Recommendations for a Passover Haggadah?

[forestofglory]

I'm planning on hosting a seder this year. I've never really done one by myself. If I had all the time in the world I'd write my own Haggadah, but since I'm going to be spending the week before the holiday doing archival research I don't think this will be possible. So I'd like some recommendations.

My ideal Haggadah would:
Be in English with transliterations for any Hebrew
Not refer to God as male only
Include and orange on the seder plate and Miriam's cup
Not focus too much on the story of the exodus
Focus on the social justice aspects of the seder
include that bit about the hand of god and the finger of god that my dad and my uncle both love
Not be too long

I doubt there is something out there that meets all of these criteria, but if you know of something close, please tell me about it.

Honestly reading from fixed text can be problematic. Last year I went to someone else's Seder and she had a customized Haggadah, which I liked the text of, but I keep wanting to go of scrip and just talk about things, but didn't really feel able. So I don't want that, but I'm not sure what other options there are. When I've been at Seders with multiple Haggadot generally people converse while someone is trying to find the next bit.

Comments

[liv]

I'm fond of Noam Zion and David Dishon's A different night. It is certainly social-justice focused but I don't think it's especially good on gender stuff, particularly gender-neutral language. The very good thing about it is that it's carefully designed to allow a fair amount of improvisation. There are lots of alternatives for everything; it's laid out in a way that you can cover all the main points of a trad seder in a fairly small amount of time, while adding in as much or as little as you want to. Some of the suggestions are triggers for discussion or prompts for people to add their own stuff, not just readings. It isn't fully transliterated but it does have transliterated texts for the key communal reading bits, and it's mostly in English.

[darthbitsy]

I know this is a bit late, but I've had "A Night of Questions" by Joy Levitt and Michael Strassfeld recommended to me. Sadly it seems to be out of print and doesn't have the finger and the hand bit.

As an aside, I didn't do Miriam's cup this year because something in the set up bothers me. I want to bring forward the roles of women in the story, but something about this ceremony feels off to me. I want to given women an inclusive place, not just a "women's place", while wanting to show off what women have done through the years. I don't like the mirror to the welcoming of the person who will bring the messianic age, who incidentally isn't in the story.

I've got some thoughts for an addition that feels more comfortable, but its not formed up enough to type up.

[forestofglory]

Interesting. If you ever get your thoughts more formed up a bit more I'd like to read them.

I ended up pulling pieces form a bunch of different sources and making my own Haggahad which meant I got everything I wanted more or less.