The most recommended passover books

I love stories peppered with Yiddish. Youngsters should know “schlep” and “chutzpah,” Right? And clever riffs on traditional tales are another favorite. Hence The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah immediately became my Passover must-read-to-the grandchild-choice. I also love to laugh and there are plenty of giggles in this book.

When Sheep, Horse, and Dog don’t help the Little Red Hen prepare for the holiday she finally gets upset but then, ever aware of the mitzvah of feeding the hungry, she gives in and invites all of them to her seder table. I must admit that after many years of preparing seders and also leading them, I’ve often felt like the Little Red Hen. “Hey, where are the helping hands here?” And, like her, I’m glad when everyone sits down to celebrate together.

This Haggadah is a Haggadah that is ideal when there are younger children at the seder. What makes the Haggadah unique are its puppets (included with the book) which need to be prepared and assembled prior to the seder. Many parts of the seder are set up as a script of a play, where parts can be given out to read. There are also original fun songs to sing. When my children were younger, I used this Haggadah with enormous success, and still have the puppets which I hope to use now with my grandchildren!

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.

This book focuses strictly on the seven feasts in Leviticus 23 as opposed to multiple types from throughout the Old Testament.

This book is also more of a devotional, with something to read each day. There are also questions to answer, which makes it more like a study guide or workbook than an actual book or devotional. With that said, the book provides a great understanding of the seven feasts and the way they each looked to Christ.

For example, most people know that Jesus is our Passover Lamb, but they would be surprised to see that the other six feasts look to him as well. You will be blessed to see how Jesus is revealed through each of them.

Meyer Levin’s memoir, In Search, ranges over the years before and after the occupation as well as the period itself. His observations are personal, often searing, and deeply affecting. He tells of Jewish G.I.s who, forbidden to fraternize with Germans, leave matzos on doorsteps of German Jewish organizations on the eve of Passover, of being snubbed by a German Jewish woman with whom he felt an instinctive connection but who found him socially inferior, and of his darkest thoughts about retribution and revenge. As the title of his memoir indicates, Levin was in search of the meaning of his Jewish identity. A few years later, his French wife gave him a copy of the French edition of The Diary of Anne Frank. Deeply moved, he was instrumental in its publication and success in the U.S.

A classic, The Carp in the Bath Tub, became one of my favorite books over fifty years ago. It speaks to me of the deep compassion children have for animals and how tradition/society is often in conflict with young sensibilities. I feel this book is not only good, but important, for it deals with big issues in a seemingly simple story.

Cohen writes the story as memoir, telling of her youth in New York in the 1930s and how she and her brother try to save the life of the carp that her mother buys a week before Passover, keeping it alive in the family bathtub, as was the tradition, in order to cook gefilte fish. She relates the realistic outcome without moralizing. That’s another reason I love this book. Today’s children and parents would have much to enjoy and much to discuss in reading “Carp”.

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. 

This Haggadah is perfect for families that want to include all of the traditional sections of the seder without spending a lot of time in discussion and study of text. Nicely illustrated and fully transliterated, the Haggadah also includes interesting facts as well as thought questions throughout. For example, the Haggadah explains that in the Ha Lachma anya section (let all who are hungry eat) early in the seder that the language of Aramaic is used. This is a reminder that when we welcome the stranger, we invite our guest in the language he or she will understand  

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.

I love Elijah stories, especially those that emerge from Eastern European tradition. But I also realize that such stories do not always speak to post-modern kids.

This particular story appeals to me specifically because it takes the underlying nature of Elijah stories—and those that are connected to the Passover seder ritual—and turns it into a totally accessible and sweet story. 

Jewish tradition teaches that we never know where Elijah may be hiding. Thus, we are instructed to show kindness to all—for it is Elijah who will herald in the messianic era—a time of peace.