For nearly two millenniums, the feast of Passover has been a lamp of hope in the dark night of Jewish existence. In ghetto and concentration camp, amidst pogrom or Inquisition, it has reminded Jews the world over that the Lord who led them out of Egypt would set them free again.
"Why is this night different from all other nights?" a child would ask at the Seder, the ritual meal on the first night of the week-long feast. Why the matzo? Why the bitter herbs? Then, as the family followed the rites set down in the Haggadah (literally, a "telling"), the old story would unfold: the bitter slavery under the Pharaoh and God's scourging of Egypt with plagues until the children of Israel were set free. And always, that last terrible plague, when the wrath of God slew the first-born of every Egyptian but passed over the houses of the captive Hebrews, which had been daubed with the blood of a lamb. At the end of the feast, the ancient hope would be toasted anew as the celebrants pledged reunion in the land of their fathers: "L'shanah haba-ah Birushaliyim!"—"Next year in Jerusalem!"
For half a century, though, some of the rich and magical aspects of the Passover celebration have not been encouraged among the hundreds of thousands of Reform Jews in North America. Some Reform Jews used other texts, of course, but since 1923 their official Haggadah has offered a resolutely rational and somewhat wan celebration of the Seder. It held no reference, for example, to the ten plagues, because, as one Reform authority now sheepishly explains, the plagues were considered "unworthy of enlightened sensitivities." The climactic, ringing phrase "Next year in Jerusalem!" was omitted too. It seemed overly Zionist to many Reform Jews of the time. The diligent preparations for Passover were given short shrift. Discussing the traditional pre-Seder search for hametz (the leavened, potentially leavened and leaven-tainted food that must be removed from use during Passover), the 1923 rite condescendingly described it as "a quaint ceremony ... still observed by the Orthodox Jews."
This year North America's 1.1 million temple-affiliated Reform Jews have taken a giant step back into tradition. Their rabbinical body, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, has issued a new Haggadah, copiously and dramatically illustrated, that restores the old sense of ritual to the ancient celebration that begins this week. The plagues are back, though with a difference ("Our triumph is diminished by the slaughter of the foe"), and so is the closing wish for reunion in Jerusalem. The revised rite even endorses a search for the hametz, in which pieces of leavened bread are hidden so that children can have the delight of hunting for them.
Much of the charm of the new Haggadah comes from full-page watercolors by Artist Leonard Baskin, better known for his prints and sculpture. In a rough-hewn but softly hued departure from his other, often starker work, Baskin evokes many of the familiar Passover figures —the paschal lamb, Pharaoh, the plagues, and the prophet Elijah.