About 10 or so years ago, my friend Colleen and I decided to write our own Haggadah for passover. She had come from a very unique religious background, I was raised jewish and at the time was a pretty active practicing pagan. But each for our own reasons still felt a strong affinity for passover. We started talking about it, and over time and a lot of discussion decided that we could craft a seder that worked to satisfy our desire to observe passover and many of its rituals, but also aligned itself with our current beliefs.
We discussed who was likely to be our fellow participants (mostly people who were not jewish and many who had never been to a seder). We did some research about what was traditionally included and some emerging practices. I read a LOT of haggadahs, and a fair bit of writing about passover. In the long run we put together a seder that we enjoyed and that our friends found interesting and instructive.
As it turned out my family liked quite a bit of what Colleen and I had put together and since then, my dad and I have spent a little time every year to update, re-write, and fill in pieces. My mom has shown it to some of her friends and now there about 3 or 4 other families that use our haggadah for their seder. There is still quite a bit in there that is flatly or partially plagiarized, although at this point I couldn’t tell you which pieces came from where.
Next year I hope to do a massive re-write job on it – I have a friend who is a writer who has said they will help me. There are parts that reads okay on the page, but don’t read so well out-loud, and I am hoping that I can soon remove the disclaimer about plagiarism, and yet add acknowledgments to some of the sources that have unknowingly inspired us along the way.
In any case – some folks have asked for a copy or to see it, etc. so here is a link to a pdf of this years Passover Haggadah. I know that there are errors, there are every year – I have gotten sort of resigned to it. Its always a work in progress, I am always sitting at the seder with a pen in hand making corrections for the following year – and to a certain extent I like it that way.
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