Of Haggadahs, Passover, and the Sexist Roots of Judaism

For decades the home of my parents has been Passover central, with a staggering number of holiday meals served (at least 1500 - nothing for McDonalds, but a lot for one Jewish family with an averaged sized living room in a suburban home), traditional songs sung loudly and off key, and haggadahs read. The Haggadah is the book of Passover. In our home, it's wine-stained, torn, and stuffed with copied pages of new readings to share with family, friends, and strangers. As part of our seder, a word that means "order," we have shared, created, and edited a story of liberation, slavery, longing, and justice. It is an active tradition.

Not My Father's Seder

The seder I grew up with was boisterous. It was my father's gift to us, his five children, one unlike those he grew up with, which went on for hours in a language he neither spoke nor understood. "That was a seder for men," my father always tells us. My mother grew up in a retail family, which meant most Passovers were spent working selling Easter finery to farmers.

My father was determined that our seder welcome and include children. As the years passed, our celebration also welcomed and included women. We altered the texts and sometimes even referred to God as she. New texts and traditions were added regularly. My brother introduced a fifth cup of wine to the four tradition demanded to remind us of those killed during the Holocaust. My cousin added a cup filled with water to remind us of the well discovered by Miriam during the forty-year wandering in the desert. My friend added the orange to the seder plate as a rebuke to a man who had said, "A woman belongs on the bima as much as an orange belongs on a seder plate." (A bit or research informs me that the orange was originally added in support of gays and lesbians. This new bit of information, no doubt, will be incorporated into our seder next year.) We replaced the "sons" with children. We added our mothers to our fathers. We heard the voices of women in the never ending story of freedom from slavery.



The New American Haggadah

When I heard Nathan Englander speak about the work of writing a new Haggadah in an interview with Terry Gross, I was thrilled. A great writer, a secularist, with deep roots in Jewish tradition, and a knowledge of Hebrew had reimagined the Haggadah! I knew it would be something I wanted, something that would enhance my celebration of Passover.

I ordered it, and it arrived in time for the first seder.

I opened it randomly and read this first:

"Here I am, prepared and ardent, allied and present, ready to perform the mitzvah of the first cup, the enactment of salvation's promise."

Prepared and ardent, allied and present. What thrilling language! Give me more. The writing throughout is immediate, clear, and gripping. The Haggadah is filled with intriguing bits of commentary and little details that are interesting. In the end it is a failure. Women and girls are relegated to the margins where we get a mention or two on the timeline, but the traditions we have added to the seder over the years are nowhere to be found.

The New American Haggadah reflects very little of the tradition of my family or of others who have used the ubiquitous and imperfect Maxwell House Haggadah as the inspiration for self-made traditions and new readings. As reformed Jews, we have as much of a right to our heritage and ritual as the orthodox and the lapsed orthodox. And our heritage is one that has struggled (as Jacob struggled with God) to include the voices of women and the marginilized. This is
especially true on Passover, when families become the centers for religious interpretation rather than rabbis and congregations, and when the story is one of overcoming oppression and injustice.

A Boy's Guide to Passover

The New American Haggadah is written by two men who obviously did not share the tradtion of change and inclusion I gew up with. It has erased decades of American Jewish learning by reverting to the old order of a story passed on from fathers to sons. Given the opportunity to include the voices of women, the retelling gives us more male voices and more male voices: it's awash in testosterone.

Reading the Haggadah reminded me of the sexist core of Judaism, not the beauty of tradition and ritual. Like all Haggadahs that have come before it, the best parts will be copied and inserted into the worn out Maxwell House Haggadah we've been using since before I was born. It will not replace the self-made books in my home or the homes of many I know who celebrate Passover as a living tradition that over the years has come to include the stories of women and girls, mothers and daughters, as much as those of fathers and sons and rabbis and disciples.

The New American Haggadah squandered an amazing opportunity to reflect the new traditions of many American Jews by diminishing our contributions and ritual and reverting to the sexist core of the religion. It would be better titled A Boy's Guide to Passover.