By
– April 23, 2012
If Passover is a night for telling and retelling the story of the Exodus, My People’s Haggadah is an almost bottomless treasury of knowledge for enriching any seder. In the Talmud-style format of Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman’s series “My People’s Prayerbook,” the centerpiece of each page is the traditional seder text in Hebrew and English, in this case the highly regarded version of E. D. Goldschmidt (1960); it is framed by wideranging comments from ten leading scholars across the spectrum of Jewish practice. Each scholar writes from a different viewpoint— Neil Gillman on theology, Arthur Green on personal spirituality, Hoffman on history, Daniel Landes on halakhah, Alyssa Gray on medieval commentators, and so on. This allows readers to select a passage or ritual and study it from many points — Chasidic, spiritual, midrashic, feminist — or to follow one thread through several passages.
This brief description only suggests the breadth and depth of information in these volumes. My People’s Haggadah is an encyclopedia on haggadot, to be consulted on any subject connected to the seder, not a haggadah for the seder table. The essays that open Volume 1 cut a wide swath, looking at the haggadah from the Bible through contemporary feminism, exploring the Passover- Easter nexus, surveying the American influence on the haggadah through the various movements and, needless to say, Maxwell House. The appendixes include translations of the seder instructions in the Mishnah and Tosefta, with a facsimile of the section of the 13th century Kaufmann Mishnah that deals with the seder, as well as a translation of a haggadah from the Cairo Geniza that reflects practice in Eretz Yisrael rather than the medieval Babylonian haggadot that are the basis of all contemporary versions. The comprehensive glossary is another excellent feature. Highly readable, thoroughly engaging, useful and informative, My People’s Haggadah is truly a people’s book. Appendixes, bibliography, contributors’ list, glossary, illustrations, index, notes.
This brief description only suggests the breadth and depth of information in these volumes. My People’s Haggadah is an encyclopedia on haggadot, to be consulted on any subject connected to the seder, not a haggadah for the seder table. The essays that open Volume 1 cut a wide swath, looking at the haggadah from the Bible through contemporary feminism, exploring the Passover- Easter nexus, surveying the American influence on the haggadah through the various movements and, needless to say, Maxwell House. The appendixes include translations of the seder instructions in the Mishnah and Tosefta, with a facsimile of the section of the 13th century Kaufmann Mishnah that deals with the seder, as well as a translation of a haggadah from the Cairo Geniza that reflects practice in Eretz Yisrael rather than the medieval Babylonian haggadot that are the basis of all contemporary versions. The comprehensive glossary is another excellent feature. Highly readable, thoroughly engaging, useful and informative, My People’s Haggadah is truly a people’s book. Appendixes, bibliography, contributors’ list, glossary, illustrations, index, notes.
Additional Title Featured in Review
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.
