Jewish Standard Feature Article on my Polychrome Historical Haggadah, the beautiful Color-coded Haggadah that reveals the Seder's history

Thanks to all of you who have purchased my Haggadah on Amazon. 

Purchase the new hardcover edition now at Amazon and Judaica House in Teaneck in hard cover at a discount!

Jewish Standard Feature Article: 

Color-coded Haggadah highlights seder’s origins: The Polychrome Historical Haggadah

Teaneck rabbi reprints classic work of seven-hued scholarship

By Larry Yudelson

Who wrote the Haggadah?

We know who wrote the Hogwarts Haggadah. (Moshe Rosenberg.) We know who wrote the Rav Kook Haggadah. (Bezalel Naor.) We even know who wrote the ArtScroll Family Haggadah. (Nosson Scherman.)

But who wrote the original text?

Like all the siddur and other classic works of Judaism, the Haggadah dates back to before people started putting title pages and copyright notices on their books and listing them on Amazon. So we don’t really know.

We do know that most of the text we use today is found in the earliest Jewish liturgical manuscripts, which date from the ninth century. And the outline accords with the teachings of the Mishna from six centuries earlier.

But who put this together, and exactly when?

Truth be told, we don’t know.

Now, however, a Teaneck rabbi — and Jewish Standard columnist — has republished a classic work that highlights all the different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

“We are having a conversation with Jews across all periods of history,” Rabbi Tzvee Zahavy said. “This is not just something we’re doing with our family. We’re having a dialogue across the ages.”

This month, Rabbi Zahavy reissued the Polychrome Historical Haggadah. Originally published in 1974, it was the work of Rabbi Jacob Freedman of Springfield, Massachusetts. It highlights the different levels of the Haggadah by putting each stratum in a different color. Biblical verses are black. Mishna passages are red. And so on — until contemporary additions like the Hatikvah, appropriately in Israeli-flag blue.

It is a seven-hued rainbow.

Download Online a Free Passover Seder Haggadah

Here are several of the best places you can go online to download a free Passover Haggadah for your Seder.

• The Jewish Agency Haggadah Links
• Wikisource Hebrew Haggadah Page
• The Union Haggadah (CCAR Classical Reform)
• Haggadah According to the Rite of Yemen: with the Arabic-Hebrew
• The Kol Menachem Haggadah: Nusach Haarizal, by Chaim Miller

I give Chabad credit for a great resource if you want a wide selection of free Hebrew Haggadahs.  
Download Hebrew Haggadahs here.

My new Haggadah is not free - but it is really fantastic!

I thought you might be interested in this new for 2017 reprint of a classic haggadah with a foreword that I added - available from Amazon. - Tzvee

The Polychrome Historical Haggadah  by Jacob Freedman et al.   Learn more

Library Makes 1,000 Rare Haggadahs Available Free Online

An illustration of King David praising G-d in a rare Haggadah published in 1710 in Frankfurt am Maine, Germany

By Dovid Zaklikowski

The central Chabad-Lubavitch library in New York made 1,000 Passover Haggadahs, many of them rare, available on the Internet for browsing by the public. The Agudas Chasidei Chabad Library has one of the largest collections of the Passover orders of service in the world.

Housed at the Lubavitch World Headquarters, the library's Haggadah collection began years ago with a nucleus of some 400 volumes purchased on behalf of the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, by renowned collector and bibliographer Shmuel Wiener in 1924.

The posting at ChabadLibraryBooks.com represents close to half of the library's total Haggadah collection and is part of chief librarian Rabbi Sholom Ber Levine's goal of making the library more accessible to the public. All told, the library possesses more than 2,200 editions of the Haggadah. Although the rarest of the books, all handwritten, are not yet available, Levine is looking for ways to post them next year. Hebrew Books, directed by Chaim Rosenberg, collaborated on the project.

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Who wrote the Haggadah?

They say that the Seder is the most widely observed Jewish ritual. Assuming that is true, the Haggadah then is a near universally used Jewish book. It also is one of the most frequently published Jewish books in history, surpassed perhaps only by the Hebrew Bible and the Siddur and Machzor Prayer books.

Now it behooves me to ask of this book, who wrote the Haggadah?

Can we take Tainted Charity? Who wrote the Haggadah? My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy - Your Talmudic Advice Column for April 2019

Can we take Tainted Charity? 

Who wrote the Haggadah? 

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy - Your Talmudic Advice Column for April 2019

Dear Rabbi,

I am the head administrator at a major Jewish nonprofit in New Jersey. One of our biggest donors has been charged with a crime. We want to remove his name from our building now. Do we need to wait and see if he is convicted or exonerated? It could be years and we do not want to suffer embarrassment in the interim.

Disheartened in New Jersey

Dear Disheartened,

You do not need to wait. But you may not need to disown your disgraced donor, even when he (or she) is convicted and sent to prison. Check with your New Jersey colleagues in the nonprofit sector about the local customs in this muddy swamp. It seems obvious that where big money is involved, creative solutions abound.

For instance, I can recall several years back, when a big-named donor of a New Jersey Jewish school was sent to prison. It was true that as a result, his name was removed from the school. But resourcefully, the school put up his mother’s name as the replacement. And the family continued supporting its cause.

The Most Expensive Haggadah is the Sarajevo Haggadah

What is the most expensive Haggadah in the world?

The answer is -- the rare illuminated Sarajevo Haggadah which also is said to be one of the most beautiful manuscripts and one of the most valuable books in existence.

My facsimile of The Sarajevo Haggadah that I bought a while back is awesome.

If you are at all interested in this Haggadah, you must read People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.

Wikipedia explains:

The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is the oldest Sephardic Haggadah in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350. The Haggadah is presently owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, where it is on permanent display.

The Sarajevo Haggadah is handwritten on bleached calfskin and illuminated in copper and gold. It opens with 34 pages of illustrations of key scenes in the Bible from creation through the death of Moses. Its pages are stained with wine, evidence that it was used at many Passover Seders. It is considered to be the most beautiful illuminated Jewish manuscript in existence and one of the most valuable books in the world. In 1991 it was appraised at US $700 million....more...

You can view quite a few pages from the Sarajevo Haggadah here.  

Or you can purchase a facsimile edition of your own here: The Sarajevo Haggadah.


More posts about the Haggadah...

YouTube: Unboxing my new CreateSpace book, The Polychrome Historical Haggadah

Enjoy!

Way to go, Tzvee! Your video is now on YouTube. Unboxing my new CreateSpace book, The Polychrome Historical Haggadah

Sample pages

My Jewish Standard Talmudic Advice Column for March 2018: Fighter for Gun Controls and Haggadah Hunters

My Jewish Standard Talmudic Advice Column for March 2018:
Fighter for Gun Controls and Haggadah Hunter

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

I’m a high school student who was devastated by the recent deadly shootings in a Florida school and by so many other recent awful acts of gun violence in our country.

My friends and I are organizing activities to counter this terrible trend, but I’m afraid we will not succeed against the fierce tide of gun proponents.

What should we do to get some real traction and lasting results?

Fighter for firearms controls in Fair Lawn

Dear Fighter,

I am awed by the response of students after the latest tragic gun carnage in Florida. I especially was floored by the young speaker who made her displeasure with politicians clear, saying on TV, among other strong sentiments, “We call B.S.! Shame on you!”

How awful that our innocent schools and holy houses of worship have suffered violent attacks that resulted in multiple deaths. How utterly sad that venues of merry entertainment were attacked by perverse maniacs. What a dreadful day and age we live in.

I think about this contrast. Back in the 1950s my dad sat working during the day in his quiet rabbi’s study in the Park East Synagogue in New York City on East 67th Street, right next door to the local police precinct. The shul entrance was always unlocked as he worked alone in the big empty shul building.

Ten Tips for a Better Seder - with Trump Tips Added

It's a great performance. A dramatic Off-Broadway revue.

I have always had fun directing the reading of the Haggadah at the Seder. I learned this dramatic art as a child by watching my father (Rabbi Zev Zahavy) masterfully conduct the performance of the communal synagogue Seders as the rabbi of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. He did it right and authentic and dramatic.

So in the spirit of the season of rebirth and freedom, let me offer you ten tips for your seder extravaganza - this year we must add Trump Tips.

Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah - a Star of the Seder

Passover is here once again. We will soon open our Haggadahs and find the familiar prologue stories to the Maggid section of the Seder. And soon we all will wonder, Who was Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah?

Maggid is literally the "telling" of the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the event that we celebrate in our evening of dramatic activity. My teacher Rabbi Soloveitchik always underscored that this is not a mere retelling of a story. The Maggid is an archetypal session of rabbinic Torah study. The major section that we read is a classic rabbinic midrash that expounds upon a few condensed biblical verses. This is the exodus story as told by the rabbis, not by the Torah of Moses. To make the point unmistakably clear, the rabbis go so far as to omit the mention of Moses altogether in the Haggadah.

The rabbis do mention several of their own rabbis by name and top among them is my favorite, Eleazar ben Azariah. He was a second century rabbi in Israel who also held the highest political position in his community.

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Column for July 2015: Holocaust Conceit

Dear Rabbi,

A member of our community has been saying for years that he is Holocaust survivor. In fact he did live in Hungary during the Holocaust, but by all accounts, he was not subjected to any special duress during that period. It seems like this person is engaging in a form of bragging and seeks a special status, even sympathy. Why would someone do that? And what should I do about it?

Befuddled in Bergenfield

Dear Befuddled,

I’ll answer your question in two parts. First the factual. The suffering for Jews during the war was less severe in Hungary than in other parts of Europe. It is true that Germany did not occupy Hungary until 1944, late in the war. During the war, however, many Hungarian Jews suffered deprivation, starvation, humiliation, and other atrocities. Every Jew in Europe during WWII suffered trauma, whether they were in concentration camps, hidden, or partisans in the forest. Even those who escaped direct attack might have been traumatized by the loss of loved ones.

The Jews in Hungary were decimated at the end of the war. As many as 450,000 or more Jews were deported to concentration camps, and anti-Semitic laws were enacted. So as a matter of fact, a person living in Budapest through the war can call him or herself a survivor of evil Nazi rule, if that’s what he wants to do.

The Holocaust is a sensitive subject. You have to be careful of your wording and tone when you discuss it, so you do not suggest that anyone who went through it is less of a survivor. True, some people fabricate their experiences, but that’s not widespread.

You need to accept that a wide range of factors goes into how people in that circumstance choose to describe themselves and their personal histories. On one end of the spectrum, some survivors will not speak at all, even to their families and friends, about their experiences.

Your acquaintance seems to be on the other side of the spectrum — speaking out too vocally for your taste and claiming too much about his past. American culture is quite averse to open conceit. Even when the facts and a person’s achievements make it tempting for him or her to claim special merit, it’s not a good idea. And if it is done in the wrong way, it may backfire for someone who claims attention for triumphs over adversity.

On the other hand, Jewish culture is thick with recollections of enslavements, persecutions, and sufferings. Theologians have spent great efforts dealing with the cosmic and narrative meanings of our adversities over the generations.

A familiar refrain that we recognize from the Haggadah proclaims that, “In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us.” And we have faith that God redeems us from our sufferings.

Cultural analysts suggest that the survival of the Jews as a collective is strengthened by the sharing of stories of survival in the face of barbaric enemies.

Yet some historians have decried the religious meme of the persecuted and suffering Jew as an overemphasis on the lachrymose side of history. Tearful accounts of the past, they say, deflect us from the reality that while many tragic events have occurred to us as a people, most of Jewish history is positive, not sad, unhappy, mournful, or sorrowful.

Your attention-seeking acquaintance seems to have chosen to personalize our Jewish meme and make himself into a singular symbol of past suffering. While that does not sit well with you, I suggest that you try to abide his attitude. Given the historical and cultural contexts of this situation, there is little that you can or should do about it.

Remember, stories of the past ought to make us wary of the real enemies that are lurking out there to attack us. But be balanced. Stay focused, and find meaning in your own present-day Judaism. Do not be distracted from it by others who dwell overly much on the horrors of our history.
________________________________

The Dear Rabbi column offers timely advice based on timeless Talmudic wisdom. It aspires to be equally respectful and meaningful to all varieties and denominations of Judaism. You can find it here on the first Friday of the month. Send your questions to DearRabbi@jewishmediagroup.com.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Haggadah for the Passover Seder by Rabbi M. Genack

Rabbi Menahem Genack published, The Seder Night: An Exalted Evening: The Passover Haggadah: With a Commentary Based on the Teachings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. A Haggadah in English and Hebrew (2009).

We think it's a great book and happily added it both to our collection of Haggadahs and to our library of works about the teachings of my teacher, the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. It is a handsome and professional volume, clearly written and packed with content based on the Rav's torah teachings.

Genack was known as one of the best students in the class when I was in the Rav's shiur back in college and in rabbinical school. He's pursued a career of Jewish service and teaching and continues over the decades to shine as an exemplary disciple of the Rav.

Like most books that present the Rav's torah, this one approaches the task with great reverence and nostalgia. Those are great characteristics for me and for the other several thousand students who personally sat at the feet of the Rav and gave themselves over to him as his uncritical disciples. Genack writes his condensed accounts of the Rav's lectures with the clarity that I need to hear again the Rav speaking. He was a charismatic teacher with a wealth of learning that he imparted in many ways.

In his public talks, the Rav emphasized the experiential side of Orthodox Judaism. He often spoke poetically, I think to prove two important points.

First, he wanted to prove a personal point, to show the world that he was not a cold Litvak, not just a product of the Lithuanian Yeshivas who valued only factual erudition and cold logic.

Second, he had a program in his work, to create and express a form of Orthodox Judaism that was on par with the other great religions of the world. For him that meant in his time and place and out of his training in Europe that he had to demonstrate the validity and fecundity of Orthodox Jewish religious experience. He believed that he was the Jewish Rudolph Otto or William James and that from his teachings the world would see that Orthodoxy stands proudly next to any form of the esteemed Protestant religions of the Old or New World.

The Rav had another mission in his teaching and preaching. That was to transmit the Brisker Torah, the innovative conceptual insights of his own and his family's heritage of learning. So the Rav sought to investigate the phenomenology of Orthodox Judaism, to seek out and abstract the core idea from each performance of the numerous commandments and from each recitation of the many prayers.

Book Serialization Part 13: Six People You Meet in Synagogue

Book Serialization Part 13:  Six People You Meet in Synagogue

For 2013. We present our book in serial format on our blog - God's Favorite Prayers...

Mythical Discourse

H

annah left me with this thought, reminding me that only one letter changes the “mystical” into the “mythical.” I ought to spend some time investigating the role of the mythical in the synagogue, she suggested. Maybe I will find another identifiable archetype, like Moshe the Mythic.

Hannah is quite right that I need to explore myTHical synagogue discourse, that mode of thinking, which is indeed related to—but not identical with—the mySTical.

I don’t, however, endorse Hannah’s suggestion that the mythical element in the synagogue is archetypal. I see that the mythical is a pervasive underlying mode of thought that religious Jews who attend the synagogue accept as a given. You may rightly ask, if it is such a given, then please explain already what you mean by the mythical.

I employ the term “myth” in a manner that is common in the academic study of religions, not in the way it is used in popular culture. In the latter, a myth is a fantasy, a far-fetched untruth that other people wish you to believe, often so they can deceive you or, perhaps, entertain you. By contrast, in the disciplines of the study of religions, a myth denotes a narrative that is truer than true, a story whose details are not just interesting, dramatic or entertaining. The elements of a mythic narrative bear special deep and timeless meanings for those who retell them.

The Haggadah as an American Best Seller

So we do not really care about what is inside of the New American Haggadah by Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander and two other popular writers. 

The watershed event of this Passover season was the appearance of a Haggadah in the top 100 best sellers at Amazon.com - today at # 39 and 34 days in the top 100. What the hey?

We had guests at the Seder who had the NAH but it turns out that they had no contributions to make to our table based on the contents. 

Who cares if the NAH is quirky or a masterpiece? As a result of the NAH's popularity we do expect many other popular writers and celebrities to publish Haggadahs next year. That is a good thing for Jewish books, and so that is a perfectly good result, from our perspective.

Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer

 The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

iPad Haggadah, Passover and Seder App and online Seders

Update; WSJ has a nice article about online Seders and the digitalization of Judaism: "Matzo Ball Soup, Check. iPad, Check. For Passover, Jews Try Techie Seders"

Now our review.

The Rambam says that it is a mitzvah for every Jew to write a Sefer Torah. To us it seems that there is a mitzvah lately for every Jew to write a Haggadah. We like that idea. And we have a tall pile of different editions of the Haggadah which we draw upon for the Seder.

Oh and by the way just about everyone we know is writing an iPad app or wants to write one. That is an urgent technology mitzvah of its own.

And so now this year David Kraemer, professor at JTS, is the author of a new Haggadah multimedia app for the iPad. The Haggadah includes eloquent introductions and commentary by Kraemer.

Here are some of the excellent additional features of this app. You can toggle between English and Hebrew in the Haggadah text. There is a cute Seder plate page that you can spin around - and see explanations of each item.

There is an oral commentary by Rabbi Irwin Kula, and nu, it could have been better and more insightful but we will take it for now as long as he redoes it for next year with more preparation and depth.

There is an oral commentary  that is a bit hard to find by Sharon Liberman Mintz, curator of Jewish art at The JTS Library, on the artwork. Featured are images of historical Haggadot from the Library’s collection, awesome. If you expand the art images that have a gold magnifying glass icon, you can hear her intelligent explanations.

There is an alternative “Sayder” by Amichai Lau-Lavie, rabbinical student at JTS, which is a bit hokie and uber-current, but we liked it. Your mileage may vary.

There is audio with transliteration of the Seder's most popular songs, very nice.

There are games for children, but we must critique the coloring pages. They seem to us to be too detailed for iPad coloring, even with small fingers. And we know this because? Because we have a three year old grandson who loves to color on our iPad. More user acceptance testing for next year please.

There are really bad jokes, sort of related to the Seder, and some fine recipes, which we have not tried so don't go by our generous opinion, and other features that we would discover if we had more time, we just got the app to evaluate, quite late in the season. 

David Kraemer and his crew have fulfilled with great aplomb the dual mitzvahs of writing a new Haggadah and of writing an iPad app. Bravo. Link.

Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
 The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

Henry Frisch's Maxwell House Haggadah Beats out the new one by the Trendy Novelists Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander

Our neighbor Henry Frisch (he lives mamash on our block in Teaneck) has beaten out the two hoity toity hotsy totsy novelists who have published a really strange new Haggadah this year.

According to the Times, none other than the President of the United States, Barack Obama, has considered the Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander Haggadah and has rejected it in favor of Henry's translation in the Maxwell House Haggadah.

Boo-yah to Henry. Way to go man!

Two Novelists Take on the Haggadah
By ALEX WILLIAMS
AFTER a lengthy interview with President Obama in the Oval Office two weeks ago, Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic, had one more question, and it had nothing to do with Iran.

“I know this is cheesy ...” Mr. Goldberg started, but before he could finish, the president interrupted him. “What, you have a book?” Mr. Obama asked. Turns out, Mr. Goldberg did, but “it’s not just any book,” he replied.

Mr. Goldberg reached into his briefcase and handed the president an advance copy of the “New American Haggadah,” a new translation of the Passover liturgy that was edited by Jonathan Safran Foer and contains commentary by Mr. Goldberg and other contemporary writers.

After thumbing through the sleek hardcover book, Mr. Obama looked up and asked wryly, “Does this mean that we can’t use the Maxwell House Haggadah anymore?”

Mr. Goldberg was impressed. “Way to deploy the inside-Jewish joke,” he later said. Since the 1930s, Maxwell House has printed more than 50 millions copies of its pamphlet-style version of the Haggadah. It has been the go-to choice at the Obamas’ White House Seders, though Mr. Goldberg hoped the president would consider using their version this time around.

In the end, the White House decided to stick with the Maxwell House next month...more...

Cheesy? More like dumb to report that your president rejected you. Or not, the book is the #7 best seller on Amazon! Utterly amazing all around.

Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

Top Free iPad iPhone Android Passover Apps

We got our iPad after the seder last year. So this is the first year we can explore the Passover apps. We confine this brief list to free apps plus one at .99. There are others at reasonable prices. Here they are:

No Chametz! - free - what you need to search for Chametz and a link for selling it for a fee.

iSellChametz -free - Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom - the National Synagogue - will sell you Chametz at no charge. Donations to his synagogue suggested. Find this app on the Android Market called "Sell My Chametz".

OU Passover - free - magazineware of the OU guide for Passover certified kosher foods.

Fishing - free game - not sure what it has to do with Passover - but will keep a 4 year old kid occupied for a while

PlagueAudio - free - cute sound effects for the ten plagues

iHagada .99 - Not (yet) for use by observant Jews at the seder. Has the Hebrew and English texts for the Seder.  Or try other Haggadah Android apps.

Just open iTunes or Android Market and search for "Passover" to find those and more.

Appy Passover!

Was the Maxwell House Haggadah Received by Moses at Mount Sinai?

How many wonderful articles have we read this year about the traditions and merits of the Maxwell House Haggadah. Dayyenu! Pick up one or more of these free haggadahs at your local super market.

Forward Loves Haggadot.com

The Forward reviews new haggadahs and they love the web site haggadot.com.

We are confused by the site. And we are not exactly technically illiterate. Still we cannot figure out how to assemble a haggadah on this site.

We think Google docs, for instance, offers a better platform for collaborative project of assembling a document like a custom haggadah. On our desktop or notebook, we'd use powerpoint to make a custom haggadah. Much easier. And yes, you could always make your own haggadah by photocopying whatever you wanted in it and stapling that together.

The other new haggadahs reviewed in the Forward in their bloglike-brief snippets are these:

A Passover Haggadah: Go Forth and Learn
By Rabbi David Silber
Jewish Publication Society of America, 232 pages, $18

Creating Lively Passover Seders: A Sourcebook of Engaging Tales, Texts & Activities
By David Arnow
Jewish Lights Publishing, 464 pages, $24.99

Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families
By Cokie and Steve Roberts, illustrated by Kristina Applegate-Lutes
HarperCollins, 192 pages, $19.99

The Szyk Haggadah
By Arthur Szyk, translated by Byron Sherwin
Commentary by Irvin Ungar
Abrams, 128 pages, $40

The Washington Haggadah
By Joel Ben Simeon
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 248 pages, $39.95

The Urban Family Passover Haggadah
By Arielle Mir and Tsilli Pines
Alef Betty, 64 pages, $14

The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative & Religious Imagination
By Marc Michael Epstein
Yale University Press, 344 pages, $65

Is Passover Jewish?

Is Passover Jewish. Yes and no. Jenna Joselit informs us in her (poorly titled) Forward essay, "How Religious Customs Take Their Toll" that Passover is no longer exclusively Jewish.

Christians have taken a fancy to Passover celebrations, especially to celebrating the Seder. This trend used to be condemned as "Judaizing" in the early church. Apparently in the modern American pluralistic context, curiosity rules. Few Christian leaders fear that mass conversions to Judaism will follow a dinner started with the eating of matzah and horseradish.

As Joselit puts it:

...More pronounced by far is the frequency with which this millennial Judaic phenomenon has appeared over the course of the past decade or so within avowedly Christian — and largely evangelical — contexts. I have in mind here the Holy Land Experience, a religious theme park in Orlando, Fla., where, day in and day out, visitors in shorts queue up in front of the Shofar Auditorium to see the “Passover Seder Presentation.”

The New Maxwell House Haggadah Has a Teaneck Connection

Our block, Milford Terrace in Teaneck, is a talented block boasting artists, doctors, nurses, rabbis, lawyers, teachers, professors, engineers, businesspersons and more.

One of our neighbors has written a new translation for the most classic Haggadah of all time - the Maxwell House haggadah.

The Jewish Week has covered this new edition with a lovely feature story, "Good To The Last Dayenu: Iconic Maxwell House Haggadah gets a modern makeover. New cover, new contents: Revised Maxwell House Haggadah is available for seders next month."

It's a good translation. We like the new design and layout.

And the Haggadah is free, compliments of the coffee company, at your local supermarket.

Congratulations neighbor on your achievement. Yasher Koach.