Curated Collection

Passover Across Jewish Time and Space

Passover is the most celebrated holiday for American Jews. Yet, few appreciate the historical evolution and diversity of its key themes and messages.

Illustration of two men, the simple son and the son who does not know to ask.

Detail from Arthur Szyk, "The Four Sons." From The Haggadah (London: Beaconsfield Press, 1940). Reproduced with the cooperation of The Arthur Szyk Society, www.szyk.org.

Curated by Deborah Dash Moore and Noam Pianko

Exile and Homecoming: The Enduring Impact of the Exodus Narrative

The Exodus narrative following the Israelites’ journey from slavery to freedom and exile to homecoming has shaped Western culture, politics, and religion. Starting with the biblical source itself, these examples illustrate how the biblical themes serve for Jews and non-Jews alike as a primary lens for interpreting everything from personal journeys to national liberation movements.

The Sphinx of Tanis

Oppression and Exodus

From movies to civil-rights movements, the Exodus stands at the center of Western thought and culture. You will still be surprised by what is, and what isn’t, in the account.

Heine portrait

A Seder Night

A medieval rabbi barely escapes from a blood libel accusation at his own Seder table in this prescient nineteenth-century story by the famous German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine.

Israel Ezra and Hamama Sasson

Out of Egypt

Egyptian Jewish American author André Aciman describes celebrating his last Seder in Egypt with his bags packed to leave his homeland for good.

Enslaved people pull a cart bearing a sphynx past monumental Egyptian buildings decorated in heiroglyphs.

Exodus and Revolution

The Exodus story serves as more than a religious or moral narrative. Its influence has shaped the fundamental paradigms of Western political thought to this day.

One Little Goat

A beloved song at the end of the Passover Seder ritual has inspired many artistic illustrations that comment on the relationship between themes of Passover and contemporary events. These powerful twentieth-century depictions reveal the enduring relevance, and changing interpretations, of the Passover story.

Lithograph on paper of building on the left and a large bird grabbing a stick of fire with beak, with Yiddish text along top of image and Aramaic on bottom.

The Fire Came and Burnt the Stick

This graphic depiction of the Passover song “Had Gadya” (“Tale of a Goat”) juxtaposes the collective memory of the exodus from Egypt with Soviet revolutionary art and politics.

Image of four panels with man in each panel: one in moustache and riding outfit; one wearing sidelocks, kippah, and suit; one muscled in boots; and one with short sidelocks, hat, and wide stance, all surrounded by decorated border and labeled in Yiddish.

The Four Sons

This 1934 illustration of the Passover story of the four sons features a caricature of the “wicked” son dressed as Hitler.

Illustration of man in a bloody apron holding a bloody knife as he begins to slaughter a large animal.

The Shohet (from “Had Gadya”)

The violence of the Passover song “Had Gadya” (“Who Knows One”) clearly spoke to this illustrator’s sense of horror following World War I.

Grappling with Passover’s Message during the Civil War

Today, the popular Passover story of Jewish freedom from slavery underscores a fundamental belief among many American Jews that there is a Jewish moral commitment to fight for justice and equity. Yet, the connection between overcoming the oppression of the ancient Israelites and fighting for the rights of other enslaved people was a central topic of debate during the American Civil War. We see the very different ways Jews have read and interpreted the moral lessons from the Passover story in these texts.

The Bible View of Slavery

A Civil War–era Jewish leader defends the institution of slavery in the South based on his reading of the Hebrew Bible.

Response to “A Bible View of Slavery”

On the eve of the Civil War, a Southern rabbi explains why the Jewish tradition requires an antislavery position. His congregants disagree vehemently with his stance.

Union soldiers from the American Civil War in uniform, front row seated and back row standing.

A Union Soldier’s Passover

Passover preparations for a Civil War–era Union soldier included importing seven barrels of matzot and collecting weeds to substitute for the symbolic bitterness of horseradish.

Passover, Feminism, and Religious Innovation

The Exodus story and Passover rituals have provided many opportunities for challenging traditionally gendered narratives and ritual practices of the Jewish past. Passover’s central place in the Jewish calendar and collective memory makes it an important site for innovations that reflect changing norms about gender and sexuality. These examples extend back to the early nineteenth century and illuminate efforts to raise the visibility of women and women’s experiences in Judaism.

Seder Plate with Orange

The Definitive Orange on the Seder Plate Story

The creator of the popular ritual of placing an orange on the Seder plate describes exactly how this innovation arose, its intended significance, and the problematic erasure of its origins.

Timbrel

Miriam HaNeviah

Miriam, one of the few women in the Bible to be called a prophet, provides an important opportunity for contemporary liturgists to expand the male-dominated framework of traditional Jewish prayer.

Miriam’s Song

What if Miriam were remembered just as a person rescuing her brother Moses rather than as the heroine responsible for saving the man who would redeem the Jewish people from bondage?

Haggadot From Around the World

Facing-page manuscript with Judeo-Persian text.

Judeo-Persian Haggadah from Kaifeng

. . . and caused us to reach this appointed time.On the first night, one should recite the blessing “who has kept us alive . . .” But on the second night, one should not read it.Blessed are…

Facing-page of printed Hebrew text on right side and illustration on left side of Hebrew text surrounded by four full-length figures, decorative border, and two animal-human hybrids on the bottom of page on either side of shield with lion.

Haggadah from Prague, 1526

This Haggadah from Prague, printed by Gershom and Grunim Katz with illustrations that are thought to be by Ḥayyim ben David Shaḥor, is one of the earliest Haggadahs ever printed. It was the first…

Facing-page print with left-hand page of Hebrew text with decorative border and woodcut illustration on bottom of man riding ox next to brick building and man playing horn, and right-hand page with Hebrew text surrounded by decorative border including cherubs playing instruments.

Haggadah from Mantua, 1560

This Haggadah from Mantua, published by the Christian printer Giacomo Rufinelli under the supervision of Isaac ben Solomon Bassan, relies heavily on the Prague Haggadah of 1526, with the addition of…

Five drawings of flowers arranged in horizontal panels.

Pesach Haggadah: Israeli Kibbutz Version

Come my beloved, let us go into the open; Let us lodge among the henna shrubs. Let us go early to the vineyards; Let us see if the vine has flowered, If its blossoms have…

Other Curated Collections

Painting of men cutting cloth and women sewing.

Engage with the gendered dimensions of Jewish life and discover lost voices of Jewish women.

Poster featuring two women in uniform, one of whom is wearing a mask, in front of a flag, and Hebrew writing along the top and bottom.

From armed confrontation to religious defiance, Jews fought back against the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Signs at an abortion rights rally.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June of 2022, abortion’s political, religious, and social impact has been at the forefront of political debate in the United States.