A YouTube Haggadah

Artists are hoping people will incorporate videos like “Maror,” above, into their seders.

Skirball project combines 14 short artistic videos for each section of the seder.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010. Sharon Udasin, Staff Writer.

An older man sits in his living room armchair, relaxing in striped button-down pajamas while crunching loudly on a raw root vegetable.

“Daddy, what are you eating?” asks his son, sitting on the sofa across from him, clad only in boxer shorts.

“Horseradish,” the balding father responds in a thick Israeli accent, shaking his right forefinger.

“Raw horseradish? Are you crazy? Uch. How can you eat that — it’s so bitter!”

The father-son discussion over the physical and spiritual merits of horseradish continues, as the black-and-white, two-dimensional animated film explores the significance of maror, the bitter herbs consumed in the eighth section of the Haggadah.

“The bitter herbs are the most important part,” the grandfather explains to his son, referencing the Garden of Eden as a place of both bitterness and paradise. “Without a choice, none of our decisions mean anything.”

Produced by artist Hanan Harchol, this animation is just one of 14 short films produced by individual artists as part of a collective attempt to explore the meaning of the seder through an online venture called Projecting Freedom. The project, funded by a grant from the Covenant Foundation, is the brainchild of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El in New York, an adult learning center that promotes art and diversity, under the direction of Rabbi Leon Morris.

Artists received a small $1,000 stipend and attended nine classes together over the span of a year. Complementing other creative ventures like the Artists’ and Writers’ Beit Midrash, Projecting Freedom aims to convey Jewish text through film, and create original visual commentary, according to Rabbi Morris.

“It’s about the power of having a broader group of people own Jewish sacred text. At its core that’s what Skirball is about,” he said. “In a way, these filmmakers and video artists added a commentary that only they could add.”  Continue reading…