Customer Reviews

American Heritage Haggadah

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This hardcover Haggadah is a great addition to anyone's collection. It is in RIGHT TO LEFT format. In Hebrew text, and English translation. No transliterations. The Hebrew text is a direct copy of an actual American Haggadah from 1857. In addition to presenting a traditional haggadah, Rabbi Geffen presents stories, illustrations, and tidbits from American Jewish Passover history. He includes copies of Passover products' ads and Haggadahs that were offered by banks, butchers, soft drink companies, other beverage companies, and other commercial concerns. For example, there is a matzah baking illustration from 1858, an ad for Dr Brown's Celery Tonic from 1924, a 1935 Passover cruise ad from Cunard, a photo of Rabbi Philip Goodman conducting a seder for the U.S. Army in 1942, a photo of an Army seder aboard a Pullman train car in 1920, color photos of American seder plates, a label from a pesach wine bottle from San Francisco in 1875, a suggested seal of the United State from 1776 that showed the Hebrews crossing the Sea, a label from matzahs that are permitted to be eaten on Wheatless days (by order of an administrator named Herbert Hoover in 1918), handbills for Passover Coca Cola in the 1930's, a copy of Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge's Passover Matzah Pardon of a Jewish prisoner in 1933, and a copy of an ad for a 1921 State Bank Passover Savings club (let a savings plan free you from financial bondage). For the Four Sons, Geffen shows renderings of the four sons from haggadahs dating from 1879, 1920, 1950, 1972 (Soviet Jewry movement), and children's model seders

David Geffen's American Heritage Haggadah brings the ancient lessons of the Bible and insights of the Rabbis who formed the Hagadag into the 21st century by linking the timeless lessons of freedom with America's own beginnings and vividly teaches how the Exodus narrative inspired the founding of America. A wonderful gift for yourself or your friends who are interested in American Jewish history and sociology.