Blogging the Haggadah, part 3

Jews don't have a pope, or an archbishop of Canterbury (don't worry, we find other ways of generating tsuris .) And though Jonathan Sacks is a very learned man, he doesn't speak for me, or for most Jews in Britain. This absence of a religious hierarchy can be confusing for outsiders. But it also means Jews have to learn to think for ourselves, make our own choices – and be ready to defend them. The same freedom applies to the Haggadah, the book Jews use as both a text and a baedecker through the seder, the meals which mark the beginning of the Passover, the feast of unleavened bread. (If you've come in late, you can find a more complete explanation of both Passover and the Haggadah here ). Tonight is the second night of Passover. When I was growing up we usually had our first seder at home and then travelled to relatives on the second night. Tonight however we'll be at home, with my youngest asking "Why is this night different from any other night?" and the four questions which follow, and the rest of the evening devoted to providing answers (and stuffing ourselves). As the ba'al ha-seder, the leader of the proceedings, I'll have a pillow behind my back (to emphasise the luxury of freedom after the privations of slavery), and a piece of matzo, or unleavened bread, hidden under the tablecloth in front of me. This is the afikomen, from the Greek "epi komos" ("after the banquet"), meant to serve as our final course, and when I leave the table to wash my hands – one of two ritual ablutions performed during the seder – the children will steal it and hide it somewhere else. Since you can't finish the seder without eating the afikomen I will have to ransom it back from them – unless I can figure out where they've hidden it, something I've never yet managed to do. Though crass, this little drama helps to keep the younger children interested. Which is the point of much of what we do at the seder. We are enjoined to tell the story of the Exodus, how the Hebrews went down to Egypt and were made to build cities for Pharoah, how they were bitterly oppressed, and how after 400 years they were set free. The Haggadah tells this story, but not in a straightforward way. We get the drama of the 10 plagues , but we also get pages and pages of argument over, for example, whether the Egyptians were really hit with 60 plagues (because God used one finger to cause the 10 plagues, but "a strong hand", against Pharoah's army at the Red Sea). In my childhood we'd sometimes have our second seder at the home of more grimly observant relatives, who insisted on the children sitting silently while the adults read aloud the entire Haggadah, and I remember shifting uncomfortably in my seat and thinking "Surely there has to be a better way … " So when my girlfriend and I hosted our first seder many years ago in Brooklyn I decided to put together a Haggadah of my own. The order hasn't changed much over hundreds of years, but I soon discovered that like a sonnet, the fixed structure allows for endless variation. Right away I added something from my family seders: the song "Let My People Go", which my mother, a lyric soprano with a deep love of African-American spirituals, had always sung with us right after the recital of the plagues. Since Passover is also a spring festival, my girlfriend suggested George Herbert's wonderful poem " The Flower ". I also took a lot of commentary from Nahum Glatzer's relatively Orthodox Haggadah and a lot of text from Arthur Waskow 's wonderful (and distinctly unorthodox) Shalom Seders. The result was a triumph of what the French Jewish anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss called " bricolage ", an improvisation out of pre-existing materials, and what the more webbed-up among us might consider a mash-up. Anyway, it worked well enough until, reader, I married her (the Herbert-fancier), and our children's growing multitude (well, three) meant I've spent most of the past 15 years leading our seders out of a colouring book . Even after we left crayons behind the self-consciously clever, politically right-on collage I'd assembled in my 20s no longer seemed serviceable, and so for the past few years I've had an ever-increasing stack of Haggadahs at hand. Some, like Arthur Szyk's gorgeous illuminated Haggadah , first printed in the 1930s, and with the Egyptian taskmasters in Nazi uniforms, are treasures; others, like Ira Steingroot's common-sense compendium Keeping Passover are invaluable for answering the inevitable tricky question from the children. But none of them satisfy my yearning for a single volume that combines narrative punch, spiritual depth, traditional texts and enough graphic enticement to keep the kids following along. (Because the Haggadah is neither part of the Bible or, technically speaking, a prayer book, the biblical ban on graven images has long been relaxed even among the Orthodox.) And this, dear reader, is where you come in. I'm putting together a new version of the Haggadah, a kind of Haggadah Comix, and I really need your help. If you are a seder veteran, what are the parts you consider absolutely essential, and why? If you are a novice, or a non-Jew, which aspects of Passover, the Seder, or the Haggadah do you find puzzling, and would like to have explained? Finally all of you fans of the graphic novel out there: please help me find artists who can make the text new without being paralysed by piety or descending into travesty. Doubtless we'll disagree. The Haggadah, after all, is an invitation to an argument. Can the wisdom of crowds build a better Haggadah? Watch this space ...