Poet­ry

Mishkan HaSeder: A Passover Haggadah 

Rab­bi Hara Per­son, Jes­si­ca Green­baum (edi­tor)

  • Review
By – March 10, 2021

Mishkan HaSeder is the newest pub­li­ca­tion of the CCAR Press Mishkan series of litur­gi­cal texts. It fol­lows the for­mat of pair­ing litur­gi­cal text and poet­ry adopt­ed by the Mishkan series. As Rab­bi Hara Per­son shares in her intro­duc­tion, it became clear that we need­ed a new Hag­gadah to add to our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion, one using the mod­el already devel­oped in our oth­er litur­gi­cal publications…with the famil­iar Hag­gadah litur­gy on the right side and poet­ry on the left, again design­ing a con­ver­sa­tion between the his­toric text of the Hag­gadah and poems deal­ing with sim­i­lar themes or imagery.” The inter­play between poet­ry and litur­gy is height­ened by the artist Tobi Kahn. The tra­di­tion­al litur­gy of the Hag­gadah is adapt­ed, expand­ed, and inter­pret­ed for a mod­ern audi­ence to build a clos­er con­nec­tion and deep­er under­stand­ing to the themes of Passover. The text also offers a guid­ed expe­ri­ence for par­tic­i­pants, open­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty for greater inter­ac­tiv­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion. Mishkan HaSeder is beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed and visu­al­ly appeal­ing. It is best suit­ed for an adult audi­ence that is respon­sive to the writ­ten word and sen­si­tive to the inter­play between lan­guage and the visu­al arts.

This is part of the Passover 5781/2021 Hag­gadah Roundup.

Jonathan Fass is the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Edu­ca­tion­al Tech­nol­o­gy and Strat­e­gy at The Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion Project of New York.

Discussion Questions