Non-Traditional Haggadah - Kibbutz Be'eri 1950

Non-Traditional Haggadah - Kibbutz Be'eri 1950

Non-traditional haggadah with impressive illustrations ad texts referring to the long-standing destiny of the Jewish people, the Holocaust of European Jewry, the Arab enemy, the resurrection of the State of Israel, and the history of the kibbutz.

The Mah Nishtanah text was changed to: "All other nights we would set the order of the festival of freedom while we were in the hands of a foreign and oppressive regime, struggling for the building of and immigration to the Land, and now we are free in the State of Israel, the gates are open to the returnees of the exile and is the breadth of our Land in our hands to be settled? ... Last Passover night we stood opposite a strong enemy, who invaded our land and aspired to destroy us, and we threw him out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and now we are sitting in our homes while the enemy is at the gate? ...

There is a passage with seven stanzas which opens with "We will come," which appeals to the strength of the people: 'You will yet see battles and movements with the lifting of the cloud of dust, with the sun in the blue of the sky ... and we will come tens of thousands and one, our eyes full of hope, of light, our bodies overcome with exhaustion ..." There is a harsh Yizkor text including those murdered in the Holocaust as well as those who fell in battle for the Land: "We will remember the tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of our brothers' and sisters' souls destroyed by human animals, who were transported in train-cars of death and burned in the crematoria of horror ... the souls of our comrades, heroes of the times and martyrs of Israel in the ghettoes, in the forests, in the cellars, and in the depths of the soil ...the souls of our brothers, the illegal immigrants, who were lost at the borders and on their way, and who were drowned by cruel waves ... we will remember the casualties of the defense, those who went first and fell first."

This haggadah contains an interesting original passage in biblical language inside an illustration of a scroll, describing the upheavals of the Jewish people, dispersed among the nations, by way of the unbearable Holocaust, and the resurrection of the people in its Land: "And there was recently the hand of an oppressive people ... And Israel was the orphan among the peoples ... spread all over the world ... and a few arose from Israel and went up again to the Land of Israel and pioneers were locked behind them in desolation to make it productive and build in it a home for our people ... And the World War broke out and our people quivered in the net of the exile until it was stuck in the great Holocaust - murder unlike any other since the beginning of man. And a handful of pioneers guarded the ember of rebellion so that it would not be extinguished ... and the Hebrew defense stood at the gate and the IDF was established and it forged its weapon, and while it was still hot, made haste to the battlefield and fought life and death ... and the army of Israel went from strength to strength and victory to victory ... and the gates were opened to the returnees from exile, and were redeemed from all over ..."

On the last page, there is a passage which deals with the fate of Kibbutz Be'eri: "Go out and see our enterprise from the day we ascended the soil of Tel Jame, and it continues with the history of the kibbutz, and hints at the bombings by the Egyptian army during the War of Independence, without sufficient arms for the residents of the kibbutz who were only equipped with a limited number of guns and mortars. And more.

Kibbutz Be'eri named after Berel Katzenelson ['Be'eri' was his pen name] was established in the Negev in 1946 by two seed groups - Hachsharat HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed in Maoz Chaim, joined by a group of immigrants from Iraq who were trained in Ramat HaKovesh.

[16] leaves. 23 cm. Partially detached binding. Fine condition.