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joy haggadah cover

The Joy Haggadah

by Lois Wickstrom

When my children were young, I wanted a Haggadah that would tell the story of Passover and our ancestors' escape from slavery and still get them to bed by 10 PM, at the latest. To accomplish this, I wrote a twelve page Haggadah. After 37 years, I decided to do a rewrite. I'm now a better storyteller. The new version is 13 pages. You can still print it on both sides of 4 pieces of paper, including the cover.  Just print the odd pages and then put the paper back into your printer and print the even pages on the back sides. (You'll need to play with your printer to figure out how to orient the paper -- they're all different.)

You'll need the Adobe Acrobat Reader available free at http://www.adobe.com

Buying one copy for $6.00 entitles you to print as many copies as you need for your family seder.

After you pay at PayPal, you'll be taken to the download page. If you have trouble, email me

cormo@juno.com

For a minimum order of 12 copies, I can print them out on parchment paper and ship them via priority mail.  The price is $6  per copy plus $3.95 postage per dozen within the US. Inquire for shipping rates out of the US.

See sample below:

Young Person:

Why are we all talking in Hebrew and having a party tonight? Why is tonight different from all other nights?

Leader:

Tonight we are celebrating our escape from Egypt, almost 4000 years ago. Even though this is the story of our ancestors, it is also our own escape. They did it for us as well as for themselves.

Our ancestors didn’t start out in Egypt. A man named Abraham, who founded the Jewish religion, was a prosperous farmer in a land called Canaan. He had two sons. His firstborn, Ishmael, became the father of the Arab people. It was normal in those days for a child to have a personal religious experience and found a new religion. Abraham’s other son, Isaac followed Abraham’s religion.

Isaac had two sons. His firstborn, Esau, followed a nature-religion. Esau’s twin, Jacob, followed the religion of Abraham and Isaac. Sometimes you’ll hear about Judaism being the religion of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They were the first three men to follow this religion.

Jacob had 4 wives. With them he had 12 sons and one daughter. All of his children followed the religion of Abraham. Jacob did something that parents know they shouldn’t do. He had a favorite child. This favorite child was Joseph, one of his youngest children. Jacob bought a fancy multicolored coat for Joseph, but didn’t buy coats for his brothers or his sister. His brothers became jealous.

Joseph also had dreams about his brothers bowing down to him. He was just a little boy and they were nearly full grown. They didn’t want to bow down to a child, and they thought he was bragging and showing off. They didn’t understand how their father could like him best. He was a brat.

One day they threw him into a well and were about to kill him when some Egyptian traders came by. These traders were Ishmaelites, descendants of Ishmael, and therefore 5th cousins of Joseph and his brothers. The brothers decided not to kill Joseph. Instead they sold Joseph to the traders as a slave. They then spattered his fancy coat with animal blood and took it back to their father Jacob. They lied and told him that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. In Egypt, meanwhile, Joseph discovered he could interpret other people’s dreams. His interpretations came true.

Leader:

One day the Pharoah had a dream and sent for Joseph to interpret it. Joseph said his ability to interpret dreams was a God-given talent. He then told Pharaoh that the dream was God telling him there would be 7 years of good harvest followed by 7 years of drought. Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of storing grain during the years of good harvest, so nobody would starve during the years without rain.

No one warned Joseph’s family in Canaan about the drought, and when the rains didn’t come, they had no stored food to eat. Jacob sent ten of his sons to Egypt for food. Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not know him. To teach them a lesson, he put his meanest brother in jail, and gave the others only enough food to get home and back again. He ordered them to bring their father and the one brother who had not come with them, and their wives and children if they wanted any more food.

When they returned, Joseph told them they were his family. And if his brothers hadn’t sold him into slavery, there would be no food for anyone, so it all worked out well. Then he let his meanest brother out of jail.

Joseph asked Pharaoh for land in Egypt for his family. Pharaoh was grateful to Joseph for all he had done and gave him the fertile region of Goshen.

About 400 years later, an easily frightened man became Pharaoh. He saw that the children of Israel were prosperous and feared that they might someday join with an enemy, if Egypt were attacked.

That Pharaoh made our ancestors into slaves and ordered their midwives to kill all the male children. But the midwives feared God and disobeyed Pharaoh. Then Pharaoh ordered the Israelites to kill their own sons by putting them into the river. One woman kept her son, named Moses, for three months and then put him into the river in a waterproof basket and sent her daughter Miriam to see what would happen.

Leader:

The baby Moses floated right by the Pharaoh's kindly daughter while she was taking her bath in the river. The princess took pity on Moses and rescued him. Moses' sister Miriam offered to fetch a wetnurse and returned with her mother. Pharaoh's daughter paid Moses' mother to nurse him. Later, when Moses was older, she made sure he was educated by the best teachers in Egypt. Education is another important Jewish value.

When he grew up, Moses knew he wasn’t like the other children in the palace. He knew he was Jewish. One day Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. He killed the Egyptian and hid him. Remember – Moses was raised in a class-based society. He was raised as royalty. He thought royal people were more important than working men. And working men thought they were more important than slaves. Egyptians hit Hebrews and Royalty could hit working men. But they weren’t supposed to kill each other.

The next day Moses saw two Israelites fighting and asked why brothers should fight. One responded "Will you kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" Moses feared how many might know what he had done and left the country. Yes, Moses was a murderer who ran away to avoid being punished.

While he was in exile, he married and had children. One day he saw a bush that was burning, but not being consumed. He stopped to watch. He must have watched for quite a while in order to notice that the bush was not being consumed. At first glance, he’d never know if the bush had an eternal flame or if it was burning down to ashes, like they usually do. A voice from the bush told Moses that he had been chosen by God to free his brethren, now 600,000 men, plus women and children, from Egyptian bondage.

Magicians were very popular in those days. The Pharaoh had many magicians to entertain him. Moses was a talented magician, too. At first when Moses went to the Pharaoh to ask for our freedom, everybody just thought he had learned some new magic tricks, like turning a cane into a snake, or giving his hand a temporary case of leprosy.

If Moses was doing tricks, he was indeed the greatest Magician ever recorded. He said he was God’s messenger. He brought ten plagues on Egypt in order to convince Pharaoh to let our people go. Moses announced each one, and each time he gave Pharaoh the opportunity to avoid the plague by letting our people go.

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cormo@juno.com