"An American Haggadah"--index page

         

        Passover is traditionally the most significant holiday celebrated in the Jewish home, and its high point is the "seder," the festive dinner which begins the holiday. Grown children return home to celebrate it with the rest of their family, entire cookbooks are devoted to just this occasion--but the focus of the evening has always been the "Haggadah," the formalized telling of the story of the Exodus, of our forefathers' miraculous liberation from slavery.

        The script of this "telling" (that is what "Haggadah" means) was written in Hebrew, a text nearly 2000 years old. Unfortunately, Jews in today's USA are rarely fluent in Hebrew or familiar with the scriptures cited in that text, and many feel out of touch with the story it tells. For them, "An American Haggadah" was assembled, a bridge between the old and the new.

        The World-Wide Web has made it possible to share this Haggadah across the entire world. Unfortunately, the Hebrew passages made it necessary to present the pages as image files in PDF format. You will need Acrobat Reader software to read it, and a free copy (about 5 Mb) can be downloaded from the internet; ask a search engine such as Google or Yahoo for details.

        The Haggadah was originally produced on a Macintosh computer with the "Nisus" word processor. If you own this word processor and have Hebrew fonts, I can send you by e-mail the files that contain the Haggadah. Contact me at the address on the bottom.

        Here are the files provided on this folder http://www.phy6.org/outreach/Haggadah/



    (1)     The pages of the Haggadah can be downloaded in 3 parts,
                        as the following files

     
      http://www.phy6.org/outreach/Haggadah/Hgd_pt1.pdf   with Pages 0-12 (596 Kb)
      http://www.phy6.org/outreach/Haggadah/Hgd_pt2.pdf   with Pages 12-25 (556 Kb)
      http://www.phy6.org/outreach/Haggadah/Hgd_pt3.pdf   with Pages 26-36 (500 Kb)

    As noted above, you will need Acrobat Reader software, a free program which can be downloaded from the world-wide web.

    (2)     A short Introduction to this Haggadah (this file, 8 Kb)

    (3)     For a quick idea of what this Haggadah is like, the original "Nisus" file was copied as text and placed in a http://www.phy6.org/outreach/Haggadah/HagdText.htm (88 Kb), readable by any web browser. The Hebrew text is meaningless and most of it is blocked out by a dark color, but all English sections are readable.

    (4)    The ideas underlying this effort and its departures from the standard text are described in "Why is this Haggadah Different from Other Haggadoth?" (24 Kb)

    (5)     Pages 29-30 of this Haggadah contain commentary concerning Elijah and the opening of the door. Because they are entirely in English, they are also provided in a form readable on your browser, in files P29.htm (4 Kb) and P30.htm (4 Kb)

    (6)     Also included in this folder is a sermon given some years ago on "Shabbat HaGadol" (16 Kb) or "Sabbath of 'the great'," the Sabbath preceding Passover. This discussion of the holiday was later reflected in the Haggadah.

    The author wishes you a joyful and inspiring Passover celebration, and welcomes any comments and suggestions.
     

                   

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Author and Curator:   Dr. David P. Stern
     Mail to Dr.Stern:   david("at" symbol)phy6.org .

Last updated 12 August 2011