An elegant accompaniment to a holy feast.
A colorful, multicultural Haggadah.
This new Haggadah (a Jewish text for guiding the annual Passover seder meal) was commissioned by New York City’s historic Central Synagogue in honor of Rabbi Angela Buchdahl. The work, translated by Rabbis Janet Marder and Sheldon Marder and edited by Rabbi Sarah Berman, is dedicated to the erev rav, the “mixed multitude,” and is meant to reflect the cultural richness and ethnic diversity of Judaism. As the introductory material states, “Central Synagogue’s goal in creating this Haggadah is to help everyone at our seders find authentic connections to the Pesach story and its themes.” Including traditional texts and modern additions, this Haggadah is strikingly augmented by the work of Indian Jewish artist Siona Benjamin. Her colorful, often dazzling contributions to this volume enliven the Haggadah with profound visualizations of the seder themes; for instance, she uses the shape of a seder plate, adorned with a mandala, to represent the 10 plagues of Israel. The explanatory text in the Haggadah is universal in voice and restrained in tone. In rare cases, the text can be seen to reflect contemporary issues (“We cannot look away from the plight of those who languish under the rule of modern-day Pharaohs”), but for the most part it feels timeless and, as the seder closes, poetic (“Egypt is now, Egypt was then. / We live it, we leave it, again and again”). Short questions ending each section serve to guide conversation and challenge participants to find the meaning of Pesach in their own lives (“How do you feel free?”; “What is sustaining you at this time?”). Many Haggadot aim to enlighten and educate guests at the seder meal, recognizing that the gathering may include a wide variety of people of different ages, experiences, and backgrounds; this particular example does so expertly.
An elegant accompaniment to a holy feast.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9780881236798
Page Count: 128
Publisher: CCAR Press and Central Synagogue
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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