The Passover Haggadah

Passover, which begins at sundown this evening, is similar to most other Jewish holidays in being organized around a book. It is unlike Yom Kippur, however, which is concluded when the 800-page mahzor is read, mostly aloud and in a singsong chant, over twenty-four hours. At least in the Diaspora, the Passover Haggadah is read twice straight through on back-to-back nights—one time on the first night (tonight), a second time on the second night (tomorrow).

The Haggadah announces its theme about a third of the way through: “In every generation let each man look on himself as if he came forth out of Egypt.” The ideal is that the Passover seder, using the Haggadah as a dramatic script, should be a reenactment of the Exodus story. The central part of the book, then, is the maggid or retelling.

Instead of reciting the biblical narrative, though, the maggid is principally built up from Mishnaic texts. The plagues, for example, are introduced by means of a rabbinical commentary on Exodus 14.31, which expands upon them in a series of hyperboles. “How do we know that the Egyptians were struck by ten plagues in Egypt and fifty at sea?” Yossi the Galilean asks—increasing the number of plagues sixfold. “How do we know that each and every plague that God visited upon the Egyptians was equal to four more plagues?” Eliezer asks, adding another forty to the number. “How do we know that each and every plague that God visited upon the Egyptians was equal to five more plagues?” Akiva asks, boosting the total to exactly a hundred.

The Haggadah is heavily mediated by Jewish literature, in other words, creating a chain of commentators (that is, literary critics) which links the living to the rabbis and, through them, to the Israelites who escaped to freedom. At the conclusion of the seder, the linkage is extended into the future. L’shanah habaah b’Yerushalayim: “Next year in Jerusalem!” the Jews shout joyously. It is a shout that assumes an extra poignance in the current political climate.