I have led many seders using a traditional Haggadah. We would just recite the Haggadah at the seder and put the books away until Passover of the following year. And then one year, after Passover, I read the Haggadah in earnest. I realized that the traditional Haggadah didn’t tell the Passover story very well, that big chunks of the story were missing, that much of the time we had no understanding of what we were reading, and that, for literally decades, we had been doing a rote recitation with little meaning. It was because of that realization that I decided to write my Haggadah.
I wrote...
The Passover Story Haggadah: A New Narrative for a Modern Seder
The Passover Story Haggadah is a traditional Haggadah that is easy to understand, regardless of your background, knowledge, or faith. It showcases a riveting, straightforward narrative of the Passover story in English, based on the story told in the Five Books of Moses / Pentateuch / Torah. The narrative replaces the sometimes opaque and puzzling presentation of the story in traditional Haggadahs. It’s easy to follow, and it includes important events that are not recounted in traditional Haggadahs.
At the same time, this Haggadah preserves the familiar seder rituals in Hebrew and English. It’s accessible while still being overall traditional.
The venerable Goldberg Haggadah is a wonderful example of a traditional Haggadah. I led seders using it for many years. The translation is very accessible, easy for all participants to read. The book has a great cover, both front and back, which normally wouldn’t be important in a book recommendation, but there is something almost magical about this cover – it just gives the feeling that you’re going to have a wonderful seder. The interior is nicely designed, with clear delineation of paragraphs, lots of white space, attractive fonts in Hebrew and English, and simple but expressive illustrations, all of which are important for a book that will be recited out loud.
Passover Haggadah: A New English Translation and Instructions for the Seder, New Revised Edition It includes the full text and translation, plus instructions, notes and an introduction. Convenient and ideal for groups.
The Steinsaltz Haggadah is a traditional Haggadah with a traditional translation, but what makes it shine are the explanations. The traditional Haggadah is in many respects a difficult book – much of it is hard to understand as is. Rabbi Steinsaltz provides explanations that bring some degree of clarity to these difficult passages. In addition, Rabbi Steinsaltz provides marvelous explanations of the Psalms of Praise recited at the seder and on Jewish holidays. I’ve recited these psalms many times over many years, and Rabbi Steinsaltz explains them in a way that I’ve never seen. When I study Talmud, I use the Steinsaltz translation, because in both the Talmud and the Haggadah, the explanations are spectacularly clear.
In this user-friendly Haggada, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz employs his renowned pedagogical skill and insight to explain the texts and rituals of the Seder night, their background and inner meaning. Divided into a clear, concise commentary and thought-provoking expansions, this is a Seder user's manual you have been waiting for.
The Scholar’s Haggadah provides Ashkenazik, Sephardic, and Yemenite versions of the Haggadah. The versions for the three groups are shown together for easy comparison. And then more than half of the book is devoted to the examination of these differences. This is a complete Haggadah, but it’s not really suitable for a seder. It is, primarily, an academic work. But it’s fascinating. I did not know, until I read The Scholar’s Haggadah, that the rituals and texts for seders are different between these groups. I used this in my book by including beautiful and highly relevant Yemenite Haggadah text that none of my readers will have ever seen.
In this unprecedented masterwork, The Scholar's Haggadah: Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Oriental Versions, Heinrich Guggenheimer presents the first Haggadah to treat the texts of all Jewish groups on an equal footing and to use their divergences and concurrences as a key to the history of the text and an understanding of its development. The Seder (the ceremony of the Passover night) is one of the most universally celebrated rituals among Jewish families, for what it commemorates-Jewish freedom from bondage-is the glue that bonds all Jews together, traditional and modern, Ashkenazic and Sephardic alike. In the Book of Exodus the Jewish people…
The Union Haggadah of 1923 was the Haggadah of the American Reform movement. It’s non-traditional. Traditional Haggadahs tell the Passover story by analyzing Deuteronomy 26:5-8 homiletically, word by word or phrase by phrase, which makes for a choppy presentation. And some of the analysis is obscure. The Union Haggadah just quotes the bible in a narrative format, similar to what I have done in my book. In addition, there is an informative discussion of the origins of the Passover holiday that would be considered heresy among Jews who are not in the Reform movement. Since I was not raised Reform, I didn’t know of this important idea until late in my life, and when I did learn it, it made total sense.
Excerpt from The Union Haggadah: Home Service for the Passover
The assignment to the child Of a prominent part in the Seder service is in consonance with the biblical ordinance: And thou shalt tell thy son in that day (ex. 'xiii: The visible symbols, the living word Of instruction, and the ceremonial acts, are sure to stimulate religious feeling. Parent and child are thus brought into a union of warm religious sympathy, which is all the more indissoluble because strengthened by the ties of natural affection. Their souls are fired with the love of liberty, and their hearts are roused…
One huge reason to recommend the Maxwell House Haggadah is that you can get it at your grocery store for free. It’s small, easy to handle, in a pamphlet binding. The interior layout is beautifully simple, with paragraph blocks of text, uniformly spaced, all in the same font, with no flourishes, not even indentation. The translation is crisp and clean, notable that it’s non-gendered. But for me the major appeal is that it reminds me of my childhood, when my brother, my cousins, and I found it hilarious that our Haggadah had the Maxwell House logo, “Good To The Last Drop,” the image of the coffee cup with the last drop, and ads for Maxwell House. This was even better because our parents and grandparents saw nothing weird about this.
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of citations and interviews with more than 250 key protagonists, experts, and witnesses.
So far, the book is the main -- and only -- antidote to a slew of early partisan “Benghazi” polemics, and the first to put the attack in its longer term historical, political, and social context. If you want to understand some of the events that have shaped present-day America, from political polarization and the election of Donald Trump, to January 6, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russian expansionism, and the current Israel-Hamas war, I argue, you need to understand some of the twists and turns of America's most infamous "non-scandal, scandal.”
I was in Benghazi well before, during, and after the attack as a US diplomat and co-director of a medical NGO. I have written three books, and have been a contributor to The NYT, Foreign Affairs, Forbes, Salon, The Financial Times, Newsweek, and others.
On September 11, 2012, Al Qaeda proxies attacked and set fire to the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing a US Ambassador and three other Americans. The attack launched one of the longest and most consequential 'scandals' in US history, only to disappear from public view once its political value was spent.
Written in a highly engaging narrative style by one of a few Western experts on Libya, and decidely non-partisan, Benghazi!: A New History is the first to provide the full context for an event that divided, incited, and baffled most of America for more than three years, while silently reshaping…
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