{"id":63432,"date":"2022-04-06T11:46:11","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T16:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=63432"},"modified":"2022-04-06T11:52:23","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T16:52:23","slug":"book-review-the-shakespeare-haggadah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/book-review-the-shakespeare-haggadah\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Shakespeare Haggadah"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Shakespeare Haggadah<\/strong><\/a>
\nMartin Bodek
\n200 pages
\nPost Hill Press, 2022<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I reviewed Martin Bodek\u2019s first Haggadah, The Emoji Haggadah<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0Written completely (and I do mean \u201ccompletely!\u201d) in emojis, I found the book to be impressive in that he could actually accomplish such a feat, as well as a fun and challenging puzzle to be unraveled. It wasn\u2019t much use as an actual Haggadah, though \u2013 at least not for anyone born in the 20th<\/sup> century. (I have no idea whether a 14- or 15-year-old could effortlessly translate emoji to English, let alone Hebrew!)<\/p>\n

Since then, Bodek released two more Haggados \u2013 The Festivus Haggadah<\/em> (based on the fictional holiday from the television show Seinfeld<\/em>) and The Coronavirus Haggadah<\/em> (based on some recent events about which you might have heard). I haven\u2019t seen either of these but based on the author\u2019s own words, they\u2019re intended more for entertainment than for actual seder use.<\/p>\n

In this, Bodek\u2019s fourth Haggadah is different. Not only is The Shakespeare Haggadah<\/em> entertaining, one can also use it to lead (or follow) one\u2019s seder with pages in the traditional Hebrew facing those in English.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s discuss the language. The Shakespeare Haggadah<\/em> isn\u2019t just a Haggadah written in Elizabethan English; it actually takes a deep dive into Shakespeare\u2019s plays. And I don\u2019t mean just Romeo and Juliet<\/em>, Hamlet<\/em> and the Scottish play (hameivin yavin<\/em>), I mean Titus Andronicus<\/em>, Cymbaline<\/em> and Troilus and Cressida<\/em> \u2013 you know, the stuff they never taught us in high school.<\/p>\n

The English side is replete with quotes from, and references to, Shakespeare\u2019s plays. For example, among the items on the seder plate we find \u201cThe bare-picked bone of majesty\u201d (King John<\/em>, Act 4, Scene 3), \u201cRoasted egg in wrath and fire\u201d (Hamlet<\/em>, Act 2, Scene 2) and \u201cThe enchanted herbs\u201d (The Merchant of Venice<\/em>, Act 5, Scene 1). Similarly, the four sons are described as \u201cone [who he is] wise,\u201d \u201cone who hath kept an evil diet long,\u201d \u201cone who is as innocent as grace itself\u201d and \u201cone who doth not knoweth what\u2019s best to asketh.\u201d (I\u2019ll let you look up those sources yourself.) The way that Bodek has found so much relevant imagery is at least as impressive as the effort involved in translating the Haggadah into emojis, perhaps moreso!<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not all! While Bodek, true to form, goes all in on the Elizabethan English from the copyright notice to the back cover, there is one exception: the book includes humorous \u201cstage directions\u201d written in modern English. As something of a meta-joke, the stage directions are reverse-engineered into the Hebrew pages as a complement to the traditional text.<\/p>\n

Not only that, the choice of font, at least so far as the English side is concerned, continues to support the book\u2019s illusion of pedigree. Resembling something that might have rolled off of Benjamin Franklin\u2019s printing press, the old-timey typeface conveys a message of antiquity without saying a word.<\/p>\n

While Bodek takes these extra steps to simulate the feel of reading a Shakespearean play, he does stop short of employing iambic pentameter.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one quibble, it\u2019s the authenticity of the grammar. For example, Bodek frequently employs \u201cthee\u201d (objective) where he should use \u201cthou\u201d (nominative), such as in the grammatically incorrect \u201cBlessed art Thee.\u201d Similarly, liberties are taken with the suffixes -eth and -est, which should only be used with third-person singular and second-person singular, respectively. However, if I might be permitted to paraphrase Shakespeare myself, \u201cIf it were so, it was not a grievous fault\u201d (riffing on Julius Caesar<\/em>, Act 3, Scene 2). After all, there are plenty of books published in modern English that contain grammatical faux pas that nobody notices and about which nobody cares. (A personal bugaboo is \u201cbetween you and I\u201d but \u2013 fun fact \u2013 even Shakespeare himself turns that phrase in The Merchant of Venice<\/em>.) So unless you\u2019re a real nitpicky grammar type, you probably won\u2019t notice, let alone care.<\/p>\n

In case you missed it, I am<\/em> a real nitpicky grammar type, but I still enjoyed this book. It\u2019s absolutely delightful and I may actually use it at the seder this year rather than the Maxwell House Haggados that our ancestors used in the land of Egypt. At the very least, I will pass it around and encourage people to read some of the English sections aloud. It\u2019s a must for Haggadah collectors and a treat for Shakespeare fans. Even if you fall into neither category, it\u2019s a unique experience and a fun read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Shakespeare Haggadah Martin Bodek 200 pages Post Hill Press, 2022 A few years ago, I reviewed Martin Bodek\u2019s first Haggadah, The Emoji Haggadah.\u00a0Written completely (and I do mean \u201ccompletely!\u201d) in emojis, I found the book to be impressive in that he could actually accomplish such a feat, as well as a fun and challenging<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":63434,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"\nBook Review: The Shakespeare Haggadah - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/book-review-the-shakespeare-haggadah\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Review: The Shakespeare Haggadah - 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