Over the years, countless parents have asked us this question: “Where can I get a good family Haggadah?” Really, it’s weird how often this happens to us. We’ll be sitting in a public-restroom stall,1 and suddenly a head will poke under the door, and it’s almost always somebody asking where to get a good family Haggadah. Sometimes these people aren’t even Jewish. Sometimes they aren’t even parents. That’s how huge the demand is.
And with good reason. Many young Jewish people today would rather undergo amateur eyeball surgery than sit through a lengthy and boring Seder. With that in mind, we wanted to make this the most entertaining and fun Haggadah ever. We thought about putting Sudoku puzzles in it, or a helicopter-chase scene involving the Pharaoh. We even considered doing the Haggadah in the form of an app, so that younger people could go through the entire Seder without ever looking up from their phones. That’s how serious we are about engaging young people.
In the end we went with a more traditional print format. In these pages, you’ll find the Seder service accompanied by some Hebrew writing. We frankly don’t know what this writing says; for all we know it’s a Hebrew repair manual for a 1973 Westinghouse dishwasher. We just felt that there should be some Hebrew in here.
You’ll also find discussion questions and activities sprinkled throughout the book. These will make the Seder last longer, so you should ignore them. We also strongly recommend that you appoint somebody as the Seder leader, with the authority to assign reading passages and assess fines for mispronunciations, slow reading, asking too many questions, etc. The Seder leader should have a whistle approved by the Rabbinical Council of America.
However you tell the story, the important thing is that, as a family, you are carrying on the ancient Jewish tradition of sitting around a table and carrying on a tradition, followed by a soup course. It is up to you, as a Jewish person, to keep this tradition alive by passing it on to your children, so that someday they, too, will purchase this Haggadah, and our children will receive royalties.
We will close with these Hebrew words:
