With thousands of versions of the Passover Haggadah in existence, it's fair to ask whether we need yet another one to narrate the familiar story of the Jewish people's exodus from Egypt. Even a cursory perusal of the striking New American Haggadah created by Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander provides an enthusiastic affirmative answer to that question.
As Foer puts it in his introduction, the Passover seder is not meant to be a dry recitation of distant historic events. Instead, the essence of the ritual is to make the ancient story come alive for the participants in a "radical act of empathy." To help achieve that goal, in addition to Englander's fresh translation of the traditional narrative, at key points in its text the New American Haggadah delivers concise, lively commentaries by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, Jewish scholar Nathaniel Deutsch, philosopher/novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and even Lemony Snicket.
Among the most distinctive features of the book is the striking design of Israeli artist Oded Ezer. The Hebrew calligraphy that graces the book subtly shifts throughout, a "graphic record of Jewish history" corresponding to the style prevalent at each era, noted in Mia Sara Bruch's timeline of more than 3,200 years of Jewish life running along the top margins of each page.
Foer and Englander's handsome work is unlikely to replace the proliferation of wine-stained Haggadot that will be thumbed lovingly when families gather around the Seder table. But it should find its way into many Jewish homes, there to become a cherished heirloom for generations to come. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer