"The moment you begin taking a step, you have arrived and you keep arriving each moment thereafter."
Some people see the Passover Haggadah as a dry ritual. And certainly, the way it has been used in many families, it is. But that isn’t what the Haggadah is meant to be. The history of the document itself is rich and varied, which is why there are hundreds available today in English alone.
Almost all of them comply with the decree by Rabban Gamliel, leader of the Sanhedrin in the first century, that for the ritual to have been observed correctly, the spiritual implications of the pesach, the matzah and the maror must be discussed. The ritual is a discussion, not a reading.
The Haggadah most people use is actually the recording of several discussions and judgments by rabbis on this subject from 2000 years ago, and it is simply read rather than used as a jumping off point for discussion and debate around the table. But that is not the intention. And certainly every Seder I have been to since the mid 1980s has used the Haggadah the way a Jazz musician treats a standard: there’s a structure that must be followed but there is much left open for improvisation in the moment.
This is the real tradition and it can be seen in the hundreds of Haggadot commentaries written by rabbis over the centuries. Many of these are available in English translation, and I’ve been at seders where everyone has had a different Haggadah, with different commentary so that the discussions represented a very wide range of opinions.
A phenomenon of the last 30+ years has been the themed-seder, with the ancestor of them all The Freedom Seder by Rabbi Arthur Waskow. Today There are feminist seders, peace seders, environmental seders, gay and lesbian seders. On that last example I am very well versed, having written and edited a Haggadah for an event knows as the Stonewall Seder. However, the Stonewall Seder is never used on Passover.
While I certainly understand the symbolism that connect the struggles of glbt people to the Passover seder, I prefer that to be implicit in the reading of the traditional seder story, and for people to bring their own personal stories to light around the table as they relate, whether queer or feminist, or around peace. The Stonewall Seder was written entirely for use during Pride Week, and while it echoes the Passover seder, it is very much its own thing.
So for Passover, every year since 1993, I’ve searched for texts, readings and songs to add to the traditional Haggadah, with spiritual improv to help turn what might be a rigid ritual into an opportunity for transformation. As a Jew who is also on the Buddhist path, I like to include some Buddhist texts where appropriate, but what is appropriate is of course, like anything in Judaism, up for debate.
Last year, I received a copy of the Haggadah for Jews & Buddhists in the mail from the editor/author/compiler, Elizabeth Pearce-Glassheim, for review given the title (and often the subject) of this blog. I didn’t review it last year because I wanted to see how any of it might fit in with the way I use texts, and whether there was anything in it I wanted to excerpt to create the handout I give guests along with the traditional Haggadah we read from.
There were indeed some sections I found beautiful and useful and that we used in our readings to help create a greater sense of presence and awareness . And that is how I would recommend it for use.
However, while it is well-intentioned, personally I find it overly didactic in some places and lacking in important information in others. I wouldn’t use it in place of a traditional Haggadah. Or even in place of some untraditional Haggadot that capture a deeper and richer awareness of the multiple layers of reality and ritual. That said, I am glad to have it in my library of Haggadot, along with volumes like the San Diego Women’s Haggadah, which Pearce-Glassheim acknowledges as an influence.
For those who find themselves walking both of these pathless paths, who are looking for a thought starter for the holiday — or for those who collect Haggadot as a way of following the ongoing cross-cultural discussion across the centuries — Haggadah for Jews & Buddhists would be well worth adding to the library.
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