For more than a millennium, the haggadah has been the centerpiece of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The book sets out the ceremony for the Seder meal, when families tell the biblical Exodus story of God delivering the ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
Today, thousands of different haggadahs exist, with prayers, rituals and readings tailored to every type of Seder – from LGBTQ+-affirming to climate-conscious. But for decades, one of the most popular and influential haggadahs in the United States has been a simple version with an unlikely source: the Maxwell House Haggadah, dreamed up in 1932 by the coffee corporation and a Jewish advertising executive.
