Word: haggadah
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...half a century, though, some of the rich and magical aspects of the Passover celebration have not been encouraged among the hundreds of thousands of Reform Jews in North America. Some Reform Jews used other texts, of course, but since 1923 their official Haggadah has offered a resolutely rational and somewhat wan celebration of the Seder. It held no reference, for example, to the ten plagues, because, as one Reform authority now sheepishly explains, the plagues were considered "unworthy of enlightened sensitivities." The climactic, ringing phrase "Next year in Jerusalem!" was omitted too. It seemed overly Zionist to many Reform...
This year North America's 1.1 million temple-affiliated Reform Jews have taken a giant step back into tradition. Their rabbinical body, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, has issued a new Haggadah, copiously and dramatically illustrated, that restores the old sense of ritual to the ancient celebration that begins this week. The plagues are back, though with a difference ("Our triumph is diminished by the slaughter of the foe"), and so is the closing wish for reunion in Jerusalem. The revised rite even endorses a search for the hametz, in which pieces of leavened bread are hidden...
Much of the charm of the new Haggadah comes from full-page watercolors by Artist Leonard Baskin, better known for his prints and sculpture. In a rough-hewn but softly hued departure from his other, often starker work, Baskin evokes many of the familiar Passover figures -the paschal lamb, Pharaoh, the plagues, and the prophet Elijah...
...addition to the striking art, the ancient rhythms of the Haggadah text are punctuated by a thoughtful anthology of contemporary and historical readings. Martin Buber retells a Hasidic story. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel discusses the Sabbath. Erich Fromm talks about idols, Elie Wiesel about Jewishness, and a passage from The Diary of Anne Frank touchingly describes how to be hopeful in adversity...
...restoration of traditional Passover flavor to the new Haggadah reflects a widespread new interest in ritual practices among Reform Jews (TIME, Nov. 26). But the editor of the new Haggadah, Rabbi Herbert Bronstein of Glencoe, Ill., emphasizes that the restorations are not a return to literalism. The phrase "Next year in Jerusalem," for instance, may be a "present physical longing" for many, but it "speaks also in the mode of our mystics, of the homecoming of all existence...