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Post by bloomers on Apr 3, 2012 15:36:41 GMT -5
www.amazon.com/dp/0316069868/ref=rdr_ext_tmb" Read each year around the seder table, the Haggadah recounts through prayer, song, and ritual the extraordinary story of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to wander the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land.
Now, Jonathan Safran Foer has orchestrated a new way of experiencing and understanding one of our oldest, most timeless, and sacred stories, with a new translation of the traditional text by Nathan Englander and provocative commentary by major Jewish writers and thinkers Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Nathaniel Deutsch. Ravishingly designed and illustrated by the acclaimed Israeli artist and calligrapher Oded Ezer, New American Haggadah is an utterly unique and absorbing prayer book, the first of its kind, that brings together some of the preeminent voices of our time."
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Post by Dante on Apr 3, 2012 15:58:09 GMT -5
I understand that Snicket's contributions are in his typical style; if you trail back over Google News, you can find a few references to this, if you're really interested.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Apr 3, 2012 20:29:28 GMT -5
Yes, this has been underway for a while, I think. I was unable to find the actual text of Snicket's contributions, though? Well, there's bound to be a Snicket-specific review for it eventually.
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Post by s on Apr 7, 2012 12:53:21 GMT -5
hey! so the text is arranged to have commentary from four people at various important points. here are snicket's contributions:
Kiddush
The Passover seder is conducted in an orderly fashion, with each ritual performed at a certain time, in a certain way, according to thousands of years of tradition. This is surprising, as the Jewish people do not have a history of being particularly well organized. Even God Himself often seems engaged in convolution, a phrase which here means “as if He has not quite followed His own plan.” If you look around your Passover table now, you will most certainly see the muddle and the mess of the world. There is likely a stain someplace on the tablecloth, or perhaps one of the glasses has a smudge. Soon things will be spilled. You might be sitting with people you do not know very well, or do not like very much, so your own emotional state is somewhat disordered. Nobody likes everything served at the Passover dinner, so there will be chaos within people’s palates, and the room is likely to be either too cold or too hot for someone, creating a chaos of discomfort. Perhaps there is someone who has not yet been seated, even as the seder is beginning, because they are “checking on the food,” a phrase which here means “sneaking a few bites” when they’re supposed to be participating in the ceremony.
This is as it should be. Passover celebrates freedom, and while the evening will proceed in a certain order, it is the muddle and the mess around the order that represent the freedom that everyone deserves, and that far too many people have been denied. With that in mind, why not excuse yourself, in an orderly fashion at some point in the ceremony, so that you might check on the food?
Poor Man’s Bread
It is altogether proper that matzah is called the bread of affliction, because it has been afflicted more than any other foodstuff on earth. It is born in a searing-hot oven and then completely ignored for fifty-one weeks of the year while people walk around shamelessly eating leavened bread and crackers. Then, Passover rolls around, and it is smeared with various substances, ground up into balls, and, in the morning, fried up into a counterfeit version of French toast. Everyone eats it and nobody likes it, and there’s always one last box that sits untouched in a cupboard for months afterward, lonely, broken, and utterly unloved.
Of course it is practically impossible for free and fortunate people such as ourselves to envision a life of slavery, but as an exercise in imagining our ancestors, place a large square of matzah in your mouth and eat it. Listen to the cacophonous crunches in your ears like the blows of the slavedriver’s whip. Feel the searing dryness in your mouth like the thirst of the Hebrew slaves for freedom. And then, with your mouth full of matzah, try to say the Shema, and watch the particles of oppression scatter across the table. Slavery spreads like a spray of crumbs, and it is very difficult to rid ourselves of slavery’s great moral shame, which is why, even thousands of years after the Exodus, there are so many people enslaved, and why, even weeks after Passover, there are so many matzah crumbs in the house.
Four Sons
Some scholars believe there are four kinds of parents as well. The Wise Parent is an utter bore. “Listen closely, because you are younger than I am,” says the Wise Parent, “and I will go on and on about Jewish history, based on some foggy memories of my own religious upbringing, as well as an article in a Jewish journal I have recently skimmed.” The Wise Parent must be faced with a small smile of dim interest. The Wicked Parent tries to cram the story of our liberation into a set of narrow opinions about the world. “The Lord led us out of Egypt,” the Wicked Parent says, “which is why I support a bloodthirsty foreign policy and am tired of certain types of people causing problems.” The Wicked Parent should be told in a firm voice, “With a strong hand God rescued the Jews from bondage, but it was my own clumsy hand that spilled hot soup in your lap.”
The Simple Parent does not grasp the concept of freedom. “There will be no macaroons until you eat all of your brisket,” says the Simple Parent, at a dinner honoring the liberation of oppressed peoples. “Also, stop slouching at the table.” In answer to such statements, the Wise Child will roll his eyes in the direction of the ceiling and declare, “Let my people go!”
The Parent Who Is Unable to Inquire has had too much wine, and should be excused from the table.
“And the Lord heard our voices.”
As it is written: “And God heard their wailing, and God remembered His covenant, His Abraham, His Isaac, His Jacob.”
God, who supposedly knows everything, needs to be reminded of a promise He made with our ancestors. This is disconcerting—a word which here means “cause for much argument among rabbis and peasants alike”—but not surprising. All of us have forgotten about promises we have made, even promises that are very important to us, and that are still very important to the people to whom we’ve promised them. These people may be wailing right this very minute, hoping that we remember whatever it is that we promised. Perhaps we promised to help them with something, but then the task was so dull that we put it aside. Perhaps we promised to be kind to them, but then we became interested in other people instead. Or perhaps we simply promised to keep thinking about them, but we have forgotten about these people until this very moment, because it is so much more interesting to think about ourselves and our own problems.
It is entirely possible that God, too would rather think of Himself, and His own problems. When we suspect this to be the case, Jewish tradition encourages us to wail, often in Hebrew. But we might also stop wailing for a moment and listen instead. We might think of the promises we have made and have not kept, or promises we ought to have made but didn’t, and while we’re thinking of this, we might hear the wailing of others, some of whom may be trapped beneath the floors of this very room.
Ten Plagues
It is one of the peculiarities of the Passover story that God sends ten plagues down on all of the Egyptians, not just the ones who were in favor of slavery. It is likely that there were a fair number of Egyptians who said, “I see no reason to detain these Hebrew slaves any longer than we already have,” and who nevertheless found themselves drinking blood instead of water. By the time frogs had hopped through the land, and gnats and flies had stung everything in sight, there were doubtless more Egyptians who said, “You know, I would rather do without slaves than have all of these terrible pests around,” and who still suffered from pestilence and boils. By the time the threats came from the sky—hail, locusts, and darkness—there couldn’t have been too many Egyptians who were in favor of keeping the Jews in bondage, except the stubborn Pharaoh, who only changed his mind when his own son, who by this point was probably an abolitionist—a word which here means “in favor of ending slavery if only because he was sick of plagues”—was slaughtered as part of the tenth and final plague. It is likely that the entire Egyptian nation disagreed with the Pharaoh by that time, and yet it was the entire nation that was punished.
This is not fair, and Jewish tradition has us spill ten drops from the beverage of our choice when naming the plagues, in order to remember the suffering of the Egyptians. Of course, the pain and terror of ten plagues cannot compare with a glass that is slightly less full than it was originally, but tradition dictates that these ten drops are symbolic, a word which here means “a way of expressing how sorry we are about something that happened a long time ago and was not directly our fault.” This symbolism may come in handy, so that some night at dinner you can say, “When I spilled grape juice all over your beautiful white tablecloth, it was not an accident, but my way of apologizing for various terrible things that have happened to innocent people.”
“In every generation each person must look upon himself as if he left Egypt.”
The story of Passover may seem very remote to you, as it happened thousands of years ago, when the oldest people at your seder table were very, very young, and so many of the details of the story seem somewhat old-fashioned, such as the smearing of lamb’s blood over the doorway of one’s home, which as largely been replaced by signs warning away solicitors. But in fact, the story of liberation is one that is still going on, as people all over the world are still in bondage, and we wait and wait, as the Jews in Egypt waited and waited, for the day when freedom will be spread all over the world like frosting on a well-made cake, rather than dabbed on here and there as if the baker were selfishly eating most of the frosting directly from the bowl. The story of Passover is a journey, and like most journeys, it is taking much longer than it ought to take, no matter how many times we stop and ask for directions. We must look upon ourselves as thought we, too, were among those fleeing a life of bondage in Egypt and wandering the desert for years and years, which is why we are often so tired in the evenings and cannot always explain how we got to be exactly where we are.
Afikoman
The afikoman is the hostage of the Passover seder, having been ripped from its neighboring matzah, imprisoned in an obscure part of the house, and then traded fro some ransom just so it can be split up and devoured. Decent people will not participate in this saga of kidnapping and blackmail but rather fight against these foul crimes by excusing themselves from the table during the meal to disseminate counterfeit afikomans, a phrase which here means “hiding similar pieces of matzah all over the house.” Soon everyone will have found an afikoman, and negotiations will break down in a flurry of accusations and crumbs. Another word for this state of affairs is “freedom.”
Elijah the Prophet
It is difficult not to be jealous of Elijah, who for many years held the enviable job of prophet and who now is welcomed in any civilized home, ushered in through the door and served immediate refreshment. (Consider, in comparison, the sad case of Santa Claus, a figure from a more prominent and less interesting religion, who is forced to enter homes via the chimney and must bribe the residents with gifts if he expects any kindness before returning to his home in one of the least habitable regions of the globe.)
Like many prophets, Elijah is invisible and silent, so if you are one of the people asked to go open the door for him, rather than the people who stay behind at the table to “check on the wine,” you can think up the sort of conversation you might have with Elijah and reply out loud with statements such as “What a handsome vest, Elijah!” or “Elijah, it really seems like you’ve had more than enough wine for one evening,” or even “Certainly, Elijah, I’d love to take a ride in your automobile, just let me get my coat,” and soon everyone in the house will be rushing to the door in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him.
Next Year in Jerusalem
It is very likely that you are reading this in the Diaspora, a word which here means “everywhere in the universe except Israel.” Even though Israel is designated as the Jewish homeland, most Jews live in the Diaspora, for any number of good or bad reasons. Whatever your reasons are for living in the Diaspora, to some extent Israel is still your home tonight, for when you read the story of Passover and think about the journey from slavery to freedom, you accompany those Jewish slaves on that journey, and part of their struggle stays with you, the way the heroes of any good story stay with you long after you are done reading. Their journey ends in Jerusalem, a place of freedom and safety for the Jewish people, and so we end the seder with the words “Next year in Jerusalem,” acknowledging their longing for a home and their satisfaction at finally finding one. Even if you do not believe you will celebrate Passover next year in Jerusalem, you may say these worlds and think of your own home, which I hope is one of freedom and safety, and the journeys of all the people in the world, which are often difficult and treacherous, as they try to find homes for themselves. Next year, we hope everyone in the world has freedom and safety and can celebrate holidays in a home full of fellow travelers who wish them well, just as everyone at your Passover table wishes you well, even the person you like the least. Let us be grateful for the homes we have, and hopeful for the homes of others, this year in the Diaspora, and next year in Jerusalem.
“Chad Gadya”
Someone’s father purchases a goat, and this goat starts a cavalcade of anguish and gluttony, with animals, objects, people, and supernatural beings all dragged into the all-consuming whirlpool of the song. The entire universe changes, and it is all because of one goat, and it has been this way since the beginning of time, in every story that has ever been told. In the story of Passover, for example, if Moses had not been rescued from his basket in the reeds, the Jewish people might still be slaves in Egypt, so the infant Moses can be said to be a goat. If your parents had never met, then there might be an uglier, crueler person sitting at the Passover table, instead of your own charming self, so your parents are goats. Every person in the world, and every action each person takes, is a goat, accumulating cats and dogs and staffs and fires and all of the joy and terror that makes up the stuff of the universe. You are a goat, and when you wake up in the morning, that is a goat, and eating breakfast is a goat, and all the goats over the world are goating and goating and goating, all the time wondering if the goat they are and the goats they are goating are the right goat or the wrong goat, which is why the world often seems as stubborn as a goat, as ravenous as a goat, as loud as a goat, as grumpy as a goat, as quick and jumpy and frisky and soft and woolly and horny and taily as a goat—until the world itself seems to be a goat, made up of countless other goats, and watched over by some enormous, all-seeing goat who created all this goating in its image.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Apr 7, 2012 13:45:35 GMT -5
Thanks a ton for posting those, s! So the rumors are true - Snicket is writing in his own style. It's a little less satirical more preachy than I expected, but still quite enjoyable and well written. The "Goat" passage reminded me of TGG's "lousy" passage.
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Post by Hermes on Jan 3, 2015 16:07:34 GMT -5
I recently picked up a copy of this in a bargain bookshop. One thing worth noting is that Mr Snicket's contribution is under the heading 'Playground', implying it is for children, which no doubt explains why he writes it as Snicket rather than Handler. I'm not sure if his style (with all the 'A word which here means...') quite fits the subject matter - but notice how the penultimate section, Next Year in Jerusalem, is totally serious.
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Post by gliquey on Jan 3, 2015 18:11:55 GMT -5
which no doubt explains why he writes it as Snicket rather than Handler I thought the "If your parents had never met" example sounded like it was intended for children, although it could, of course, apply to anyone. |
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