The Pangram in the Pesach Haggadah

Post date: Jul 30, 2018 6:25:47 PM

HEBREW PANGRAMS

Although there are 26 pangram verses/ psukim in the Hebrew Bible, only two of these appear in the five books of Mozes: Exodus 16:16 and Deuteronomy 4:34. The latter also appears in the Haggadah in the section expounding the Midrash:

א֣וֹ ׀ הֲנִסָּ֣ה אֱלֹהִ֗ים לָ֠בוֹא לָקַ֨חַת ל֣וֹ גוֹי֮ מִקֶּ֣רֶב גּוֹי֒ בְּמַסֹּת֩ בְּאֹתֹ֨ת וּבְמוֹפְתִ֜ים וּבְמִלְחָמָ֗ה וּבְיָ֤ד חֲזָקָה֙ וּבִזְר֣וֹעַ נְטוּיָ֔ה וּבְמוֹרָאִ֖ים גְּדֹלִ֑ים כְּ֠כֹל אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֨ה לָכֶ֜ם יְהוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֛ם בְּמִצְרַ֖יִם לְעֵינֶֽיךָ׃

This Bible verse has obviously been translated by many different Bible translators as can be seen, for example, HERE. The King James translation has been the basis for most English Haggadah translations of this verse:

Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

But, as is obvious from the above, the rendered translation is no longer a pangram as it is missing the letters j, k, q, v, x and z. So I started wondering if there is no English pangram translation for this verse.

TRANSLATING MEANING AND FORM

Most translators favour meaning over form. It is extremely difficult to adhere to both meaning AND form simultaneously. Look for example at the lipogrammatic novel Gadsby written in 1939 by Ernest Vincent Wright. This 50.000 letter novel does not contain the letter e. Although the book inspired several other authors to create something similar, the book was never faithfully lipogrammatically translated into any other language. The closest to a translation is the French novel La Disparition (also a lipogram without the letter e) but this novel is inspired by Gadsby and not its translation.

It becomes even more difficult when you try to translate a self-referring pangrammatical sentence as Lee Sallows explains in his “Quest of a Pangram”

I see the problem of translating both meaning and form also clearly when comparing the translations of the Haggadah. For example, towards the end of the Haggadah there is a short 8-line poem “Hassal Siddur Pesah” (= accomplished is the Seder of Pesach) with which we officially conclude the ceremony. Although the Hebrew text is very clearly a poem with end-of-line rhymes, almost none of the hundreds of English Haggadah translations I have examined have rendered it as an English rhyming poem. I have until now located less than 15 such translations.

Another example are the abecedarian acrostic hymns (each verse starting with a new letter from the Hebrew alphabet) at the end of the Haggadah – e.g.. The Sacrifice of Passover. I have, until now, found very few translators who made an effort to produce an English translation starting with the letters of the English alphabet – a mean feat taking into consideration that the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters in contrast to the 26 of the English language. Here are the first three lines of one such an attempt:

And the overpoweringness of Thy mighty deeds didst Thou wonderfully show on the feast of Passover.

Before all other festivals and elevated above them didst Thou set the feast of Passover.

Coming events didst thou reveal to Abraham, the Oriental - which shall happen in the middle of the night of Passover.

And ye shall say: This is the sacrifice of the Passover.

This translation, published by Karnith Bnei-Brak, Israel in 1981, was created by Ezra Kienwald. It was logically one of the first for me to look at when searching for a pangrammatic translation of Deuteronomy 4:34.

WHY USE ALL THE LETTERS OF THE ABC?

One could ask how important it is to consider this verse as a pangram. It might be completely by accident that all letters appear in it and if so, why go out of your way doing the same in a translation?

Bar Ilan Maths Professor Ely Mertzbach states that finding 26 pangrams in the entire bible is statistically completely normal, hence maybe one should not pay attention to it. However, he does also mention that the 14th century Bible commentator Rabbeinu Yacov ben Asher (Ba’al HaTurim) identifies the two Pentateuch pangrams and that he does gives reasons for the fact that all letters are used in these verses. Rabbeinu Asher explains that all the letters show that G-d first tested the Jewish People in every possible way before he liberated them from Egypt.

The method of using all letters to express a complete process or thorough feeling is used by psalmists and hymnist throughout the ages for example in the prayer אל ברוך גדול דעה and in the psalm אשרי. The Haggadah hymn The Sacrifice of Passover (mentioned above) was created on purpose as an abecedarian acrostic hymn to express the idea that EVERYTHING is connected to the Passover Sacrifice. Ignoring this form when translating it would therefore, in a way, mean ignoring the main idea of the hymn. So if Rabbeinu Yacov ben Asher believes that Deuteronomy 4:34 is pangrammatic on purpose, we should not ignore this in a translation.

THE PANGRAM IN THE PESACH HAGGADAH

However, no matter how much I searched in hundreds of English Haggadah and Bible translations, I have not been able to find an English pangram as translation for this verse. Not even Ezra Kienwald has attempted to do this. Most translators were probably not aware of the fact that the Hebrew is a pangram.

With the help of some scholars from the Ask the Beit Hamidrash Facebook page, I have therefore taken it upon myself to create such a translation. My translation contains all the letters of the alphabet and is a faithful translation of the original. It is loosely based on the extensive translation of Jacob Freedman’s 1974 Polychrome Haggadah with the necessary changes to make it a pangram. Any Haggadah publisher who wants to include it is welcome to use it:

Or has any God ever exerted himself to seize unto Himself an entire People, removing it quite from the midst of another nation's jail by trials, by signs, by wonders, even by battle, and by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and by great and mighty fearful acts which were like all that the Lord your God has done for you in Egypt, before your very eyes.