Armchair Activists

I'm occasionally accused of being an armchair activist, which isn't really true. I'd like to think I don't really tell people how to live their lives, rather, I try to expose a bit of stupid now and then and encourage people to be slightly less-assholeish. But if a family tradition, say, making your own haggadah, works for you, then go for it.

But some dudes think this is bad. Specifically, Slate's Mark Oppenheimer. It seems the idea of so many different haggadot really puts a bee in his bonnet (or, for the yeshivish, a nit in his kippah). Why?

There are only four or five important translations of the Bible into modern English, and each generation needs at most two or three translations of Homer. We couldn't possibly need so many Haggadot—the Hebrew plural—and it's worth interrogating why we think we do.

...Theologically speaking, there's no problem with multiple Haggadot. While most of the Haggadah consists of Bible verses and traditional prayers, passages of interpretation constitute a significant portion of the text, and there's nothing sacrilegious about altering them or quarreling about them at the Seder, the Passover meal...Thus a raft of modern Haggadot (and supplements to them) have been designed to provoke disputations and appeal to different ideologies: feminist, liberationist, Zionist, humanistic, multicultural, and so forth. Many people create their own Haggadot, often with themes like "freedom" or "diversity"—there's even an open-source project to customize yours.

So what's the problem? Well, because they detract from the unity of the tradition, apparently.

Diversity within a religious tradition can be a source of strength, but it can also be a weakness. One of the inarguably great aspects of religion is how it gives communities of people shared experiences: Jews the world over know about the Haggadah's "four questions," the singing of the rousing hymn "Dayeinu," and the traditional foods on the Seder plate. Although traditions vary from region to region—and the Seder, conducted in the vernacular, thus comes in as many versions as there are languages Jews speak—there are certain common Passover rituals that most Jews will recognize.

So what? Why are these things in conflict? Not everybody does Passover the same way- go to a Sephardic seder and you'll notice qite a few differences. And I did an Italian ladino version of Dayenu last year that, while a little strange, was perfectly unobjectionable.

The question, then, is how diversified and variegated a cultural tradition can get before it loses meaning to the people who invented it.

DUH?

It's one thing to add an orange to the Seder plate, an innovation meant to honor Jewish women. But what if one family uses a Haggadah that focuses on vegetarianism, while another reads from one about Palestinian liberation?

So fucking what?

Both noble causes, to be sure—but are the families celebrating the same holiday?

Considering that both haggadot are meant to give an additional context to the overlying focus of the holiday, I'd say, YES. Giving two different drashes on the same story doesn't invalidate the central commonality. What kind of question is that?

If they're not, then when their children marry someday (after a touching courtship commenced when they were counselors at a Jewish summer camp), will they see Passover as shared cultural patrimony, something that unites them, or will they have fraught quarrels about which version of the holiday to pass on to their children?

Are you serious, Mark? The biggest problem with people celebrating different versions of the same holiday is not how it affects the larger state of Jewdom, but the fact that it creates inter-Jewish mixed marriages? Shit, why not have everybody marry their cousins and be done with it. And what prevents people from using MULTIPLE haggadot? There are TWO nights you can do seders, after all, and the holiday does come around every single year. Worrying about dueling Passover haggadot is like saying that an Ashkenazi from the US shouldn't marry an Israeli because they have conflicting fried food customs on Hanukkah and their kids might feel conflicted in the great latkes versus sufganyot debate.

All traditions splinter, and the good fragments will survive while others eventually prove ephemeral. And a Judaism that was hard and unbending would be worse than one that's too flexible.

A nice freebie. What else you got, Mark?

But there is a deeper problem, I believe, with Haggadot popping up like matzo balls in April. The diversity of Haggadot is a symptom of the unease that many Jews feel about Judaism. For some, the unease is political: Passover is a holiday about liberation, so the Haggadah has special meaning to those who feel that Judaism today is insufficiently attentive to left-wing political causes. For others, the unease is just a species of what all secular Americans feel around religious tradition, and Jews like this are always looking for a Haggadah that is "contemporary" or "relevant" enough to produce religious sentiment with a minimum of embarrassment.

Hang on, the fact that Jews are actively making Judaism meaningful and relevant to them is a bad thing because it suggests Judaism isn't meaningful and relevant to them? What the hell kind of argument is that? These people are ENGAGING with their Jewish identity and tradition. As long as they aren't making up complete horseshit and claiming it was delivered on Sinai (Kabbalah Center), where's the harm?

Many Jews think that if only they could tweak the liturgy just so (or associate the religion with enough Hollywood stars) they would feel better about Judaism.

What an inane bullcrap strawman. Seriously, Adam Sandler?

Such longings misunderstand the complex nature of religion.

Which Mark Oppenheimer, prophet from Sinai, has divined through a lifetime of talking to himself.

Liberals' desire for religion purely in service to social justice is as wrongheaded as conservatives' conception of religion as social control, and "relevance" is not the only test to apply. Religion makes some of us better people some of the time, but that's not all it's good for. You could found a religion whose core teachings included universal health care and a woman's right to choose, but it would have all the aesthetic grandeur—and durability—of the Green Party.

And now aesthetics are the marker of meaning and value? So Catholicism beats the Jains because they have nicer stuff and hats? What the hell are you talking about, Mark?

I try to work for peace, animal rights, and higher taxes, but while my Judaism supports those values, I got them from my secular mom and dad. Judaism, to me, is other things: a reminder of my grandmother when I say the mourner's prayer in her memory once a year, a closeness to my neighbors, several of whom will attend a Seder at my house. It helps me appreciate the art of Genesis, say, or Bernard Malamud. Religion is richer, and more interesting, than its implications for public policy. Passover is, too.

I'm happy that Judaism has nice cultural implications for you, Mark. I'm sure it does for millions of other Jews, too. But to suggest their Judaism isn't authentic because it involves politics or tweaking the liturgy as opposed to fond memories of Bubbe or Malamud is moronic. What makes YOUR version of cultural Judaism supreme?

The Haggadah I like best is the old Maxwell House Haggadah, filled with the "little kitschy scribbles" others find objectionable. According to Maxwell House, nearly 40 million of these handy little booklets have been distributed since 1934, when the coffee company first hit on an ingenious way to win Jewish customers' loyalty. The 2007 edition is, like all its antecedents, apolitical and middlebrow, geared for mass appeal. But it's clear and concise, and, most important, my parents and my in-laws all grew up on it.

In other words, it's the nostalgia appeal. Again, great for you, Mark, but why should everybody HAVE to use the same Haggadah? I'm unconvinced it really makes a difference. And this isn't about relevance- a giant coffee can on my Haggadah isn't very relevant to me, either- how about a little variety once in a while? If you want to use the reprint of the Haggadah your alter zeide brought with him smuggled in his colon as he fled the Cossacks from darkest Belarus, go ahead, but why knock other people's minhags? Aren't they as legitimate- and pigheadedly subjective- as your own?

What it lacks in poetry, it makes up in ubiquity. It's the Haggadah most evocative for my extended family, and there's majesty in that simple claim, a claim that no better, smarter, more beautiful edition could ever make.

Everybody's tradition was new once, Mark. If you like Maxwell House, then that's your choice. But OWN it, damn it. Don't pretend like the Maxwell House haggadah is timeless or without its own contexts, an ancient custom that miraculously appeared and was passed down from Moses or found in a cave somewhere. It's a freaking coffee company, for crying out loud, this isn't like some esoteric secret the Baal Shem Tov pulled out of his ass. In your rush to avoid being "trendy" or relevant, you're forgetting that every choice we make about what traditions, rites or rituals we follow is itself a choice- and I for one don't see what's gained by making everybody march to the beat of a single drum, or making everybody read Hebrew in the same Yiddish pronunciation (or Sephardic, for that matter!)

No, another new Haggadah won't "transform" Passover- but since when has that been the claim? And is the alternative, magically eliminating everybody else's family haggadot except for the one YOU like, somehow supposed to bring people together? Judaism is heterodox, it IS pluralistic, and ESPECIALLY when it comes to home observance- that's part of what makes us so interesting as a religious civilization and a people. Yes, part of religion is the sense of community and shared experience, but that doesn't have to be the result of some enforced uniformity. We are a people, but we're also individuals. We're families, AND we're family. That's how it's been for as long as anyone can remember, for better or worse, and that's what we've got to work with. We can't go back to a single tradition, and I for one wouldn't want to.

Mark, do what makes you happy- make your own decisions, and your own traditions- like we've all been doing for thousands of years, and with any luck, will keep doing. Just don't rain on my parade.