order in the court

[watersword]

I'm working on this year's Haggadah, and finding it difficult for a variety of reasons.

1. I thought I'd try moving the core & supplementary texts into Scrivener and assembling them in a collection, and that was super frustrating. I think I'm pretty good at Scrivener, and I still think this is a conceptually good approach, it's kind of how I approach poetry submissions, but it did not feel like I had made my life easier either now nor in the future, so now I'm back in Word, which I object to on pure principle, but I might as well take advantage of Past Me's hard work in the Styles pane.
2. I'm going to a friend's Seder this year instead of hosting, and I promised to send her a draft ahead of time so we can make sure it works for her and this is giving me weird performance anxiety.
3. I have so much poetry I could include and I can't decide what to cut even though I suspect that S.'s other guests will not be thrilled by the non-traditional content.

   a. Some of the poetry, e.g., Marge Piercy's "The Cup of Eliyahu", is longer than I actually want, especially that late in the Haggadah, but how do I excerpt??? See also Primo Levi's "Passover".

4. How the actual fuck do I make a haggadah that doesn't center the actual genocide happening right now with people being herded into kill zones, how literal does Mitzrayim have to get? But it isn't my Seder and I am absolutely certain that some of the other guests (I've met them before) aren't going to be able to hear what I feel compelled to say/acknowledge, and I want to be able to meet them where they are and offer them an opportunity to listen and be listened to, and I just don't know how to do it. Everything feels inadequate.
5. Also I'm sick of Garamond but every other typeface is worse.

Comments

[larryhammer]

We'll be using our usual family-friendly one -- which in this case means short and with all the children's songs -- but I fully understand #4. We've no idea how to acknowledge this.

Re #5: if in doubt, go with Georgia.

[watersword]

I keep trying to make this thing shorter and it is IMPOSSIBLE.

[sabotabby]

I have an entire Google Drive folder full of social justice Haggadah, many of them which focus on Palestinian solidarity, if you want. Doesn't help with your "this isn't my Seder" issue, but if you're looking for ideas.

I like Gentium. My publisher got me hooked on it.

[watersword]

I would love to take a look, thank you! Can't hurt.

[sabotabby]

Here you go: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14PXKXURwRHdcPnSVhQdQLzr-gY77N0rl?usp=sharing

[liv]

Do you know about Haggadot.com? It's set up for creating custom haggadahs, so it's probably less powerful than Scrivener but a lot less painful than Word.

As for #4, mostly just solidarity. It's a huge and impossible question. How the actual fuck, indeed. For my Seder, it's not just friends who aren't going to be receptive to talking about the genocide, but the community who will be employing me. The best hooks I have are: really lean on the bit about not celebrating our enemies' deaths, and also the part of 'we were slaves' that goes to empathy with those suffering oppression. I think it's somewhat more possible to shift the needle towards caring about the victims in Gaza, than to directly criticize the perpetrators of genocide if people somehow identify with Israel and see criticism as an attack. But that's also nowhere near good enough, in this situation.

[watersword]

I do! It was a good place to get started but I want to control typesetting stuff in more detail than it allows me to.

THANK YOU. That is mostly where I have landed as well, and I am grappling with the "not nearly enough".

[kass]

Oh GOD I feel you on this, especially item 4. SO MUCH.

[watersword]

Somehow I thought you would share my agonies. Let me know if you have any strokes of genius allowing you to thread the impossible needle.

[naomikritzer]

My family's Haggadah includes a passage that we added back in the 1980s during the Intefadah. It's at the end. Here's the quote:

At this point tradition calls upon us to say: "Next year in Jerusalem" (Yerushalayim). What
does the word Yerushalayim mean? There is a teaching that Yerushalayim means:
IR-HA-SHALOM
CITY OF PEACE.
There is also a teaching that Yershalayim means
YERUSHA OLAM
THE WORLD'S INHERITANCE.
So now let us say:

Next year may Jerusalem be a city of peace for all peoples, especially the Israeli and Palestinian people. May Israel be a signpost of peace. May all the world rejoice in its heritage of holiness and peace.

[azurelunatic]

Re: #4, as a goy watching, I am just hurting for everyone except Bibi and his administration. Good luck threading the needle.