No festival in our calendar more firmly anchors in us a collective sense of memory and inter-connection than Pesach.
This is how it has been ever since Moses imparted God’s directions for the very first Pesach night rituals to the soon-to-be-freed slaves some 3,500 years ago and our beloved sage rabbis centuries later created and then enhanced the order of procedure (the seder) for retelling and re-enacting that nervous, wonderful, historic first Passover night.
No religious work has been more illustrated, decorated or reproduced than the Haggadah, the liturgical text that enshrines that memory-sustaining and people defining seder.
As has become my custom on the “eve” of Pesach, I enjoy bringing to our readers’ attention to some of the new Haggadot that come across my desk in time for the holiday.
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The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem has recently published two stunning Haggadot. A non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of pluralistic Jewish education in Israel and Europe, the institute is also associated with the Conservative movement.
The Lovell Haggadah is a testament to the soaring places that the human imagination can touch when the heart combines devotion to text with devotion to esthetics.
Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz of Boca Raton and Jerusalem is the illuminator, translator and commentator of this Haggadah. He is supremely talented. And we are the beneficiary of his talents.
Rabbi Berkowitz provides three distinct entry points to the mystery and wonder of the seder experience for the user of this Haggadah: the book’s liturgy, its artwork and commentary. Each is its own magical pathway to new thoughts and reflections on our participation in the story of the Exodus.
The production values of the text are of a very high quality. The layout calls us to each page. The inter-relationships among space, illustration and text is pleasing and provocative. The cream colour and quality of the paper immediately set this Haggadah apart. Moreover, and perhaps especially, Berkowitz’s drawings are bold and deeply evocative.
The Haggadah takes its name from the sponsors of Rabbi Berkowitz’s project, Dedee and Stephen Lovell, who are his students and who provided the chief motivation for him to undertake this rare artistic achievement. The softcover work sits lightly and delightfully in the reader’s hand.
The Schechter Haggadah is also a three-channelled exploration through art, history and commentary of the Haggadah.
Joshua Kulp, the co-founder of the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, provides the translations and the commentaries in the Haggadah. David Golinkin, president and the Jerome and Miriam Katzin Professor of Jewish Law at the Schechter Institute, has selected and annotated the 115 eye-catching colour illustrations in the book.
A hardcover work of 350 pages, the Schechter Haggadah is a tall textbook conceived as a sourcebook and reference guide for the myriad aspects of enquiry into the origins, meanings and evolution of the many-layered text and rituals of the seder.
The text is cross-referenced throughout the Haggadah. The illustrations reach as far back as the year 1300 CE, and the commentary section is itself a banquet of some 40 different discussions and elaborations.
This Haggadah is both a comprehensive seminar into the entirety of the lore and instruction of the seder and a eye-catching travelogue back through time and space that our sages originally intended the seder to be for us and our children.
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The JPS Commentary on the Haggadah, (The Jewish Publication Society Philadelphia) follows in the footsteps of all the JPS publications: serious and scholarly.
The actual text of the Haggadah seder, finely printed in clear, square Hebrew font, is accompanied by traditional, exegetical commentary.
But the magnet of this Haggadah attracting inquisitive minds and curious hearts is the 70-page introductory essay by renowned scholar Joseph Tabory, professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and an Orthodox rabbi. The essay is titled The Haggadah and its Ritual. Its wide-ranging explorations are akin to a plunge into the middle of the lake of scholarship into the history of the Jewish people’s attachment and relationship to this most seminal and beloved of sacred texts: the Haggadah. It is an excellent and exciting feeling.
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The story of Pesach is the story of the Jewish people. These new Haggadot recount that story, our story, in new, ever-instructive ways.
