Delivered: January 19, 2013 by Al Kohn
Parashat: Bo – Exodus 10:1 – 13:16
CHAPTER 13 of this Torah portion is as follows:
3 And Moses said unto the people: ‘Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the LORD brought you out from this place; there shall no leavened bread be eaten.
4 This day ye go forth in the month Abib.
5 And it shall be when the LORD shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, which He swore unto thy fathers to give thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in this month.
6 Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a feast to the LORD.
7 Unleavened bread shall be eaten throughout the seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee, in all thy borders.
8 And thou shalt tell thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that which the LORD did for me when I came forth out of Egypt.
9 And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thy hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the law of the LORD may be in thy mouth; for with a strong hand hath the LORD brought thee out of Egypt.
10 Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in its season from year to year.
The Haggadah sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. Reading the Haggadah at the Seder table is a fulfillment of the Scriptural commandment to each Jew to “tell your son” of the Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt as I just read in Exodus 13:8.
I thought you’d like to be hear about the history of the Maxwell House haggadah which I sure many of you have a copy at home .
It was in the early 1930s, during The Great Depression, that Maxwell House published its first Passover haggadah. Maxwell House was no longer a Tennessee company, Cheek Neal Coffee Co., and was part of the General Foods Inc. conglomerate. The firm wanted to increase its presence in the NYC marketplace; and the Joseph Jacobs Advertising Agency proposed an idea. Prior to this, grocers sold tea during passover to their observant Jewish customers; no coffee was certified kosher for Passover. Joseph Jacobs hired a rabbi to certify the coffee bean as a berry, and not a legume bean, and deem it kosher for Passover for Ashkenazi and other Jews. Since then, Fifty million haggadot have been printed over the past eight decades, and the Maxwell House haggadah has become as much a staple of American seders as matzah balls. In 2009, the Maxwell House haggadah was used at the White House seder.
Believe it or not, the Maxwell House haggadah has used the same English translation of the Aramaic and Hebrew that it first used in 1933. But for the 2011 edition, one million copies strong, the haggadah has a new translation that has removed some stilted English, changed the Four “Sons” to “Children,” and removed the gender of god from “He” and “King” to “God” and “Monarch.”
The Shakepearian “Thee’s” and “Thou’s” have also disappeared for greater clarity. It also places the English on the opposite page of the Hebrew, instead of on the same page as it had in the past.
Comparing past copies with the 2011 version, one sees the following changes. “Blessed art thou, Oh Eternal, King of the Universe” is now rendered “Blessed are you, our God, Monarch of the Universe.” The Hebrew font in the new version is much more readable. Yachatz, in which the graphic was of a man’s hands breaking the matzah in half, now has just a gender-free matzah slice broken in half with two lonely crumbs between the halves.
The graphic for the four questions used to be that of a father stoking his bare chin and listening to one of his two sons sing the question. A light haired daughter or wife looked on. The new version is a photo of a young well-dressed girl holding her haggadah as she prepares to recite the questions. The older versions had “Wherefore is this night distinguished from all other nights”; the updated version has “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The child who “hath no capacity to inquire” has become the child “who does not know how to inquire.”
The oldtime woodcut graphic of the ten plagues, complete with a drawing of dead cattle (or a dead cow), is now just the photo of two frogs. “Elevate the cup” has become “Raise the cup.”
The new translation took a year to complete and was done by Henry Frisch, 63, of Teaneck NJ.
This year the first night of Passover will be on Monday, March 25th. I wish all of you and your family and friends a joyous and blessed Pesach at your seders. May you all have interesting seders, a million matzo balls and more than delicious gefilte fish.
Shabbat Shalom!