The Translator of the Maxwell Haggadah

Although none of the researchers who wrote about the Maxwell Haggadah discovered the name of the anonymous translator, I will attempt to do so here. Neither Maxwell House nor Joseph Jacobs Advertising have any information about this on record. Cohen-Ioannides (2017, chapter 1[1]) claims that “the first edition of the Maxwell House came out in 1912 and was a copy, with parts removed, of Dr. A. Th. Philip’s Seder Haggadah Shel Pesach, also printed in 1912.” This claim contains two factual mistakes: the date of the first Maxwell Haggadah and the source of the translation. Comparing the first Maxwell Haggadah (1932) and Philips (1912) reveals that they are significantly different. A comparison between the texts of the wicked son shows the similarities and differences:

The wicked son expresses himself thus; what mean you by this service? By the expression you, it is clear, he does not include himself; and as he hath withdrawn himself from the collective body of the nation, it is proper, that thou retort on him, and therefore answer him thus: this is done because of that, which the Eternal did for me, when I went from Egypt.

(1912_PHILIPS)

What says the wicked son? He asks: “What mean you by this service?” By the word “you”, it is clear he doth not include himself, and thus hath withdrawn himself from the community; it is therefore proper to retort upon him by saying: “This is done, because of what the Eternal did for me, when I went forth from Egypt;”

(1934_MAXWEL1)

Differences between Philips and Maxwell are lexical (e.g. “expression” vs “word”), in syntax (e.g. the first sentence), in register (e.g. the modern “does” vs the archaic “doth”) and in punctuation (e.g. use of quotation marks) negating the claim that the latter is a mere copy of the former.

It was through one peculiar word in the Maxwell Haggadah that I eventually managed to identify a better candidate for its anonymous translator. In the last sentence of the text immediately following the anecdote about the five Rabbis celebrating Pesach in Bnei Brak, חכמחם, the “sages” are quoted. However, whereas all other Enlish-language Haggadot just call them “rabbis” or “sages”, they are called “doctors” in the Maxwell Haggadah, which kept using this word until 1995 when “doctors” was changed to “Sages” like all other Haggadot.  The only other Haggadah that uses this extraordinary translation is a 1949 Haggadah with an introduction and translation by David M. Hausdorff (Yudlov #4132). The translation in this Haggadah (for the “Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Yeshiva and Mesifta” school) is identical to the Maxwell Haggadah except for a few minor additions. Although it seemed plausible that Hausdorff had just copied Maxwell’s translation, I decided to dig deeper. I located the husband of Hausdorff’s granddaughter, Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, who claimed that during the 1930s, David Meyer Hausdorff (1906-2001) had worked for Joseph Jacobs Advertising and in that capacity had translated the Maxwell Haggadah for the advertising company. Pruzansky remembers Hausdorff telling him this by himself. Hausdorff’s daughter-in-law also confirmed this.

In an attempt to prove that Hausdorff was indeed the Maxwell House Haggadah translator, other books written by Hausdorff were digitized (“candidate texts”) and stylometrics were used (Stylo) to compare these with the Haggadot in the corpus, to try and prove authorship. However, although stylo has special authorship authentication features (the “stylo.imposters()” method), this method yielded no positive results. There are several possible reasons for this:

1. All the translations in the corpus, though different from one the other, are much more similar than the candidate texts (the other digitized texts).

2. The candidate texts are English first language texts written by the candidate while the texts in the corpus are translated texts.

3. All the translations in the corpus are semi-liturgical texts while the candidate texts are expository texts.

4. The anonymous Maxwell Haggadah text was written in 1934, while all the candidate texts were written 6-26 years later.

Comparing the Maxwell text with all preceding Haggadot, Stylo does seem to justify my assumption that none of the other pre-1934 translators is a good candidate source because a general imposters query yielded "0" for most translations, except for the occasional 0.01, 0.06, and one 0.11 which all seem insignificant. Hence, Maxwell’s translation was not a copy/paste job but stylometrics cannot be used to prove that it was created by Hausdorff, notwithstanding oral family tradition.

Still, although the advertising company Joseph Jacobs does no longer have the employee records of the 1930s, Steinberg (2015, p. 65) describes two other promotional booklets published by Joseph Jacobs in 1933 and 1937, which “both acknowledge Joseph Jacobs...and David Hausdorff, who prepared the written texts for each”. This places Hausdorff in the right place and job at the right time to be a strong candidate for the anonymous translator, especially considering the oral family tradition. We can therefore conclude that, in all likelihood, David Hausdorff was the (previously unknown) translator of the Maxwell House Haggadah.

Maxwell continued printing Haggadot with the same translation until the mid-1960s when a slightly more modern English-language translation was introduced (DeLuxe Edition). Minor translation changes were made in 1996 but a major change was implemented in 2011 when a new translation was made by Henry Frisch.

Listen to the following podcast to learn more about the Maxwell Haggadah from the mouth of Elie Rosenfeld. My name and research is mentioned at minute 15:15:

https://seforimchatter.buzzsprout.com/1218638/10409495-with-elie-rosenfeld-discussing-the-maxwell-house-haggadah

[1] Ebook without page numbers.