Nearing its 80th birthday, perhaps it was time the most printed Passover haggadah in history had a major facelift.
The Maxwell House Passover Haggadah, which has had more than 50 million copies published, hit the shelves — and supermarkets — this spring featuring its first new English translation since 1934, the year it was originally printed.
Banished are the awkward “thee” and “thou,” replaced by the more conversational “you.” The Eternal One no longer “delivereth” but “delivers,” and seder participants are not invited to “eat thereof” but simply to eat.
While American Jews of the early 20th century might have accepted the original, archaic language, “it makes the haggadah more clumsy for contemporary readers,” said Elie Rosenfeld, CEO of Joseph Jacobs Advertising, which represents Maxwell House and spearheaded the new translation, which took nearly a year to complete.
“We wanted to make sure everyone who uses it feels comfortable with it,” Rosenfeld said.
The original Maxwell House Haggadah was created as a marketing tool to promote the company’s coffee, which was certified kosher in 1923. There had been controversy for years over whether coffee beans were legumes, and thus forbidden for Passover according to Ashkenazic norms, or whether they were in fact a berry — a fruit — and therefore permitted.
Marketing whiz Joseph Jacobs, founder of the ad agency, got Orthodox Rabbi Hersch Kohn to certify the coffee kosher for Passover. The publication 11 years later of the eponymous haggadah, still distributed free in supermarkets with the purchase of the coffee, cemented the dominance of Maxwell House and its haggadah at American seder tables ever since.
There have been political as well as linguistic changes. The higher power in the new haggadah isn’t a He, Lord or King, but is referred to by the gender-neutral monikers God, the Eternal and Monarch of the Universe.
The impetus for the new translation was not to address gender issues but to retell the old tale in contemporary language. Still, using gender-neutral language for God is indicated by modern theological understanding, Rosenfeld says.
The inside illustrations are more subtly rendered than in previous versions but have not changed significantly, with one exception: Instead of a young boy, a little girl is pictured asking the Four Questions.
The text is bigger to make it easier to read, and the layout is easier to navigate. But the story stays the same.
“The Jews don’t end up in Boca — they still get to the Promised Land,” Rosenfeld says.