Passover across Jewish Time and Space

A medieval rabbi barely escapes from a blood libel accusation at his own Seder table in this prescient nineteenth-century story by the famous German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine.

A poignant scene depicts André Aciman’s family celebrating their final Passover in Egypt before exile.

The Exodus story serves as more than a religious or moral narrative. Its influence has shaped the fundamental paradigms of Western political thought to this day.

This graphic depiction of the Passover song “Had Gadya” (“Tale of a Goat”) juxtaposes the collective memory of the exodus from Egypt with Soviet revolutionary art and politics.

This 1934 illustration of the Passover story of the four sons features a caricature of the “wicked” son dressed as Hitler.

The violence of the Passover song “Had Gadya” (“Who Knows One”) clearly spoke to this illustrator’s sense of horror following World War I.

A rabbi in 1861 argued that slavery was sanctioned by scripture, revealing how faith and politics collided before America’s Civil War.

As the Civil War loomed, Jewish leaders clashed over the morality of slavery—one invoking scripture to defend it, another proclaiming divine justice to oppose it.

Passover preparations for a Civil War–era Union soldier included importing seven barrels of matzot and collecting weeds to substitute for the symbolic bitterness of horseradish.

The creator of the popular ritual of placing an orange on the Seder plate describes exactly how this innovation arose, its intended significance, and the problematic erasure of its origins.

Miriam, one of the few women in the Bible to be called a prophet, provides an important opportunity for contemporary liturgists to expand the male-dominated framework of traditional Jewish prayer.

What if Miriam were remembered just as a person rescuing her brother Moses rather than as the heroine responsible for saving the man who would redeem the Jewish people from bondage?