Any seder might involve a few glitch­es, but imag­ine if a giant palm tree fell
across the road as you made your way to the cel­e­bra­tion, block­ing your path before you even had the chance to sit at the table. In Road­side Seder, a mul­ti­cul­tur­al cast of char­ac­ters en route to Jerusalem expe­ri­ence this unlike­ly obsta­cle. Togeth­er, Anna Levine’s live­ly text and Naa­ma Lahav’s bright­ly col­ored illus­tra­tions tell a sto­ry about inge­nu­ity and coop­er­a­tion with sur­pris­ing results.

The book begins with a typ­i­cal com­plaint about the traf­fic; the illus­tra­tion shows a long line of cars reced­ing into the hori­zon. The scene shifts to the inside of a car, where par­ents, grand­par­ents, and Ben­ji, a boy dressed like Moses, are grow­ing impa­tient. Soon the
scene expands to a cross-sec­tion of Israeli soci­ety. Sephardim and Ashke­naz­im, sol­diers, mem­bers of the Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ty, young and old, are strand­ed by the top­pled palm tree. Grand­ma calls the sit­u­a­tion ​“a plague,” but where­as the Ten Plagues pre­ced­ed the Israelites’ flight to free­dom, the immov­able tree has left every­one stuck where they are. Lahav’s pic­tures cap­ture the frus­tra­tion of the adults. Thent Ben­jy and a girl with a skate­board come up with a cre­ative idea. They will hold the seder on the side of the road, set­ting the impro­vised palm-tree table with matzah, charoset, maror, and every­thing else need­ed for the rit­u­al. A two- page spread shows this diverse group of Jews cel­e­brat­ing together.

The text com­bines rhymes and prose, with some sen­tences inside word bub­bles and oth­ers for­mat­ted tra­di­tion­al­ly. This engag­ing pre­sen­ta­tion moves the nar­ra­tive along to its core. The Jew­ish peo­ple, exem­pli­fied in the book’s char­ac­ters, have many dis­tinc­tive cus­toms. An Ethiopi­an woman demon­strates the smash­ing of an old ceram­ic bowl before using a new one for the hol­i­day. A Moroc­can grand­fa­ther pass­es the seder plate over the head of each guest in a ges­ture of bless­ing. Per­sian par­tic­i­pants are seen ​“bop­ping” spring onions over one another’s heads, in play­ful defi­ance of Pharaoh’s cru­el­ty. Yet this col­or­ful vari­ety of tra­di­tions actu­al­ly under­scores the uni­ty of the Jew­ish peo­ple. Togeth­er, under a road sign direct­ing trav­el­ers towards an inac­ces­si­ble Jerusalem, they cheer­ful­ly vary the ide­al des­ti­na­tion for Pesach, as Ben­jy enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly calls for next year’s seder to be a road­side one.

This high­ly rec­om­mend­ed pic­ture book includes an after­word, a glos­sary, and a recipe for charoset.