Pintele Update 7
Well, this is where I come to terms with the fact that I need more time. I keep saying that one of the challenges of a self-motivated project is that nobody is enforcing a deadline. But that’s also one of the advantages.
I’ve spent the last several weeks still thinking of the end of April as my deadline to release the first episode. But as the calendar pages keep falling away, and my list of things to add or change keeps getting longer, I can see the writing on the wall. (Maybe writing on the wall is the problem. I really should get a notebook.)
There are three aspects of the project which need more time:
The family history stuff, which occurs occasionally throughout the seven chapters but is especially heavy in Part One (“Straight Outta Anatevka”), Part Three (“A Very Brody Passover”), and Part Seven (“Next Year in Manhattan”), has expanded due to new research and new insights.
Part Six, “Tyrants Disappearing,” deals partly with current events. I know this could be updated every ten minutes and still not be truly current upon release, and that’s okay; it’s not a newscast. But there are recent developments that must be included:
The Republican Trump regime using a fake crusade against antisemitism as a motive for putting people in concentration camps.
The assassination attempt on Governor Shapiro and his family, on the first night of Passover; and the regime’s tacit approval; one Republican congressman said that this should make Governor Shapiro “tone down” his criticism of Herr Führer Trump.
In my typical (and typically Jewish) tendency to make everything more complicated, there is now a Pintele side project, which is well underway and which will be released at the same time as the audio series. This side project is a book, but it’s not a prose version of the series. I decided to do it because it’s demanded by a conclusion I come to in the course of the series; I’m trying to follow my own advice. And so, this Hebrew school dropout and determined atheist is now writing and illustrating a liturgical text! As liturgical texts go, The Pintele Haggadah is highly unusual, because everything in it is true. It’s deeply reassuring to find that if you remove the fiction from the traditional Haggadah, you still have a beautiful holiday, rich in Jewish tradition, which celebrates liberation from tyranny. To my thinking it’s more beautiful, as well as adaptable to your own preferences.
Anyway, yes: As a side project I’ve rewritten Passover, and I think I’ve solved its second act problems. The Pintele Haggadah, along with the seven-part Pintele audio series, will be available soon, I promise — not quite as soon as the end of April, but not much longer. I just need a little more time to make all of this more worthy of your attention.
