invitation for commentary: a haggadah

[psocoptera]

So I want my family to do a Seder of our own next year, on the first night, in addition to Chaos's second-night Seder. I love Chaos's Seder, but the room of strange adults is intimidating for the kids, and I felt like Junie in particular was neither participating nor comprehending to the extent of her actual ability to do so, so. I thought about reading a bunch of family-oriented haggadahs (uh, haggadot, I guess) for research, but in the end I put this together from a) Chaos's existing haggadah (which she also wants to revise, but for adults, not kids), b) the Velveteen Rabbi's haggadah, c) Wikipedia, d) my own arrogant rewriting of your sacred texts, sorry Judaism!

No, seriously, I am aware that this is a somewhat problematic project, fostering my kids' Jewish heritage while not sharing it. My own Jewish ancestors very deliberately abandoned and suppressed their Judaism, so while I would love to learn what Seder was like on Curacao in the 19th century, there is no sense in which whatever I do now has plausibly evolved from that, unlike Josh's Seders as a kid, which were directly descended (if however much changed) from the Seders of his ancestors in Belarus etc. I did elicit input from Josh and Chaos and Betsy about their general thoughts about key elements of Seders before putting this together, although they haven't seen the finished draft yet (I figured I'd collect feedback in one fell lump), and I had a whole list of goals of my own, which I will mercifully omit (but if anyone actually wants to discuss this thing with me, I would be very happy to talk about what I was thinking).

pdf of draft of Haggadah for Small Smifts

Comments

[q10.livejournal.com]

I would love to have a look at this and discuss it at some point, but that some point would be some point next month. Would that be okay?

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I don't plan to print it out until a few days before next Passover, so I figure you've got almost a year ::grin::. Well, and, after that, I should have results from the first round of user testing which should also be interesting. Seriously, I would love to hear your thoughts however far in the future we end up having that conversation(s), yay!