For Passover, a brief history of the Maxwell House Haggadah, a marketing move turned classic

By Kerri Steinberg, Office Chair of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Otis University of Artwork and Style

For extra than a millennium, the haggadah has been the centerpiece of the Jewish getaway of Passover. The ebook sets out the ceremony for the Seder meal, when households convey to the biblical Exodus story of God delivering the ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

Currently, countless numbers of various haggadahs exist, with prayers, rituals and readings personalized to every single sort of Seder – from LGBTQ+-affirming to climate-aware. But for decades, a single of the most well-known and influential haggadahs in the United States has been a simple model with an unlikely source: the Maxwell Dwelling Haggadah, dreamed up in 1932 by the coffee company and a Jewish promoting government.

Its historical past displays how Jews modernized and adapted to their new country, though also upholding traditions. But coffee has no ritual ties to Passover. So what clarifies the Maxwell Property Haggadah’s sustained popularity?

Coffee competition

A single explanation is advertising and marketing: a field so pervasive and potent in people’s life that it will become practically invisible. As a scholar of American Jewish visual tradition and communication, I have investigated how internet marketing can impact Americans’ spiritual and cultural identities.

The story of the Maxwell Home Haggadah commences with the conference of two internet marketing masterminds. The to start with, Joseph Jacobs, grew up on the Reduce East Aspect in New York at the transform of the 20th century, amid a wave of Jewish immigration from Japanese Europe. He went on to set up his promotion corporation in 1919. The second was Joel Owsley Cheek of the Cheek-Neal Coffee Firm, who hailed from the South. Cheek-Neal was then the father or mother company of Maxwell Home coffee, with its popular slogan “superior to the last drop.”

Jacobs’ quest to familiarize businesses with the buying electric power of the expanding inhabitants of Jewish People led him to speak with Cheek in 1922 about inserting advertisements for Maxwell Home espresso in Jewish journals. There was only a single difficulty: American Jews of Jap European descent thought that espresso beans, like other legumes, had been forbidden for Passover, when sure foodstuff should be avoided, so they drank tea for the duration of the weeklong holiday break.

Consulting a rabbi from the Decreased East Facet, who declared that technically espresso beans ended up like berries and therefore kosher for Passover, Jacobs secured a rabbinical stamp of approval for Maxwell coffee in 1923.

Throughout the Terrific Melancholy of the 1930s, when a important grocery chain discounted their individual manufacturer of coffee, Maxwell Property turned to Jacobs’ firm to aid them stay aggressive. The Maxwell Property Haggadah was born when he suggested distributing a guide for totally free with just about every purchased can of coffee.

Over and above its attractiveness as a giveaway, having said that, the written content of the haggadah needed to generate Jewish customers’ have faith in. The entrance include relied on a classical design and style of centered textual content in Hebrew, but also English. Inside, pen and ink illustrations of biblical tales continued the sense of tradition. The webpages of the haggadah turned from right to still left, as is normal of Hebrew texts.

It labored. According to a market place report commissioned by the Joseph Jacobs Corporation to tutorial its internet marketing attempts, Maxwell Home turned the coffee of alternative for Jewish homes all over New York Town.

Modernizing the haggadah

The Maxwell Household Haggadah remained mostly the identical via the 1940s and ‘50s, and before long reached the status of a Passover basic. Nevertheless the 1965 variation marked a definitive break with the earlier. As 1960s culture launched extra minimalist, graphic art, raging in opposition to the classicism of the previous, the haggadah’s images transformed to reflect the moments. And while the published text remained mostly the identical, the addition of English transliterations of blessings and prayers hinted at Americanizing Jews’ decline of Hebrew reading abilities.

For the up coming 30 years, extremely little modified in the haggadah. But in 2000, it last but not least received a visual makeover, as witnessed in an ad that yr. Stark graphics, preferred because the mid-’60s, have been changed with nostalgic images depicting an intergenerational family members at a Seder. This tender imagery invoked tradition at a time when numerous People had grown far more distant from their Jewish communities, prompting worry from Jewish leaders.

In 2009, the haggadah achieved throughout the world fame when President Barack Obama utilised it to conduct his initially White Property Seder. Shortly soon after, it underwent a complete overhaul for the 21st century. Maxwell House’s variation was now a lot less illustrated and bundled far more prepared text, like the haggadahs made use of by more spiritual Jews. By getting rid of antiquated words and phrases like “thee” and “thine,” alongside with gender-distinct pronouns for God, the new variation felt more pertinent for a youthful and far more secular Jewish populace.

And in 2019, when “The Great Mrs. Maisel,” the tv demonstrate about a mid-century Jewish housewife-turned-comic, was at its top of popularity, Maxwell Residence posted a exclusive Mrs. Maisel version of its haggadah. A throwback to the haggadah’s heyday in the late ‘50s, this television tie-in represented but a different advertising hard work to keep American Jews’ affection for Maxwell Household coffee in a crowded current market.

In a sea of thousands of haggadahs, it is Maxwell House’s that has develop into the de facto agent of American Jewish lifetime. The story of its area in just U.S. homes points to marketing’s important role in shaping a yearly custom.