Customer Reviews

Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb

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The "liberated lamb" here is the Passover sacrifice. This Haggadah (Passover liturgy) was one of the first (if not THE first) to create a seder that focuses on vegetarianism and animal rights. The author does a nice job of examining the horrible conditions that animals live under in modern factory farms, and compares that to the oppression of slavery in Egypt. In this area, the Liberated Lamb does very well, and gives us much to think about.

However, the Haggadah fails in the same area where many such alternative liturgies fail, namely, liturgical requirements. While there can be a great deal of leeway in re-telling the Exodus story on Passover, certain elements MUST be there, or the seder ceremony is not kosher. One absolute requirement is that the celebrants must mention three things: Matzah, Maror, and Pesach. "Pesach" refers to the lamb sacrifice -- which this haggadah never mentions at all, not even to condemn it. My sense is, that Ms. Kalechovsky was so offended by the very idea of sacrificing a lamb, that she preferred to excise the idea completely. Unfortunately, that omission renders the entire seder incomplete -- if this is the only text being used. For that, I'm docking it a star.

Still, there is some very good material here. My recommendation would be to use "Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb" as a source book for supplementary readings around the seder table, but use a more traditional text to actually lead the seder itself.

Unfortunately, I found this haggadah to be too pedantic. The philosophical/ethicial reasons for being vegetarian were discussed in a very grim and uncomfortably vivid way. I purchased this for my cousin, who is a 15 year old vegetarian in the hopes that it might help her feel more connected to and included at our Passover Seder. Instead, because I found the haggadah upsetting, I didn't even show it to her. The idea of a vegan/vegetarian Haggadah is a great one, and I hope that when someone else attempts to create another one that they spare us all the descriptions of agribusiness animal torture we are unfortunately already familiar with.