If you look long enough at haggadah illustrations, you will notice that when it comes to the four sons, the wicked son has spent several centuries being depicted as a warrior. (The weapons and the uniform change in time and place, but the essence is the same). This shows of course Judaism’s commendable opposition to violence as a solution to the world’s problems. Interestingly enough there appears to have been a shift away from this trend in the 20th century. Perhaps a warrior is no longer as negative since warfare has changed in both purpose and method. Perhaps other things have begin to preoccupy us as “evil” with the decline in warfare the late 20th century has brought about. Or perhaps there’s another reason entirely. In the Szyk haggadah, a beautifully illustrated haggadah done by Marvin Szyk in 1930s Poland, he depicted the wicked son as German, complete with Hitler mustache. Szyk’s original haggadah was very anti-Nazi in many ways (most of which were actually censored by the publisher), and it seems clear that he did not view the warrior-Jew as wicked. Perhaps this is the paradigm change that changed the standard illustration of the wicked son in the haggadah.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 3:31 pm by Ari and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.