The Szyk Haggadah reflects the times

It’s no wonder the Szyk Haggadah is among the most famous works of Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), master of miniature painting and the 16^th Century art of illumination. Szyk is referred to as an artist-activist for using his paintbrushes and ink pens to create commentaries on freedom, human dignity, and religious and racial tolerance. His work reflects the same universal themes as the narrative of the Jews’ exodus from Eqypt.

Throughout his career, Szyk worked as an illustrator of Judaic subjects and an illuminator of books and manuscripts. During the 1930s and 1940s, as Szyk witnessed the rise of fascism, his work turned to political cartoons and propaganda that exposed figures like Hitler, Goebbels, Hirohito, and Mussolini. Szyk became known as a “one-man army” against fascism whom Eleanor Roosevelt called “a solider in art.” It’s during this period that Szyk created his famous Haggadah.

Illustrated Haggadot first appeared in the 16^th century, said Molly Dubin, curator at Jewish Museum Milwaukee, a program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. “Historically the illustrations reflected the life experience of the illustrator,” she said.

Early illustrations of the four sons, for example, depicted the wicked son as a soldier. The warrior figure represented devastation and cruelty, as these were the personal experiences of the illustrators at that time. More recently, with the founding of the State of Israel, the wise son has been depicted as a proud soldier.

Szyk’s four sons similarly reflected his life experience. Three of the four were depicted as well-known types that the artist would have encountered in his native Poland. The simple son was “untutored, a physical laborer who left the philosophy and theology to others,” according to Dubin. The wise son was “a Yeshiva bucher, the perennial student of Torah.” The one who doesn’t know how to ask is “a loafer, on the dole, often dressed like a gentile, living on the fringe of Jewish society.”

During Szyk’s time the wicked son was typically portrayed “as a prosperous German Jew, a bergermeister who has forgone his Jewish identity and assimilated into the wider community,” Dubin said.

Szyk broke with tradition by portraying his wicked son as Hitleresque, reflecting the artist’s commitment to exposing oppression and intolerance. His original illustration included a swastika, leading some to surmise that the wicked son was Hitler himself. The swastika was removed prior to the printed edition.

“Today, scholars generally agree that the wicked son was not Hitler but someone who was so assimilated that he sympathized with the Nazi cause,” Dubin said. The implication is that assimilation is the equivalent of becoming the enemy of the Jewish people. 

According to Rabbi Tiferet Berenbaum of Congregation Shir Hadash in Milwaukee, Szyk was following the obligation of Jews “to see themselves as if they were leaving Egypt on Seder night (Pesachim 116b).”

Szyk found “the parallels between the Pesach narrative and the world around us,” she said. It’s Berenbaum’s view that he asked himself, “Who and what are the pharaohs today?”