Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?: The Four Questions Around the World »

Ilana Kurshan's essays and reviews have appeared in Lilith, The Forward, and the World Jewish Digest, among other publications. She works for a literary agency and studies Talmud in Jerusalem, where she lives.

This fascinating, informative, and beautifully illustrated books translates the Passover seder's Four Questions into twenty-three languages and provides capsule histories of the Jews in the countries where the languages are spoken.

The recitation of the Four Questions at the beginning of the Passover seder by the youngest participant is one of the highlights of the evening and captures its very essence: to keep the memory of the Exodus of the Jews from Egyptian slavery alive in our minds, and to teach our children about their heritage and history. This unique volume covers a variety of languages of the Jewish Diaspora—from French to Farsi, from Latin to Ladino, from Amharic to Afrikaans, from Yiddish to Swedish to Chinese. For each language a translation (and, where necessary, a transliteration) of the Four Questions is provided, accompanied by a brief overview of Jewish life and culture among the speakers of the language, and an illustrations of either historical or contemporary interest.

The perfect seder gift, Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights? is also an excellent introduction to Jewish history in the Diaspora for young and old alike.

Graham Christian Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - School Library Journal

A notable feature of modern Judaism, especially in America, is its inventiveness-its many variations within its long-standing traditions. As Passover approaches, some families will bring out a variety of Haggadahs; others will revise the old or write new ones for the events of this year. These two books illustrate different facets of that ongoing ingenuity in Jewish American life-neither of them, shockingly enough, a true Haggadah.

Kurshan takes the traditional "Four Questions" that drive the retelling of the story of the Exodus into 23 languages and gives a short account of the fate of the Jews in the country where each of these languages is spoken. This touchingly illustrated book is ideal for demonstrating the global reach of the Jewish Diaspora. Rips, a bookseller and longtime Seder host, collects anecdotes, observations, memories, and jokes-many of them irreverently hilarious-from the likes of Rita Rudner and Rabbi Harold Kushner. The book underscores the humor, the unpredictability, and the love that have shaped so many Seders for so many generations and includes a helpful glossary of terms for the Passover-unenlightened. For most collections.