Before you is an examination of significant moments in the evolution and formation of the Passover Haggadah. Traditional oral texts – literary, legal, liturgical – can take form and endure for centuries, continuing into their preservation in writing. Some formulators will independently create unique versions of those foundational texts which then persist in their communities. When, over time, these varied original forms come into contact, they may influence each other. In addition, creative tradents will embellish and augment their material, which would then be preserved anew for their own liturgical context. The Passover Haggadah is one such traditional text, better, a collection of texts, each with its own tradental development and history.

Manuscript fragments of Haggadahs from the Cairo Genizah and other early textual witnesses attest to various phases of those developmental processes. Whether copied in the tenth century or the thirteenth, they present a variety of pristine, modified, augmented and innovated versions of textual components all of which had developed by the ninth century when they were documented in writings of Babylonian Geonim. This book analyzes the preserved elements of that varied textual evidence to “connect the dots,” whether as pieces of a puzzle to be assembled, or as a series of time-lapse snapshots revealing the process of evolutionary development and flowering of different components of this unique and treasured classic.