By
– April 20, 2012
Ma nishtana may be the most familiar words in the entire seder, and now it’s possible to recite them in 300 languages, living, dead, and created. A thirty-year effort to find speakers around the world to translate the questions into their own languages has resulted in 300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions, an exuberant compilation by Murray Siegel and Rickey Stein. Siegel and Stein present not only the translations but also information on the language, the translator, the speaker, and the transcriber. The book comes with both a CD and a DVD that have translation highlights, games, quizzes, chants — and more. Irresistible to any language lover and a trove of seder novelties.
Maron L. Waxman, retired editorial director, special projects, at the American Museum of Natural History, was also an editorial director at HarperCollins and Book-of-the-Month Club.