The Family Participation Haggadah

Likrat Shabbat -- Setting the Shabbat mood; baking bread, eating cake, collecting tzedakah, meditating
Nerot -- Candlelighting
Shalom Aleichem -- welcoming the angels of peace
Birkat Banim -- Blessing our children, amd one another
Eishet Hayil/Song of Songs -- Renewing love; praising a strong woman
Kiddush -- sanctifying the day of Shabbat over wine
Hallah (with handwashing)
Dvar Torah -- Shabbat table talk
Zemirot/Songs -- biblical, medieval, and modern
Birkat HaMazon -- blessings before and after eating
Oneg Shabbat -- Shabbat pleasures
Kiddush Rabbah -- daytime kiddush
Havdalah -- saying farewell to Shabbat

Each chapter has beautiful art, short thought-provoking texts, and guidelines (1) from the tradition, (2) for beginners, and (3) for parents.

REVIEWS

A Day Apart: Shabbat At Home. A Step-by-Step Guidebook with Blessings and Songs, Rituals and Reflections. Noam Sachs Zion and Shawn Fields-Meyer. www.haggadahsrus.com. 168 Pages. $24.95 single copy, $15.95 for 5 or more. ISBN: 0-9664740-5-8.

Anyone who used the best Haggadah ever published, A Different Night, or the splendid two-volume set for Hanukkah, A Different Light, will rejoice with this new volume of a Shabbat literary feast, with everything you could possibly want for your Friday night Shabbat table. While many books have been published for use at the table on Shabbos night, there is none that compares with this. Its color, drawings, photos, design, contents, inclusions, - you name it – make this the most wonderful gift anyone can own. If I had a thousand dollars in my bank account, I’d buy some 60 copies and give one as a gift for every coming bar or bat mitzvah, birthday, anniversary or other happy occasion. It’s the best gift to give and to own.

Not only is there every standard prayer, ritual, blessing and song, but also modern readings, celebration ideas, contemporary reflections, modern ideas for enriching the Shabbat experience. Some of the contributors to this lavish and beautiful treasure are poets and singers, such as Marge Piercy, Danny Siegel, Debbie Friedman and Shlomo Carlebach; artists and photographers such as Marc Chagall, Mark Podwal and Bill Aron; contemporary rabbis and thinkers such as David Hartman, David Wolpe, Naomi Levy, Lawrence Kushner, Blue Greenberg, Marcia Falk; modern spiritual masters such as Abraham Joshua Heschel, Joseph Soloveitchik, Martin Buber, Rav Kook, Nahman of Bratzlav; and psychologists such as Erich Fromm and Viktor Frankl.

This book can literally transform your Shabbat experience. Go out right now and buy 5 or 10 for your own home, and another ten to give away as gifts. It’s that good!

I was on a cruise to Misty Fyords National Monument outside of Ketchikan, Alaska on the day before leading a Shabbaton for the small Jewish community there. I brought A Day Apart with me so I could familiarize myself with it before leading the Shabbat dinner on the way back. As we cruised home from the awesome peaks of Misty Fjords I opened the book to study it. The naturalist who had narrated the tour of the monument was resting and spied me reviewing the book. She came over and asked me what the book was about. I told her it was about the Jewish Sabbath (since she was not Jewish). She gushed, “This is such a beautiful book. Can you show it to me? We leafed through the book, punctuated by her oohs and aahs. She then asked me, “Can you get me an invitation to one of these feasts? It seems truly wonderful!
Such is the power of this book to convey the beauty and majesty of Shabbat that even an Alaskan naturalist reveled in it.

-- Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, Seattle, WA