Sunday, March 28, 2010

What's In *Your* Haggadah?

Am I the only one who hides special sentimental goodies in the pages of my haggadah?

When I was young, my father wouldn't allow large collections of "notes" at the table. He felt that if you were going to give a dvar Torah, you should be familiar enough with it not to need to read it out of a school notebook. So my haggadah was stuffed page after page with tiny "crib notes" reminding me of this or that dvar Torah that belonged to each specific page.

That haggadah still has a place on the bookshelf, complete with all the little "tzetlach", but I now own a different haggadah, which is very sentimental. It is a beautiful, illuminated volume presented and inscribed to me by Avram, the year that we were joyously expecting Jennifer.

But I am a bit of a sentimental fool and each year it seems, a new treasure gets secreted away to be discovered the next year.

The back flyleaf holds my favorite photo of my father with my children. Inside the front cover rests the place card Jen made years ago in the shape of a matzoh, two Pesach cards and the text of the rhyming clues that I used the year that I stole the afikomen from the children's hiding place and sent them on a "hunt" for it's new location.

Oh, and let's not forget that every wine stain tells a story, doesn't it?

What's in your haggadah?


3 comments:

mother in israel said...

Aw, that is really sweet. Nothing in ours except for wine and charoset stains.

EJB said...

Mine just has margin notes of ha'aras and mareh mekomos (written before pesach)

Anonymous said...

My "hiddush" this year:

...וַיַּרְא אֶת עָנְיֵנוּ - זוֹ פְּרִישׁוּת דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ

That is when they stopped believing in Torah im Derech Eretz!