This Might Be Your New Haggadah

Sometimes one thing leads to another… and you get surprised.

After posting about Jewish estrangement (and writing) the other day, I got an email from the lovely poet Erika Meitner, who also happens to be finishing her dissertation in Jewish Studies right now.

I love when the internet connects me to kindred spirits! Erika and I don’t really know each other, but we have a lot of common ground, so when she directed me to this Haggadah, I decided to have a look. After all, Passover is coming.

Now, let me be honest, and admit (while blushing) that I’m pretty devoted to my horrible New Union Haggadah (printed in like, 1923), complete with its wine-stained grey binding, a very male God, and the patriotic inclusion of “America the Beautiful”. I know it’s not politically correct, but it sounds like my grandfather to me. It smells like Passover and Baltimore, and without it I’m lost.

It’s so bad, and feels so right.

And this new Haggadah-zine, entitled, “Love and Justice in Time of War,” couldn’t be more different. But it will be useful/important/meaningful for many of you, I think. And the Jewish world needs to open up to everyone. Desperately. “The tradition” does not suffer because those who need to interpret it differently take advantage of that right.

Especially when the writing is this good. And when the tradition is left pretty much intact, used respectfully as a scaffold for innovative ideas and multiple perspectives. So I’m glad to find this new Haggadah, and happy as hell to share it with you.

The introduction goes a little like this:

We are both white, Ashkenazi middle-class folks and long-time activists/organizers. We are both queer. Micah is a tranny/alien type. Neither of us grew up in religiously observant households. Most of what we know about Jewish practice, we have learned as adults. We are both familiar with that particular frustration that can arise from not knowing about your own culture, not knowing how or what to ask. And for those of us who are also marginalized because of class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc., Jewish knowledge can be especially hard to come by…

And so this is a Haggadah that proceeds from that place. Incorporating the traditional Seder, but also the personal narratives of many kinds of people, new rituals, and a real attention to language.

I suggest you check it out, and not dismiss it before you give it a read. It really surprised me!