family life. “The Haggada is the one Jewish book that everybody feels he has the right to use for his own agenda.”

In all, Wolfson says, there are more than 3,000 known versions of the Haggada.

The biblical injunction, Wolfson says, as included in most traditional texts of the Haggada, requires every Jew to tell the story of liberation from slavery as if he or she were personally set free, and to “dwell upon its message.” That means, says Wolfson, that each person is free to tell the story with his own embellishments, and to discuss or “dwell upon” it in the way that best suits him.

More traditional Haggadas use commentaries from famous rabbis to enlarge upon the basic rituals. But today’s liberal Haggadas use modern songs, poems and essays.

J. Roth Bookseller in Beverly Hills is carrying more than 50 different types of Haggadas this year. “We have a New Age Haggada and a feminist Haggada,” owner Jack Roth says. “We even have a secular Haggada that leaves out all the blood, guts and miracles.”

Roth’s selection, which covers two large tables and continues into the children’s section of his store, includes a Haggada augmented with paintings by Marc Chagall, reproductions of Haggadas from the Middle Ages, and a host of modern versions.

The “Haggada for the Liberated Lamb,” for example, is a traditional Haggada made for vegetarians. Families who use this version of the ritual are instructed to substitute olives, grapes and grains for the traditional lamb shank on the Seder plate.

“The Telling: A Loving Hagadah for Passover,” which is not available at Roth’s store, describes itself as “non-sexist, yet traditional.” In this Haggada, as in many liberal, conservative and even traditional versions today, the deity is not referred to with words like king or lord , but with non-gender-specific terms like our source or empowerer .

Then there are “The Shalom Seders,” three thematic Haggadas combined in one book by the group New Jewish Agenda. One called “A Haggada of Liberation” uses images from the labor and civil rights movements to describe the passage of the Israelites out of slavery. According to this Haggada, when the Jews wanted to leave Egypt, they formed a committee that “met every Tuesday and Thursday” and offered pharaoh an opportunity for peaceful negotiation.

For New Age enlightenment, there’s “The Santa Cruz Haggada: A Passover Haggada and Coloring Book for the Evolving Consciousness.”

The feminist “The San Diego Women’s Haggada” tells of the female heroes of ancient Hebrews and modern Jews and augments the discussion of the 10 plagues visited upon the Egyptians with the “10 plagues brought upon women in Jewish life.” Those plagues, the Haggada says, include a male image of God, a failure to take the education of women as seriously as that of men, and failure to pay enough attention to single, childless and lesbian women.

“To embellish is one of the demands of the tradition,” says Judith Plaskow, a Jewish feminist theologian at Manhattan College in New York. “You’re supposed to raise questions and go beyond what’s there.” Plaskow suggests that people are more likely to experiment with the liturgy on Passover--the most widely celebrated Jewish holiday--because the ceremony takes place at home.

“The fact that Passover is a home holiday gives a leeway and freedom that isn’t there when you’re in a synagogue,” Plaskow says. “After all, who knows what you’re doing in your home except the group of people gathered there?”

Wolfson says that while Jews have always used different types of Haggadas, the first of today’s eclectic Haggadas, Arthur Waskow’s Freedom Seders, came out in the 1970s. It incorporated modern liberal views of freedom and justice into the traditional Haggadas. Since then the idea has taken root among the whole spectrum of Jews, from Reform to Orthodox.

Many modern families even design their own Seders, with help from several different Haggadas. As long as the bare bones of the ritual and story are there, says Wolfson, that is theologically acceptable. “The rabbis designed the Seder as an interactive, multi-sensory event,” he says. “You’re trying to feel what it was like to be a slave, and what it feels like to be redeemed.”