THE METHODOLOGY
The first step toward understanding anything thought or said, from a comedy routine to a user’s guide, is always the same. It is to get one question right: What is its genre? The genre of this book is a guidebook. It is a guidebook to the Haggadah—which is the book we use to conduct the Pesach (or Passover) Seder. But the Haggadah, as we’ll see, is not simply a holiday manual. It is the Greatest Hits of Jewish Thought. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to guide the reader through the Haggadah, showing the wisdom, insights, and highly practical guidance within every passage.
The establishment of the genre answers two questions about this book. First, when should this book be read? The answer: Anytime one is seeking what the Haggadah provides—the way to live a happier, more fulfilling, and better life. Just as a book about the animating ideas behind America’s founding might be especially appreciated around July 4 but can be enjoyed anytime, this book will have special resonance at Pesach but is for all seasons.
Second, how should this book be experienced? It should be used—both to enable Jewish ideas and principles to enrich one’s life and to make one’s Seder what it should be: the most interesting, inspiring, and instructive night of the year. It is a book that can be, but by no means needs to be, read all the way through. A reader should feel comfortable opening to a chapter that seems like it might speak to her at that moment, and read only it. A Seder leader should, realizing that even the most robust Seder can only address a fraction of the topics enabled by the Haggadah, pick five or maybe ten of the ideas of this book and focus on them.
One of the teachings derived from the Haggadah, which will surface throughout this book, is that there can be multiple interpretations of the same thing that are all different, each true, none contradictory. I have applied this lesson in the writing and structure of the book. Particularly for a book as vast as the Haggadah, there are numerous—perhaps countless—ways to approach it effectively. I had to pick one. It is by no means the only way.
This book is divided into three sections. The first is about the background of the Pesach celebration and the Haggadah that is its animating text. This section covers four concepts. First, what Pesach is for the Jewish people. Second, what the Haggadah is for the Jewish people. Third, the purpose of Pesach and the Haggadah for God. Fourth, how God and his greatest of all prophets, Moses, decided to implement the vision that Pesach embodies.
The second section of this book is about the preparation for the Pesach Seder. It might seem odd that preparation should warrant such extensive attention. But the preparation for the Pesach celebration is, as prescribed in the Torah and done in Jewish homes today, so detailed, so meaningful, and so important that it is not really preparation at all. It is part of the event.
The third section of this book is about the Haggadah. With the exception of the last chapter, it will focus entirely on the Maggid (Telling) section of the Haggadah. This is the section of the Haggadah that contains the parts that are familiar to all Seder-goers—the Four Questions, the Four Sons, the song “Dayenu,” and much more. But that is not why most of this book is about Maggid. Maggid is the part of the Haggadah that is directly responsive to the discussion and directives in Exodus 12 and 13. That alone earned the focus in this book.
This Maggid section constitutes most of this book. Each chapter discusses a passage in the Haggadah (which is quoted at the top of the chapter) or a theme raised directly by two or three passages. The Haggadah I used is the ArtScroll. Any variations from mainstream Haggadot will be small—so the reader can follow along with any Haggadah she has. I also used the ArtScroll edition for most of the biblical translations.
Readers may, and hopefully will, identify important aspects of the Haggadah and the Pesach holiday that are not mentioned in this book. This identification will lead thoughtful and engaged readers to ask: “Why isn’t this passage or that idea—which I find interesting, instructive, or memorable—included?” There will be different specific answers, depending on the question. But there is one general answer: This book is incomplete.
This seems to be the inevitable state of a book about the Haggadah. Every time—every single time—that I thought I concluded anything related to the Haggadah, I realized that I had just generated more questions. Every “discovery” turned out to open several new avenues of inquiry. This means, practically, that this book could never, in any meaningful sense, be complete. One of the lessons I learned in writing this book is that this state of incompletion describes any genuinely Jewish experience. This phenomenon, as applied to the Haggadah itself, will be explored in the chapter “The Unfinished.”
Uses of language often embed a political, philosophical, or religious orientation inside a word choice. This is not the case with regard to my non-capitalization of the pronoun “he” when referring to God. This is simply in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style. It is the case in this book in at least four instances. First, the term I use to describe the desert people whom God freed from Egypt is Jews. An argument could be made for calling us, at the time of the Exodus, Hebrews or Israelites. But we are named after the biblical character Judah, who lived hundreds of years before the Exodus. Moreover, one of the main purposes of the Pesach holiday is for Jews today to identify completely and even literally with our biblical ancestors. Calling us all by the same name—Jews—seems to be the best way to honor that commitment.
Second: I have used the term Jew hatred instead of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is a term that was invented by nineteenth-century German pseudo-scientific race theorists who believed in the inferiority of the “Semitic” race (of which Jews were a part). According to the philologist Jonathan Hess, the term was used to distinguish “modern” forms of Jew hatred from previous forms. “Anti-Semitism” quickly became an expression that encompassed all forms of Jew hatred.1
The problems with the term “anti-Semitism” derive from its bizarre origin. First, as we’ll see, there is remarkable consistency in the philosophy of Jew hatred from its very beginning to the present time. Second, Jew haters today routinely say that they are not “anti-Semitic” because this or that group they like is also Semitic.
The term that most clearly, honestly, and comprehensively describes antagonism against Jews is “Jew hatred”— and so that is what I use in this book.
Third: I use the terms “we” and “us” throughout the book. One of the lessons of Pesach is that the Jews are one people, through time and across geography, with no history (as defined as a chronicle of what happened to others in the past) but with a completely shared experience. I think that is correct. Accordingly, it would not be right to refer to Jews enslaved in Egypt as “they.” As we’ll see, the Haggadah places each Jew there. The Pesach spirit and message guide me, therefore, to an enthusiastic “me” and “us.”
Copyright © 2021 by Mark Gerson