Synopses & Reviews
Read each year around the seder table, the Haggadah recounts through prayer, song, and ritual the extraordinary story of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to wander the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land.
Now, Jonathan Safran Foer has orchestrated a new way of experiencing and understanding one of our oldest, most timeless, and sacred stories, with a new translation of the traditional text by Nathan Englander and provocative commentary by major Jewish writers and thinkers Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Nathaniel Deutsch. Ravishingly designed and illustrated by the acclaimed Israeli artist and calligrapher Oded Ezer, New American Haggadah is an utterly unique and absorbing prayer book, the first of its kind, that brings together some of the preeminent voices of our time.
Review
"A touching and scholarly Haggadah that offers fresh insights....what makes this Haggadah shine is the combination of commentary, design, and illustration....[it makes] us think, laugh, cry, and ask questions."
--Julia Neuberger, Financial Times
Review
"This Haggadah sings to more than one generation; it is glorious and rich, funny and affirming. And it reminds us of why we do Passover in the first place. This is what we've been waiting for."--Andrea Grossman, Writer's Bloc Presents
Review
"New American Haggadah is as finely-designed as any book you are likely to come across, religious affiliation notwithstanding...unlike Haggadahs that take an anodyne approach to history, this one respects its audience enough to engage in some of the most pressing questions facing Jews today, trusting that they are smart enough to come to their own conclusion."--Alexander Nazaryan, New York Daily News
Review
"What makes this volume such a pleasure to read, and what makes it the best book of modern religious thought in recent memory, is its demand that dialogue be a central part of worship....The New American Haggadah makes worship a radical act of intellectual inquiry."--The Millions
Review
"Clearly worth the wait. A gorgeous production, it is distinctive in every way....The translations are elegant, and the accompanying remarks thoroughly fitting for a contemporary, questioning, open-minded member of American Jewry."--The Jewish Week
Review
"Buy a copy of New American Haggadah. While the compilers demurely observe in their brief introduction that 'Like all Haggadahs before it, this one hopes to be replaced,' I am confident that it will have an uncommonly long run; it is a labor of great love and of much work and, above all, of brilliant artistry - verbal, graphic and intellectual."--Sun-Sentinel (South Florida)
Review
"This Haggadah is simply magnificent. The translation turns the English 'side' of the service, which has always felt clunky and awkward to me...into poetry. It's a translation finally worthy of sharing the page with the Hebrew. Which is so, so important for those of us who can't engage meaningfully with the text in the original."--Beliefnet
Review
"Englander's translations are crisp and clear, and the themed commentaries...are excellent, multi-vocal and concise. It is, indeed, excellent work: literate, inventive and sure to win prizes."--The Jewish Daily Forward
Review
Praise for
EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED:
"Not since...A Clockwork Orange has the English language been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and brio."--Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review
Review
"Powerful...A veritable book of treasures."--Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
Praise for
EATING ANIMALS:
"Stirring...compelling....Foer brings an invigorating moral clarity to the topic."--Entertainment Weekly
Review
"One of the most important books I've ever read."--Ellen DeGeneres
Review
"What makes Eating Animals so unusual is vegetarian Foer's empathy for human meat eaters, his willingness to let both factory farmers and food reform activists speak for themselves, and his talent for using humor to sweeten a sour argument."--O , The Oprah Magazine
Review
Praise for
THE MINISTRY OF SPECIAL CASES:
"Who is this Nathan Englander, so young in novelist years, but already possessed of an old masters voice?...One reads this novel in awe of Englander's talent."--New York Times Book Review
Review
"[A] tour-de-force.... A few pages into The Ministry of Special Cases, it becomes clear how much [Englander] has to bring to the topic: pitch-black humor, a skeptical affection for his characters, and the narrative ability to trace the impact of fascism-with-a-modern-face on a cluster of lives."--The Seattle Times
Synopsis
The perfect book for every Passover seder, from editor Jonathan Safran Foer and translator Nathan Englander: this bestselling modern prayer book brilliantly interprets one of our oldest and most sacred stories. Read each year around the seder table, the Haggadah recounts through prayer, song, and ritual the extraordinary story of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to wander the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land.
Now, Jonathan Safran Foer has orchestrated a new way of experiencing and understanding one of our oldest, most timeless, and sacred stories, with a new translation of the traditional text by Nathan Englander and provocative commentary by major Jewish writers and thinkers Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Nathaniel Deutsch. Ravishingly designed and illustrated by the acclaimed Israeli artist and calligrapher Oded Ezer, New American Haggadah is an utterly unique and absorbing prayer book, the first of its kind, that brings together some of the preeminent voices of our time.
"The best book of modern religious thought in recent memory." --The Millions
"What makes this haggadah shine is the combination of commentary, design, and illustration." --Financial Times
Synopsis
Jonathan Safran Foer's and Nathan Englander's spectacular Haggadah-now in paperback.Upon hardcover publication, NEW AMERICAN HAGGADAH was praised as a momentous re-envisioning through prayer, song, and ritual of one of our oldest, most timeless, and sacred stories-Moses leading the ancient Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to wander the desert for 40 years before reaching the Promised Land. Featuring a new translation of the traditional text by Nathan Englander and provocative essays by a collection of major Jewish writers and thinkers, it was received not only as a religious document but a magnificent literary and artistic achievement. Now, after two years of patience, those readers who asked for a paperback edition have gotten their wish.
About the Author
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of
Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and
Eating Animals. His books have been translated into thirty-six languages.
Everything Is Illuminated received a National Jewish Book Award and a Guardian First Book Award, and was made into a film by Liev Schreiber. Foer lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the novelist Nicole Krauss, and their children.
Nathan Englander is the author of the novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, the play, The Twenty-Seventh Man, and the story collections For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife Rachel Silver.