Feedback for "Hagada - Mi Yodeya?"

Question

If you downloaded "Hagada - Mi Yodeya?" and certainly if you used it at your Seder, we would love to hear what you thought of it.

• Are there any improvements you'd suggest?

• Is there anything about it you specifically hope we don't change?

• Do you have any interesting stories about using it at a Seder?

• Please include the version of the Hagada that you used.

Anything you can tell us along these lines would be much appreciated. Should we do anything like this (or even bigger) again, your feedback will help us make it even better.

If you have participated on Mi Yodeya before, you should be able to post your feedback as an answer to this question. If not, or if you prefer to send it in private, please email [email protected].

Answer 1

I thought some kind of index with just a list of the questions would be useful. I was only looking at the PDF, so it may be less of an issue once it is printed.

Answer 2

In future "print-your-own" projects, we should consider sweeping for and eliding instances of God's name and/or including a suggestion that people dispose of the document with care.

Answer 3

Philip Setnik said on G+:

I started looking at this and it's very impressive. Thanks very much to Mi Yodeya for this. I'm always looking for some new tidbits and "meat" for the Seder table - this looks like it should do nicely. It's highly accessible, yet it also seems to be pretty rigorous.

For example, I love the explanation brought down from the Maharal about +Monica Cellio 's question about "If G-d had not rescued us... we would be slaves to this day."

Thank you to Monica and the Mi Yodeya community for this great resource!

Answer 4

It would be nice to have a proper bibliography. There are many references to sources in books, mostly just by title. A bibliography would make it easier for readers of varying backgrounds to follow up and research the cited sources.

Answer 5

In future publications, we should come up with a mechanism for handling jargon. Here on the website, we try to make our content accessible by reducing jargon use and providing definitions. One of our major ways of providing definitions is to link to a dictionary or encyclopedia entry for the term. This works great on the web, but not so much on paper. In our next paper publication, we should consider having a glossary, including more inline definitions, and/or further reducing jargon use.

Answer 6

I printed the Haggadah and used parts of it during my seder this year. Really nice - easy to read and follow as well as educational and pleasurable. Yeyashru Kochachem. Perhaps, consider updating each year? I know it's a lot of effort, but may be worthwhile. If so, contact me close to Pesach 5776! How about one for Shavu'ot? This HAS to be interesting enough to keep us awake all night :-)

Answer 7

This answer applied to the first edition.

I used this as input to my seder. I printed copies for my guests (and sent people home with them), had chosen a couple questions to bring up in discussion, and had anticipated reading some answers from the supplement. No plan survives contact with reality. :-)

We had a really talkative bunch, which is great! (Almost three hours to get to the meal, and there were only eight of us.) And other people brought sources and ideas too. So what ended up happening is that questions got asked and discussed without much verbatim reading from any of the sources that people had brought. Several questions that others asked were answered in Hagada Mi Yodeya? and I ended up summarizing those answers (being, you might say, already very familiar with its contents).

The questions from our haggadah that ended up getting asked were:

• "If God had not delivered us...we would still be slaves?" (I brought this one up)
• Why is the wicked son sanctioned for doing what the wise one did? (I asked this one too)
• Did hardening Paro's heart mean he wasn't responsible?
• How would Har Sinai without torah have been enough?
• What do you do with kos shel Eliyahu (asked by a guest on the way out the door, not at the seder)
• Why do we sing "Echad Mi Yodeya"?

This year's s'darim (I was a guest at the other) were the best seder experiences I have ever had, individually and certainly collectively. Hagada Mi Yodeya? had a lot to do with that for one of them. (While the leader of the other had a copy, I don't think he had time to do much with it. Maybe next year.)

Answer 8

Collect social-media links here:

If you've posted, or seen, a link to the haggadah in a place that allows commenting, please add a link to the post here so that later we can harvest any useful feedback that shows up there but not here.

Stack Exchange G+ post, reshared by Jin, Menachem

Monica's G+ post, reshared by Isaac, Meirav, Philip

Monica's blog, reposted by lisa-eve44

Hirhurim - Musings

Joel Spolsky's and Stack Exchange's Twitter tweets

Answer 9

I used the second edition at my small seder this year. I describe this seder as the "it takes as long as it takes" seder, encourage lots of discussion and Q&A, and ask everybody to bring things to share -- teachings from other sources, their own insights, new melodies, poetry, whatever. My guests obliged and there was much discussion.

I gave everybody a copy (to take home later) at the beginning of the seder and saw people paging through it while we talked. Other haggadot were being passed around too. I referred to Hagada - Mi Yodeya? for at least the following topics:

• "Does everyone wash?" - indirectly, when we got to Rachatz and had a quick discussion of who was or wasn't getting up to wash.

• "What does the word 'karpas' mean?" - our haggadah had mentioned the connection to Yosef's garment in passing, and I read from the answer here for more detail.

• "Why is the wicked son sanctioned...?" - in passing, as part of a discussion on that topic that someone else initiated.

• "How do we know the wicked son would not have been redeemed?" - in passing, as part of a discussion about many Israelites not leaving and how avoidance of the final plague required positive, public action to identify with Yisrael. (I don't quite remember how this all came together.)

• "Did hardening Paro's heart mean he wasn't really responsible?" - I read the majority of Jake's answer about God influencing people without taking away free will. This seemed to be well-received.

• "How would Har Sinai without Torah have been enough?" - I shared the gist of Alex's answer after somebody else brought this up.

• "Hardboiled eggs and salt water?" - used this information in passing.

• "What do you do with the Kos Shel Eliyahu?" - I remember this coming up but I don't remember the details now.

• The two Chad Gadya questions - mentioned the questions in passing but we didn't discuss.

A guest commented on "What do the haggadah section titles mean and where do they come from?", and another guest said "I've always wondered that too!".

We also had a longish discussion of arami oved avi, during which we consulted Rashi, a lexicon, and several other haggadot. All the time I was thinking that I should ask about this on Mi Yodeya, though I think we managed to round up most of the main sources already so I'm not sure if I still have a question. Maybe I'll ask and answer it. It's something that I would have liked to have in Hagada - Mi Yodeya? but I hadn't realized this until we were in the midst of the seder.

Addendum: it turns out somebody already asked that, but because it was asked as a question about the parsha rather than a question about the haggadah, we didn't consider it. When we do a third edition we should review questions on the parshiyot quoted in the haggadah to see if there's anything else we should bring in.