The 1904 Version of the Seder Service Credited with Reviving Passover Observance in the U.S.

Many American Jews today have distinct memories of using the Maxwell House Haggadah, which has remained in print since 1932, at family seders. Before that, writes Jenna Weissman Joselit, there was The Seder Service, “arranged”—as its cover states—by Mrs. Philip Cowen and first published in 1904.

Easy to read and handle, this version was used by schoolchildren and their families; by patrons of the State Bank of New York, among whom it was distributed as a gift; and by American Jewish servicemen during World War I, who received a free copy along with a ration of matzah, courtesy of the Jewish Welfare Board.

The Seder Service also found favor among both Orthodox and Reform Jews at the grass roots, bridging what many believed to be an uncomfortable divide between the two. Giving new meaning to the old adage about reading the fine print, The Seder Service made it possible for an Orthodox Jew and a Reform Jew to sit side by side at the same seder table by signaling through means of typeface and layout which aspects of the seder were not to be skipped (see: large type, full lines) and which could be passed over (see: small print, indented lines). In that way, Mrs. Cowen acknowledged, “no fault should be found with the suggestion it conveys, as he who wishes may read every line of the older service, for not a word has been here omitted.”

The Mrs. of the book’s title—a/k/a Lillie Goldsmith Cowen—was the wife of Philip Cowen, the longtime publisher of The American Hebrew, and the mother of Elfrida, who married M. Leon Solis-Cohen. A skilled typesetter in her own right as well as a deft editor who wielded a “relentless pencil,” or so boasted her proud husband, Mrs. Cowen turned her talents to modernizing the haggadah. . . . If contemporaneous accounts are to be believed, the celebration of Passover received quite a boost from the release of Mrs. Cowen’s haggadah, experiencing a momentary surge in popularity.

Read more at Tablet

More about: American Jewish History, Haggadah, Passover

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF