The First Stars and Stripes in Battle and Haggadah
Post date: Sep 2, 2018 7:10:49 PM
Today, September 3, 1777 is the first day the Stars and Stripes was flown in battle. General William Maxwell (not connected to the Maxwell Haggadah) ordered the stars and stripes banner raised as a detachment of his infantry and cavalry met an advance guard of British and Hessian troops during a Revolutionary War skirmish at Cooch’s Bridge, Maryland. The flag had been officially adopted three months earlier, on June 14 (Flag Day). The first Haggadah printed in the USA was the Jackson Haggadah of 1837. The Haggadah is written in the Jewish Ashkenazi and Spanish Jewish tradition and claims to include the translation of the late David Levi from London. This traditional Haggadah was reprinted numerous times until Reform Judaism started to alter the Haggadah text to meet its needs in an attempt to modernize and actualize the ceremony.
The first American reform Haggadah was published by Jastrow in 1883 but this Haggadah did not have much influence. Also later Reform Haggadot like Abraham Heyman’s Haggadah, the Haggadah by Isaac S. Moses and the “Eastern Eve Haggadah” by H.M. Bien were not that influential. They all did help shape the first official 1907 Reform Union Haggadah under the aegis of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Especially early Reform Judaism, more than any other stream in Judaism saw America as the promised land, even more than the Land of Israel. We see therefore, from the very beginning, an emphasis on America as the land of freedom.
In the 1907 Union Haggadah we find a picture of a statue celebrating religious liberty and in the 1923 revised Union Haggadah the song “America America” is included complete with the musical notes for it.
Other Haggadot follow suit with minor but sometimes significant changes. Whereas Kaplan’s 1941 Revisionist New Haggadah adds the Hatikva (first two stanzas of the poem by Imber) followed by the first verse of America which emphasizes the sweet land of liberty, the 1975 Silverman Haggadah adds the 4th verse emphasizing God as the father of liberty following it with Hatikva (Israel’s national hymn based on first two stanzas of Imber’s poem) and the eternal prayer “Leshana Haba’a BeYerushalayim”. It was in a Haggadah called “Seder Service for the First Two Nights of the Feast of Passover” (showing it is a religious and not a Reform Haggadah”) published in New York in a free Haggadah with advertisement for the Bank of United States that I found the Star-Spangled Banner hymn underneath the text of a poem called Hatikva which is neither the text of the Israeli nation hymn nor the nine stanza poem Tikvatenu by the poet Naftali Herz Imber (although it is obviously a version of it). Although the Haggadah is not dated it is identified by Yudlov as published in 1922.
I was sure that that was the first time the Stars and Stripes was flown in a Haggadah, however, Yudlov (#2081) mentions the Domestic Service for the eve of Passover <adapted from the German of the late Dr. Leopold Stein> by I.S. Moses. This is a left-to-right reform Haggadah, mostly in English, which contains musical notes and additional songs amongst which the American national hymn "The Star-Spangled Banner". This Second Edition Haggadah was printed in Chicago in 1898 and thus pre-dates the one mentioned above. Yudlov mentions that the Star-Spangled Banner did not appear in the 1893 first edition of this Haggadah and that means that this is probably the first ever Haggadah in which we find the Stars and Stripes a mere 21 years after the first Stars and Stripes was flown in battle.