In offering us an opportunity for more open conversation, the traditional haggadah invites us to expand our political imaginations beyond what’s given to us on the page. In this light, contemporary leftist haggadot are, perhaps, attempting a shortcut: By committing a particular set of issues and phrases to the page, we avoid the more spontaneous, creative, and sometimes vulnerable act of generating commentary amongst ourselves. In the absence of a fixed political script, we have the opportunity to be surprised anew by the ancient text and rituals, by one another’s insights and humor, by moments of connection between past generations and our own. By contrast, more traditional haggadot-like the classical Jewish tradition more broadly-might seem to belong to an entirely different world than the one we inhabit and the one we wish to build.īut from another perspective, the distance between the traditional haggadah’s world and our own is not a problem but a gift. Embracing rewritten haggadot that make visible the people and injustices often ignored or maligned in communal Jewish life can offer a form of solace or even function as a subtle act of resistance. I also know well how many American Jewish communities are deeply inhospitable to socialists and feminists, to queer people and people of color, to critics of Zionism and the modern state of Israel. Naming the grotesque injustices of the world in which we live is part of a long and painful process of coming to understand just how wrecked that world is, how much harm has been done to us, and how much harm we have caused in turn. I should say from the outset that I understand and appreciate the intention behind these contemporary reinterpretations of a very old text. And yet as Passover approaches this year, I find myself wanting something quite different for my table. Comprised of excerpts from other political haggadot of the last decades, it opens by instructing seder participants to drink the first glass of wine “in honor of the long history of Jewish women and men fighting against capitalism.” When the karpas is introduced, we are invited not only to say a blessing while we dip the green vegetable in the salt water representing the Israelites’ tears, but also to reflect on contemporary human rights catastrophes: “As we dip, we recognize that, today, there are more than 65 million people still making their treacherous journeys away from persecution and violence in their homelands.” The ritual handwashing is accompanied by original commentary: “We sanctify our hands to remind ourselves that tikkun olam is the task to which we, and our hands, are called.” This haggadah is but one of the many handmade Passover texts I’ve held over the years, lovingly created by organizers and radicals to guide their own seders. A really great watch.THE HAGGADAH I’M HOLDING is an unpublished version created by a friend of a friend, home-printed and stapled and dotted with purple stains. All in all I found it an intense, taxing but highly rewarding watch. The screenplay is dense and layered (I'd say it was a thick as a Bible), cinematography is quite stark and spare for the most part but imbued with rich, lucious colour in moments (especially scenes with Florence Pugh), the score is beautiful at times but mostly anxious and oppressive, adding to the relentless pacing. RDJ is also particularly brilliant in a return to proper acting after his decade or so of calling it in. In fact the whole cast are fantastic (apart maybe for the sometimes overwrought Emily Blunt performance). An absolute career best performance from (the consistenly brilliant) Cillian Murphy anchors the film. This relentlessness helps to express the urgency with which the US attacked it's chase for the atomic bomb before Germany could do the same. There are visual clues to guide the viewer through these times but again you'll have to get to grips with these quite quickly. It fires dialogue packed with information at a relentless pace and jumps to very different times in Oppenheimer's life continuously through it's 3 hour runtime. This is intelligent filmmaking which shows it's audience great respect. You'll have to have your wits about you and your brain fully switched on watching Oppenheimer as it could easily get away from a nonattentive viewer.
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