Over the last half-century, the Jews of Canada have grown from the world’s sixth-largest Jewish community to the fourth. Sadly, this is due in part to the decline of other communities, but it is also a function of our growing size and vitality.

The Jews of Canada, however, have not developed their own institutions to the extent that the three larger Jewish communities of the world have. Israel, the United States and France all have rabbinical schools of various Jewish denominations – Canada has none. Almost all Canadian rabbis are foreign trained, and most are foreign born. Very few Hebrew or Yiddish books are published in Canada. Recently, the Orthodox Jewish community here was pleased when a major Jewish publisher, Koren, printed a so-called Canadian version of its excellent Koren-Sacks prayer book.

What made this prayer book Canadian? One page. The prayer for the government and president of the United States is replaced with an almost identically worded prayer for Canada’s government and prime minister. 

Rabbi Adam Scheier, senior rabbi at Shaar Hashomayim congregation of Montreal, and Richard Marceau, author of the autobiographical A Quebec Jew: From Bloc Québécois MP to Jewish Activist, have teamed up to address this imbalance, along with the talented Canadian graphic designer Lewis Robinovitch. The result is beautiful and creative. Their distinctly Canadian trilingual Passover Haggadah was printed in Canada and published by Rabbi Scheier’s synagogue.  

Haggadot have traditionally been the most popular liturgical vehicle for Jewish artwork. Instead of illustrations and illuminations, this Haggadah contains about 100 pictures of Canadian Jewish life, many from the early years of the 20th century.

Some of the pictures are loosely connected to the nearby Hebrew text, such as the one of the Jewish Old Folks home on Cecil Street in Toronto from the 1920s, opposite the verse from the grace after meals, “I was once young and now I am old…”

Other pictures are connected generally to Passover, such as the advertisement from the Canadian Jewish Review of 1923 urging consumers to purchase Ward’s Orange Crush in the “Krinkly Bottle” as a “Passover delight.” Many are simply curious items from Canadian Jewish history, such as the ticket, in Yiddish and English, to the Toronto Labour Lyceum’s “First Annual Fruit Ball,” which took place on a Friday night in 1927.

Aside from pictures of Jewish Canadiana, other elements make the Haggadah specifically Canadian. The traditional Hebrew texts are translated into both English and French, and all instructions appear in our two official languages as well. The grace after meals includes a 12-word Hebrew prayer for Canada (and a nine-word Hebrew prayer for Israel, the only two additions to the traditional Hebrew Haggadah text). Most significantly, 19 Canadian rabbis explain and elucidate different parts of the Haggadah. 

The Haggadah consistently uses gender-neutral language in both English and French. (The English translation of the text was adapted, with permission, from Noam Zion’s excellent Israeli haggadot, A Different Night and A Night to Remember.) The Haggadah is also unabashedly non-denominational: the contributing rabbis, women and men, come from across Canada and from all the major Jewish denominations. (Full disclosure: I, too, appear in the Canadian Haggadah, with a short reflection on the controversial Shfoch Chamatecha prayer, the one that calls on God to “pour out fury on the nations that do not know God.”) As far as I can tell, all 19 contributing rabbis are anglophones (as are most Canadian rabbis), but their comments also appear in French translation.

One of the most thoughtful insights into the text of the Haggadah was provided by my York University colleague, Rabbi Michael Brown, writing about the Ha lachma anya prayer near the beginning of the seder, which invites all who are hungry to come and eat with us. After restating some of the traditional explanations for the inclusion of such sentiments at the beginning of the seder, Rabbi Brown provides his own (more convincing, in my opinion) reason. 

In the Torah, the mitzvah of remembering the Exodus from Egypt is frequently coupled with the call for Jews to reach out to the disadvantaged of society. For example, “When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not pick it over again; that [i.e. what remains on the vine] shall go to the stranger, the orphan and the widow. Always remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment.” (Deuteronomy 24:21-22) 

Rabbi Brown explains: “Remembering [that we were slaves in Egypt] is not simply a thought or a word. We are enjoined to act, to look after the weak and the needy… And unfortunately, even in our prosperous society, the needy are very much with us: the homeless, the refugees, the mentally ill, the poor. Our seders can be enriched by including them.”

This prayer and commentary are accompanied by two illustrations: a Canadian Jewish Congress pamphlet titled “What about their Passover in 1946?” illustrated with a picture of Jewish war refugees, and a blurb from 1926 from the Hebrew Aid Society of Vancouver, describing how they distribute Passover provisions not just to needy Jewish homes, but also to “Jewish inmates in hospitals, asylums and penitentiaries.”

I know my own seder this year will also be enriched by use of this handsome and thoughtful Haggadah.