Jew­ish Text

Pic­tures Tell: A Passover Hag­gadah with pho­tographs from around the Jew­ish world

  • Review
By – March 30, 2022

Pic­tures Tell is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore the images of Zion Ozeri — a not­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Jew­ish expe­ri­ence — to deep­en your engage­ment with the themes of Passover. Ozeri’s pho­tographs are thought­ful­ly placed to encour­age their use as pri­ma­ry texts and exam­ine Jew­ish prac­tice and con­tem­po­rary con­cerns. Com­par­ing the inter­pre­ta­tion of pho­tographs to texts, Ozeri writes “‘One can approach a visu­al text in much the same way. The first ques­tion we might ask is, What do I see? What is the pshat, or sim­ple read­ing?’…. Final­ly, it’s time to make con­nec­tions: How does this image con­nect to a par­tic­u­lar text in the Hag­gadah? How does it exem­pli­fy or ampli­fy an aspect of our Passover obser­vance? How does it reveal, clar­i­fy, or chal­lenge a deep­er theme of our faith?’”

QR codes attached to sev­er­al of the pho­tographs extend the con­ver­sa­tion by pro­vid­ing links to source sheets on Sefaria, one of sev­er­al part­ners in devel­op­ing this new Hag­gadah. Addi­tion­al QR codes allow you to lis­ten to Passover songs from Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties around the world. Con­tri­bu­tions by con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish thinkers, such as Pro­fes­sor Deb­o­rah E. Lip­stadt, Rab­bi Daniel Bouski­la, and Rab­ba Sara Hur­witz, will deep­en the experience .

This Hag­gadah includes the tra­di­tion­al text in Hebrew and Eng­lish. While best used by an adult audi­ence, the Haggadah’s mul­ti­me­dia approach makes it acces­si­ble to younger audi­ences as well.

Jonathan Fass is the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Edu­ca­tion­al Tech­nol­o­gy and Strat­e­gy at The Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion Project of New York.

Discussion Questions