Next year in Jerusalem rebuilt

As you scan the Haggadot of 400 years ago, the theme of Jerusalem is focused on the Temple and its courtyards, as artists imagined them.

By STUART GELLER
Updated: APRIL 20, 2016 19:22
‘Ethiopian Haggada’ from El Al, with paintings by Michal Meron (photo credit: COURTESY REPRODUCTIONS)
‘Ethiopian Haggada’ from El Al, with paintings by Michal Meron
(photo credit: COURTESY REPRODUCTIONS)
My friend Rabbi David Geffen was a chaplain in the US Army. At the end of the soldiers’ Seder in 1967, he said, “I hope next year we can have a Seder in Jerusalem reunited.”
The Haggada’s cry of “Next Year in Jerusalem” – romantic, messianic and hopeful – is for us alive now; it actually came to pass.
For years I have been collecting illustrated Haggadot. I examined how Jerusalem appears in the artwork at the end. In contemporary times it is common to find a photograph of the Old City with the Dome of the Rock at the center.
The remembrance of Jerusalem is a key part of the Jewish life cycle. Wedding ceremonies conclude with “If I forget thee O Jerusalem.”
Jerusalem is mentioned frequently in our daily prayers, at the conclusion of Yom Kippur and at the end of the Haggada.
The Sarajevo Haggada is one of the oldest, written in Barcelona around 1320. It begins with drawings that tell the Bible stories – like a slide show leading up to Moses blessing the people before his death.
At the end of the “slide show” the Temple is depicted, and written under it is “The holy Temple which will be built soon, in our days.”
As you scan the Haggadot of 400 years ago, the theme of Jerusalem is focused on the Temple and its courtyards, as artists imagined them.
The images presented here are modern interpretations. In Halaila Hazeh, by Mishel Zion and Noam Zion, there is a full-page image of the Messiah arriving through the Peace Gate on a white donkey.
Pictured on the wall above is Herzl reading Der Judenstaat. Written on a taxi is “The Cab of the Final Days” (a pun on the word monit; the sentence also means “counting until the end of days.”
Yaakov Kirschen draws the Dry Bones cartoons that appear in The Jerusalem Post. His Dry Bones Haggada emphasizes the added word, “L’shana haba’a b’Yerusalayim habnuya – next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem.” Near those words are drawings of people at the Western Wall as doves of peace fly above what seems to be a sliver of the Dome of the Rock.
The Ethiopian Haggada given out by El Al, which participated in the airlift of 14,400 Jews to Israel in 1991, has a two-page depiction: on the right are worshipers at the Wall dressed in the Ethiopian manner, and on the left David’s Citadel.
Many English readers grew up with the Maxwell House Haggada, which tradition says was given out on Passover to show that the coffee bean was not considered a legume. It has a very simple Jerusalem skyline, appropriately in blue and white, with the dome in the middle.
There are many Haggadot for children. One by Sahar Ben-Ari features the Ninjas diving out of a plane and forming a Magen David in their free fall, and the blueprint for the Temple in the left corner.
I encourage guests to look through my Haggadot, reflect on them and tell their own stories.
I always have tears in my eyes when we intone “Next year in Jerusalem.” I dreamed of fulfilling that promise and now we are actually living that dream.