Haggadah: A Celebration of Freedom

By Martha Shelley

Book Overview

Haggadah means "the telling." The escape from Egypt is the defining legend, the central drama of the Jews. Every nation coalesces around such an epic; its people project themselves into the story, aspire to the virtues of its heroes, and through periodic retelling or dramatization, transmit their values to the next generation. The traditional Haggadah offers a set of instructions for conducting the Passover service, interspersed with readings from the Bible, rabbinical commentaries, legends, prayers, hymns and children's songs. Written by men and addressing men, the traditional text has not historically offered much space for women to see themselves as fully involved in or spoken to by the powerful drama of human freedom articulated by the Haggadah. In Haggadah: A Celebration of Freedom, Martha Shelley brings a new vision to the traditional text.

Martha Shelley's feminist Haggadah is a model of clarity infused with poetry and beautiful language. Jewish women who have felt shut out of the traditional ceremony will savor this fresh, exquisitely sensitive interpretation of the Passover seder. -- Susan Brownmiller

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1879960532
• ISBN13: 9781879960534
• Release Date: December 1997
• Publisher: Aunt Lute Books
• Length: 58 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Celebrates freedom

I'm wondering if the previous reviewer was even reading the same book. There's nothing man-hating about it! I loved it. It's a haggadah that celebrates men, women, EVERYBODY resisting the Pharaoh, in whatever guise, and coming up out of Egypt, wherever that may be at the moment. Passionate, feminist, liberating, yes! Man-hating? no.

A haggadah for our time

This is the perfect haggadah for our seder--a truly inspired work! The poetry is clear and easy to read and the prose is poetic. _Haggadah_ reminds us of our ancestors' struggles for liberation and calls on us to resist our contemporary pharaohs.

A powerful, passionate book

Imagine a beautiful, powerful, universally relevant haggadah rooted in tradition--a socially conscious, joyfully feminist, poetic hagaddah firmly based in the original Hebrew texts. This is that book.Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays. The seder--something like a highly ritualized Thanksgiving gathering and dinner--is the celebration and retelling of the story of the exodus from Egypt. The hagaddah is the little book the participants use to follow through the steps of the seder.The seder where this hagaddah is used will keep the attention of all the participants, engaging their conscience and their emotions. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the seder's poetry, meaning, and relevance to our lives here and now.

A seder treat for "the rest of us"

I go through such a dither every Passover cutting and pasting appropriate passages from the standard-issue Haggadahs. Now Martha Shelley has done the job for me. Her poetic Haggadah steeped in Jewish, humanist, and feminist traditions is just what I've longed for. It's totally relevant and totally charming, so the kids won't fall asleep and the adults won't get bored before we get to the dinner!

A haggadah to spice up your seder

This haggadah blends feminism with a kind of liberation theology based in Judaism. Author Martha Shelley, longtime feminist activist and poet, writes not just for Jews across the theological spectrum but for non-Jews as well, drawing on the struggles of many nations to tell the Exodus tale. The book has a strong social action agenda and offers up some lofty poetry playing on themes of nature. -- from The Reporter, publication of Women's American ORT