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From a Kanye West parody to AI versions, here are 10 new haggadahs to try this Passover
(JTA) — What makes this year’s batch of new haggadahs different from all other years’? For one thing, there are entries written by machines — with not just one but two different versions written by artificial intelligence.
The haggadah market is continually booming, as Jewish writers and creatives take inspiration from news, pop culture and other trends to create seder texts and supplements that break out of the Maxwell House box. This year’s crop tackles Kanye West, the AI app craze, turmoil in Israel and more.
Here are 10 haggadahs to freshen up your seder this year or in the future. (For more options, check out last year’s list, including an Israeli Black Panthers haggadah now in its second printing and another written in Shakespearean verse.)
For the Kanye hater
Serial haggadah humorist Dave Cowen is back with his latest pop culture-themed Passover text: “The Meshugah Kanye Haggadah: A Passover Parody Musical,” which takes songs by the rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, and loosely changes the lyrics to tell the holiday story. For those who missed the news in the fall, West declared himself an antisemite through a series of interviews and social media rants — though he recently recanted. West has said he struggles with bipolar disorder, and Cowen is donating part of the profits of his haggadah to Mad in America, which publishes research and content aimed at rethinking mental health care in the United States.
For the psychedelics-curious
Interested in “tripping toward freedom”? Or “ingesting transformation” through karpas? How about reciting kadesh with “spiritual intention”? Then you might be drawn to “Taste & See: A Psychedelic Pesach Companion” from the Jewish artist-run Ayin Press. It pairs prayers with specific psychoactive substances and then offers Jewishly-inspired passages to guide one through a seder trip, in a foundational text for the growing Jewish psychedelics movement.
For the visual artist
An Israeli artist collective known as Asufa has put out a haggadah featuring colorful and sometimes edgy illustrations by a slew of up-and-coming artists, for the last decade. Only once before has the collective put out a version with English text — until now. A 10th anniversary edition culls artworks from previous editions in one place with a gold-foil cover and a bilingual text. The group put out a new Hebrew version with fresh art as well.
For those concerned about Israel
As the founder of the first Orthodox yeshiva that ordains women clergy, Avi Weiss is no stranger to commenting on fractures in the Jewish community. The liberal Orthodox rabbi and outspoken pro-Israel activist is doing so again in haggadah-supplement form this year, writing in prayers and points of discussion for a seder on the political crisis in Israel that has exploded since the country’s right-wing government took office earlier this year. “It is a template meant to inspire thoughts wherein seder participants can join in, sharing their own reflections and interpretations,” he writes.
For the visually impaired
The Jewish Braille Institute has teamed up with the Kehot Publication Society, the publishing arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, to revamp and re-promote its free haggadah for the visually impaired. “Whether these haggadahs help a grandfather hoping to lead a seder as they have for decades or a child who hopes to read the four questions for the first time, JBI’s mission is to make sure that every person who chooses to can participate in our beloved traditions and know that they belong at the table,” JBI’s president, Livia Thompson, told Chabad.org.
For fans of Chat GPT
The Chat GPT bot can do everything from compose music to hold conversations. It was only a matter of time before someone instructed it to produce a haggadah. Israelis Royi Shamir, an architect, and Yitzchak Woolf, a photographer, produced a version of the seder text through the app — a co-author they’ve called Rabb.AI. The original art in “Haggad.AI” — billed as the first of its kind — were produced by Midjourney, another artificial intelligence program that creates images from prompts. Julie Shain, an editor of the popular Daily Skimm newsletter, has done the same with “The AI Haggadah“; both start with text from Sefaria, the free online Jewish resource. (Both haggadahs are invigorating debates about the necessity of humans in Jewish practice.)
For the impatient
One of the best-selling haggadahs on Amazon this year has a pretty self-explanatory name: “The Swift Seder: The Concise Passover Haggadah for a Reverent Yet Efficient Seder in Under 30 Minutes.” No elaborate illustrations or long commentaries — just the instructions, story and explanations needed to run a tight seder (and a chapter full of songs to add in at one’s leisure).
For Ukrainian speakers
This year, for the first time ever, a haggadah is available in the Ukrainian language — a response to Ukraine’s war and the impulse of Jews there to shed their Russophone roots. This year the haggadah is available online only, but its creators — a Jewish feminist nonprofit and a musicologist who translated the whole text from its original languages — plan to make a print version available next year.
For trans Jews and their allies
The folks at Pink Peacock, the queer, Yiddish, anarchist cafe and Jewish movement in Glasgow, Scotland, have put out a “Trans Liberation Haggadah” perfectly timed for an era when trans rights are under attack in many states. The haggadah expands upon the haggadah supplement released a decade ago by Keshet, the LGBTQ Jewish advocacy group, in the brash spirit with which Pink Peacock has made itself felt far beyond its Scottish city.
Honorable mention: For curious kids (and their grownups)
Our sister site Kveller’s haggadah isn’t new — it was first published in March 2020 — but it still deserves a spot on any haggadah list, especially for families with young children. It makes the seder more digestible for kids, and it also features insights from renowned researchers who explain the connections between memory and food.
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The post From a Kanye West parody to AI versions, here are 10 new haggadahs to try this Passover appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump to Meet Qatar’s Emir Al-Thani En Route to Malaysia
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani speaks during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in Doha, Qatar, December 8, 2021. Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – US President Donald Trump will meet with Qatar’s Emir and prime minister on Air Force One during a refuel stop in Qatar en route to Malaysia for a regional summit, a White House official said on Saturday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio would join Trump in Qatar, the official added. The meeting is expected to be closed to press.
Qatar, a Major Non-NATO Ally and host of the largest American military base in the region, is also an ally and sponsor of Hamas, the jihadist Palestinian group sworn to Israel’s destruction that, on October 7, 2023, led the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
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Report: Hamas Terrorists Freed Under Ceasefire Deal Luxuriating in a 5-Star Cairo Resort
Hamas terrorists carry grenade launchers at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
i24 News – Upward of 150 convicted Hamas terrorists released by Israel in exchange for hostages under a US-brokered ceasefire deal are staying in a luxury hotel in Cairo alongside unsuspecting Western tourists, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.
The group was among some 250 prisoners serving life sentences for deadly attacks against Israelis. Israel agreed to the swap to secure the return of the last 20 living hostages. The move was met with some opposition in Israel, including from those whose loved one were murdered by the terrorists.
The Daily Mail reported that 154 of the released terrorists are staying at the five-star Renaissance Cairo Mirage City Hotel, whose guests are booking rooms without being forewarned that convicted terrorists are also staying on the premises.
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Leonard Bernstein wrote a love song to the White House; now it’s an elegy
In 2017, Cynthia Erivo, clad in white like a bride, took the stage at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center to perform “Take Care of This House.” It was opening night of the National Symphony Orchestra’s season, and Erivo was singing First Lady Abigail Adams’ solo from the little-known Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
That show, an ode to the first century of the White House’s existence, premiered in 1976, and has a rocky history: It closed on Broadway after only 20 performances, including previews. But the musical, while imperfect, was daring — a recounting of American history that featured a series of presidents, their first ladies, and their Black servants. Erivo sang in the first year of President Donald Trump’s first term. Then, having a Black actor on the Capitol’s most prominent stage sing the part of a white first lady — in a song that promises a Black servant he has a part in the American dream — felt like resistance.
Yes, the political tide might have been turning away from the heartfelt messaging of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which suggested women and people of color were as central to American history as any white, male president. But in the world of culture, Erivo’s performance proclaimed, that kind of equal respect was still the true American dream.
Is it still?
Where Jacqueline Kennedy’s Garden, also known as the First Lady’s Garden, once bloomed, there is an expanse of yellow-brown dirt. The First Lady’s Office, shaped by Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosalynn Carter, is a heap of twisted metal. Where the corridors of power once linked the presidential operations of the West Wing to the visitor’s office — the point of public access to the public’s house — there is an expanse of scarred, dusty red brick, the innards of the house exposed.
Amid Trump’s demolition of the White House’s East Wing, the rubble where part of the most familiar facade in the country used to stand feels like a rebuttal to the simple exhortation Adams’ character expresses in “Take Care of this House.” “Keep it so clean,” she sings, “The glow can be seen / All over the land.”
Bernstein held a troubled but profound attachment to the vision of a United States that lived up to its founding promise of liberty and justice for all. That oft-broken pledge was a theme of West Side Story: “America,” with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, is an unusually effective, and entertaining, argument both for and against maintaining hope in this country. Bernstein’s support for the civil rights movement was so well-known that it occasionally backfired, with Tom Wolfe famously asking if the composer’s activism was just a way of accenting his own glamour.
But the picture of a better country — a country that was true to its professed ideals — has rarely sounded as unglamorous, or as meaningful, as it does in “Take Care of This House.” Adams coaches her servant carefully: Make sure the doors are locked and the surfaces are shined, and be ever alert to anything even mildly amiss.
Whatever Bernstein’s failings as an activist, he understood something essential about what the White House means. It is an example of the best of the U.S. because it is humble: Not a palace, but a place that successive generations — especially First Ladies, and their unsung servants — have strived to make beautiful. Some people may visit the White House to gawk at the extravagance, or to feel the rumbles of the machinery of power. I suspect more do because they are drawn to their own sense of ownership of it — the idea that they, too, could have a small part in making it great.
Will Trump’s new ballroom make it greater than the First Lady’s Garden did? Greater than the quiet energy that came from standing between walls that had witnessed the making of history?
It’s true that luxury and ease are also manifestations of a kind of American dream — a different one than that which Bernstein and Lerner articulated. But today, watching Erivo sing Adams’ paean to the beauty of a carefully kept home, my heart aches. All that work, over all those decades, and the end is a landscape of desolate rubbish, with the suggestion of gaudiness to follow.
When I think back to my own visit to the East Wing of the White House in 2015, I think about the last lines of Bernstein and Lerner’s song: “Take care of this house / Be always on call/ For this house / Is the hope of us all.”
I felt a sort of soft awe back then. I wonder if that feeling is one I’ll ever have again.
The post Leonard Bernstein wrote a love song to the White House; now it’s an elegy appeared first on The Forward.