Reviews
Product Description A guide to help you invigorate your Seder, create lively discussions, and make personal connections with the Exodus story today. For many people, the act of simply reading the Haggadah no longer fulfills the Passover Seder's purpose: to help you feel as if you personally had gone out of Egypt. Too often, the ritual meal has become predictable, boring, and uninspiring. Creating Lively Passover Seders is an innovative, interactive guide to help encourage fresh perspectives and lively dialogue. This intriguing Haggadah companion offers thematic discussion topics, text study ideas, activities, and readings that come alive in the traditional group setting of the Passover Seder. Each activity and discussion idea aims to: - Deepen your understanding of the Haggadah - Provide new opportunities for engaging the themes of the Passover festival, including interactive readings and bibliodrama - Develop familiarity with the Exodus story, as well as the life and times of the people who shaped the development of the Haggadah Reliving the Exodus is not about remembering an event long ago, but about participating in a conversation that provides hope and strength for the struggle to make tomorrow a brighter day. With this complete resource, you can create more meaningful encounters with Jewish values, traditions, and texts that lead well beyond the Seder itself., Product Description A guide to help you invigorate your Seder, create lively discussions, and make personal connections with the Exodus story today. For many people, the act of simply reading the Haggadah no longer fulfills the Passover Seder's purpose: to help you feel as if you personally had gone out of Egypt. Too often, the ritual meal has become predictable, boring, and uninspiring. Creating Lively Passover Seders is an innovative, interactive guide to help encourage fresh perspectives and lively dialogue. This intriguing Haggadah companion offers thematic discussion topics, text study ideas, activities, and readings that come alive in the traditional group setting of the Passover Seder. Each activity and discussion idea aims to: * Deepen your understanding of the Haggadah * Provide new opportunities for engaging the themes of the Passover festival, including interactive readings and bibliodrama * Develop familiarity with the Exodus story, as well as the life and times of the people who shaped the development of the Haggadah Reliving the Exodus is not about remembering an event long ago, but about participating in a conversation that provides hope and strength for the struggle to make tomorrow a brighter day. With this complete resource, you can create more meaningful encounters with Jewish values, traditions and texts that lead well beyond the Seder itself., Product Description A guide to help you invigorate your Seder, create lively discussions, and make personal connections with the Exodus story today. For many people, the act of simply reading the Haggadah no longer fulfills the Passover Seder's purpose: to help you feel as if you personally had gone out of Egypt. Too often, the ritual meal has become predictable, boring, and uninspiring. Creating Lively Passover Seders is an innovative, interactive guide to help encourage fresh perspectives and lively dialogue. This intriguing Haggadah companion offers thematic discussion topics, text study ideas, activities, and readings that come alive in the traditional group setting of the Passover Seder. Each activity and discussion idea aims to: * Deepen your understanding of the Haggadah * Provide new opportunities for engaging the themes of the Passover festival, including interactive readings and bibliodrama * Develop familiarity with the Exodus story, as well as the life and times of the people who shaped the development of the Haggadah Reliving the Exodus is not about remembering an event long ago, but about participating in a conversation that provides hope and strength for the struggle to make tomorrow a brighter day. With this complete resource, you can create more meaningful encounters with Jewish values, traditions, and texts that lead well beyond the Seder itself., "David Arnow has written the afikomen of Seder books: An ingenious synthesis of history, legend, law, and spirituality (un)leavened with practically helpful, politically important, and psychologically sophisticated suggestions on how to transform your meal into a true celebration of asking and learning. This book belongs next to every seder plate." --Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, Emanu-El Scholar at Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco; author, The Way Into Jewish Mystical Tradition "This richly informative and inspiring book is a treasure for all those seeking to create a Seder that is alive with questions that matter." --Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, coeditor, The Women's Passover Companion "What is most enjoyable is the connection between the ancient and the contemporary, the timely and timeless quality of our eternal texts which David Arnow has masterfully managed to bring to our attention. Will serve as a marvelous companion piece to the Passover Haggadah and can be referred to year after year." --Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, chancellor, Ohr Torah Stone Institutions of Israel "A deeply enriched and enriching Seder awaits those who use [this] comprehensive sourcebook. [Its] chapter on women of the Exodus is alone worth the cover price." --Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author, Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America "The book everyone who has to lead or attend a Seder has been waiting for. Simply put: This book will ensure that Seders will be intellectually challenging, emotionally engaging, and spiritually uplifting for years to come. If we only have David Arnow's new book to guide us to creating lively Passover Seders, Dayyenu--it would be enough!" --Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership; coeditor, The Book of Jewish Sacred Practices: CLAL's Guide to Everyday & Holiday Rituals & Blessings "A gift to Jewish parents and teachers who want to explore the many layers of history and interpretation in our celebration of freedom." --Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, editor, The Open Door, the Reform Haggadah "A treasure trove of lore and scholarship, insight and activities that will fascinate and enlighten readers and enrich their Seders for decades. An extraordinary array of strategies for reaching the diverse groups who gather to share the Seder experience." --Rabbi David A. Teutsch, past president, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College "A welcome support for Seder leaders everywhere. As Jewish life continues to evolve, the Seder remains a pivotal moment to transmit values, stories, and the culture of our people. This book is full of ideas, texts, and information on how to enrich the experience for all gathered at the table!." --Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael, rabbinic director, Jewish Women's Spirituality Institute, JCCs of Greater Philadelphia, Passover is coming again, and with it, the irony of liberation. What irony? That while Passover is the Jewish holiday of freedom, so many of us feel enslaved to it. The cleaning, the prohibitions, the absurd details of kosher dish soap and unkosher salt, and worst of all, the endless drone of the Haggadah, which in so many households is, as Macbeth memorably intoned, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." We've all been there: the Passover Seder that seems as long as the slavery in Egypt, complete with indecipherable Hebrew and Aramaic texts and bizarre exegesis (50 plagues! 200 plagues!), all recited in a hopeless, mindless drone. To me, the "We Don't Know Why We're Reading This, but We're Going To Read It All Anyway" Seder ritual seems deliberately designed to turn even the most inquisitive "wise child" into a contrary wicked one, a stupefied simple one and then, finally, an absent and therefore silent one. Really, there's hardly a better way to drive away your friends and children from Judaism than to mouth the meaningless syllables of a rabbinic text. The irony is that the Seder, modeled on the Greek symposium, was never meant to be about rote recitation. The text of the Haggadah is not a magical formula; it's a model for conversation, a jumping-off point, an inspiration. This is how the rabbis did it, the Haggadah says; now it's your turn. The long exegesis on the Exodus narrative is not the point; the point is for each of us to tell the story anew, embellishing as fantastically and freely as did our rabbinic forbears. There are plenty of contemporary examples of how this could work in practice, even for families with small children. In the mainstream, interactive Haggadot -- like Noam Zion and David Dishon's "A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah" (Shalom Hartman Institute, 1997) and Zion's (with Mishael Zion) more recent "A Night To Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices" (Zion Holiday Publications, 2007) -- capture perfectly the multi-vocality and pedagogical potential of the Seder ritual. Likewise, the encyclopedic "My People's Passover Haggadah" (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2007), edited by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman and David Arnow). This Haggadah brings together the traditional text and commentaries from a wide variety of viewpoints. To lead a Seder from such Haggadot takes work. (Arnow's sourcebook "Creating Lively Passover Seders"[Jewish Lights Publishing, 2004] can help there.) But the reward is worth the investment -- and the work can be divided among Seder attendees, with each taking responsibility for different parts of the evening... Present your children (and peers) with a dead, written-in-stone-and-read-in-monotone Judaism, and they will indeed follow the descent of the "four sons," a one-way journey from alienation to ignorance to cultural extinction. But dare to take the risk -- not by dressing up the Seder in "cool" clothing, but by re-examining your fundamental assumptions of why we're yoking ourselves to this text in the first place, by putting in the time and effort and, in so doing, demonstrating your own interest in the Jewish project -- and there's a chance that some of them will rise to the occasion. You do not need a doctorate or a working knowledge of Aramaic to make the Seder special, just the courage to ask more than the same four questions, and make this night a little different from the rest., Passover is coming again, and with it, the irony of liberation. What irony? That while Passover is the Jewish holiday of freedom, so many of us feel enslaved to it. The cleaning, the prohibitions, the absurd details of kosher dish soap and unkosher salt, and worst of all, the endless drone of the Haggadah, which in so many households is, as Macbeth memorably intoned, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." We've all been there: the Passover Seder that seems as long as the slavery in Egypt, complete with indecipherable Hebrew and Aramaic texts and bizarre exegesis (50 plagues! 200 plagues!), all recited in a hopeless, mindless drone. To me, the "We Don't Know Why We're Reading This, but We're Going To Read It All Anyway" Seder ritual seems deliberately designed to turn even the most inquisitive "wise child" into a contrary wicked one, a stupefied simple one and then, finally, an absent and therefore silent one. Really, there's hardly a better way to drive away your friends and children from Judaism than to mouth the meaningless syllables of a rabbinic text. The irony is that the Seder, modeled on the Greek symposium, was never meant to be about rote recitation. The text of the Haggadah is not a magical formula; it's a model for conversation, a jumping-off point, an inspiration. This is how the rabbis did it, the Haggadah says; now it's your turn. The long exegesis on the Exodus narrative is not the point; the point is for each of us to tell the story anew, embellishing as fantastically and freely as did our rabbinic forbears. There are plenty of contemporary examples of how this could work in practice, even for families with small children. In the mainstream, interactive Haggadot--like Noam Zion and David Dishon's A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah (Shalom Hartman Institute, 1997) and Zion's (with Mishael Zion) more recent A Night To Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices (Zion Holiday Publications, 2007)--capture perfectly the multi-vocality and pedagogical potential of the Seder ritual. Likewise, the encyclopedic My People's Passover Haggadah (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2007), edited by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman and David Arnow). This Haggadah brings together the traditional text and commentaries from a wide variety of viewpoints. To lead a Seder from such Haggadot takes work. (Arnow's sourcebook Creating Lively Passover Seders [Jewish Lights Publishing, 2004] can help there.) But the reward is worth the investment--and the work can be divided among Seder attendees, with each taking responsibility for different parts of the evening.... Present your children (and peers) with a dead, written-in-stone-and-read-in-monotone Judaism, and they will indeed follow the descent of the "four sons," a one-way journey from alienation to ignorance to cultural extinction. But dare to take the risk--not by dressing up the Seder in "cool" clothing, but by re-examining your fundamental assumptions of why we're yoking ourselves to this text in the first place, by putting in the time and effort and, in so doing, demonstrating your own interest in the Jewish project--and there's a chance that some of them will rise to the occasion. You do not need a doctorate or a working knowledge of Aramaic to make the Seder special, just the courage to ask more than the same four questions, and make this night a little different from the rest., Passover is coming again, and with it, the irony of liberation. What irony? That while Passover is the Jewish holiday of freedom, so many of us feel enslaved to it. The cleaning, the prohibitions, the absurd details of kosher dish soap and unkosher salt, and worst of all, the endless drone of the Haggadah, which in so many households is, as Macbeth memorably intoned, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." We've all been there: the Passover Seder that seems as long as the slavery in Egypt, complete with indecipherable Hebrew and Aramaic texts and bizarre exegesis (50 plagues! 200 plagues!), all recited in a hopeless, mindless drone. To me, the "We Don't Know Why We're Reading This, but We're Going To Read It All Anyway" Seder ritual seems deliberately designed to turn even the most inquisitive "wise child" into a contrary wicked one, a stupefied simple one and then, finally, an absent and therefore silent one. Really, there's hardly a better way to drive away your friends and children from Judaism than to mouth the meaningless syllables of a rabbinic text. The irony is that the Seder, modeled on the Greek symposium, was never meant to be about rote recitation. The text of the Haggadah is not a magical formula; it's a model for conversation, a jumping-off point, an inspiration. This is how the rabbis did it, the Haggadah says; now it's your turn. The long exegesis on the Exodus narrative is not the point; the point is for each of us to tell the story anew, embellishing as fantastically and freely as did our rabbinic forbears. There are plenty of contemporary examples of how this could work in practice, even for families with small children. In the mainstream, interactive Haggadot - like Noam Zion and David Dishon's "A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah" (Shalom Hartman Institute, 1997) and Zion's (with Mishael Zion) more recent "A Night To Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices" (Zion Holiday Publications, 2007) - capture perfectly the multi-vocality and pedagogical potential of the Seder ritual. Likewise, the encyclopedic "My People's Passover Haggadah" (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2007), edited by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman and David Arnow). This Haggadah brings together the traditional text and commentaries from a wide variety of viewpoints. To lead a Seder from such Haggadot takes work. (Arnow's sourcebook "Creating Lively Passover Seders"[Jewish Lights Publishing, 2004] can help there.) But the reward is worth the investment - and the work can be divided among Seder attendees, with each taking responsibility for different parts of the evening... Present your children (and peers) with a dead, written-in-stone-and-read-in-monotone Judaism, and they will indeed follow the descent of the "four sons," a one-way journey from alienation to ignorance to cultural extinction. But dare to take the risk - not by dressing up the Seder in "cool" clothing, but by re-examining your fundamental assumptions of why we're yoking ourselves to this text in the first place, by putting in the time and effort and, in so doing, demonstrating your own interest in the Jewish project - and there's a chance that some of them will rise to the occasion. You do not need a doctorate or a working knowledge of Aramaic to make the Seder special, just the courage to ask more than the same four questions, and make this night a little different from the rest., An innovative, interactive guide that can help encourage fresh perspectives and lively dialogue offers thematic discussion topics, text study ideas, activities and readings that come alive in the traditional group setting of the Passover seder. Original., An innovative, interactive guide that can help encouragef resh perspectivesa nd lively dialogue offers thematic discussiont opics, text study ideas, activities, and readings that come alive in the traditional group setting of the Passovers eder. Original.
