PASSOVER
Fruits of Freedom
This Haggadah, written by a biblical ethnobotanist, offers a new perspective for your seder. AVERY ROBINSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
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ayenu: it would be enough if I had a practical, well-designed Haggadah with English translation; this alone is exciting. Dayenu: a Haggadah that offers many explanations of the different ritual elements (so that guests can distract/understand for themselves). Dayenu: a Haggadah that helps me better understand what is Passover? And why, after a year of working out the kinks in my rye sourdough, do I have to spend a week eating the most basic, uninteresting and digestively difJon ficult crackers? Greenberg Dayenu: a Haggadah designed for foodies. Dayenu: a Haggadah for those who have spent the pandemic noticing all of the different trees and
plants in their neighborhood again and again and again. The recently published Fruits of Freedom, The Tora Flora Hagadah does this and more. It illuminates the multi-layered meanings of the Passover seder through understanding “the natural and agricultural history of the Biblical and Talmudic worlds” within the context of the underlying multicultural environments (and different ecosystems) where Jews lived. Written by Jon Greenberg, a “Biblical ethnobotanist” who has worked as an agronomist at Cornell and the USDA, The Torah Flora Hagadah offers an accessible anthropological explanation for many components of the Passover seder.
TOP: Ancient Egyptian depiction of “Hyksos” (Canaanites or Hebrews). Note the colorful robes, suggestive of the “coat of many colors” that Joseph wore. BOTTOM: (left) Ancient Egyptian depiction of grape harvesting and wine production. (right) Illustration in a 14th-century Spanish Haggadah depicting a lordly hare controlling or beating a dog while being served by a modestly dressed pig. Such imaginative animal scenes were commonly used in medieval and Renaissance Haggadot as a code for thoughts that could not safely be expressed in public.
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APRIL 7 • 2022
