Today I learned that in 1933, a Mr. Maxwell J. House* hired a rabbi to say that the coffee bean is more like a berry than a bean, and therefore coffee is kosher for Passover. And thus was born the Maxwell House haggadah, sheepishly tucked into grocery bags by the dozen every Passover by thousands of families who couldn't manage to remember where they stored last year's Maxwell House haggadahs.
Even though my 15 Maxwell House haggadahs - the fruits of my mother's visits to four different supermarkets last weekend - would be enough (dayenu!), I am having an all-Gentile, all-singer seder, and therefore am compiling my own supplement. Thus far it consists of "readings" from Marjorie Morningstar, The King & I, Tony Kushner, and The Nanny. Suggestions for quotes, songs, and other ephemera are quite welcome.
And, typed by hand from Death & Taxes: Hydriotaphia and Other Plays because amazingly this wasn't yet on the internet, I give you the following from Tony Kushner's rambling short "Notes on Akiba":
...And, and look how good my kid is, he... performs, he really performs, he memorizes, he is prepared, a performer, he's four years old he can barely read Green Eggs & Ham and look he has memorized lengthy strings of what are to him nonsense syllables which he will now produce flawlessly on command because he knows like the whole year to follow and his life along with it will be cursed, the crops will fail and Elijah won't come because YOU FORGOT WHAT COMES AFTER MA NISHTANAHA ETCETERA, and like, that's not affliction?
*not really, but the rest of it is true
it was actually joseph joacobs that hired the rabbi, mr. maxwell house is not an actual person but a brand of coffee
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