«alhadeff passover haggadah» personal project spring 2010 - spring 2011
site: atlanta, ga tools: InDesign, photoshop Another challenge in typesetting a traditional text like the Haggadah, is that paragraphing and line content remains fixed and resistant to change. Keeping sections of related content together on the same page often resulted in too much or too little space, especially with the added complication of adding images (with captions).
A bilingual Hebrew and English manual for the service of the Passover meal displays the traditional text read with instructions for the Passover ritual translated into JudeoSpanish (Ladino). The book is illustrated with family photos from over 40 years of celebrating the Passover in Atlanta, Chicago, and elsewhere. A family tree section at the beginning records the family’s history since the late 19th century in Constantinople and the Isle of Rhodes and illustrates portraits of the ‘first-cousins’ and group photos from the recently begun family reunions.
Modern Latin fonts Parisine and Trebuchet are used to clearly mark the text off into sections which family members take turns reading aloud. Recent re-translations of the Bible are drawn on to better clarify the text for contemporary usages.
The Haggadah is recorded with the text as passed-down in a typewritten copy from Turkey and includes several popular table songs translated into Ladino. After the main text of the Haggadah, a traditional Alhadeff seder menu is given, with recipes for important selections.
The facing Hebrew text is typeset in a traditional font, allowing the texts to be recalled in their original language. Following the conventions of Hebrew typesetting, the book is bound on the right-side and ‘drop-words’ are used to delineate sections and paragraphs. Prominence is given to quoted biblical verses to clearly expose the underlying structure of the service, usually hidden by conventional typesetting.
One of the chief challenges in creating a multilingual book, especially moving between a Western language and a Middle-Eastern language, was proper alignment of text lines, especially given that many non-native speakers are not expert in reading Hebrew text without added vowel markings. Instead of stacking a line of text on top of one vertical space, extra space must be allowed for above and below the line of consonants to avoid collisions with the lines above and below.
Alhadeff Passover Haggadah
Alhadeff Passover Haggadah La Agada de la familia Alhadeff from Ródhos and Constantinopolis: to Atlanta…and beyond
Ródhos, 1522
Finally, the front cover is illustrated with Braun and Hogenberg’s 1522 map of Rhodes from Civitas Oberum Terrarum and the back cover with a hand-rendering of one of the famous windmills in the Rhodes harbour.
La Agada de la familia Alhadeff
Passover 5771—2011
daniel v alhadeff - portfolio - 36
Passover 5771—2011
from Ródhos and Constantinopolis: to Atlanta…and beyond