The exodus story you know ‘All Too Well’ gets retold in new Taylor Swift haggadah
A Jewish mother and an illustrator have teamed up to create an unofficial Taylor Swift haggadah for Passover this year. (Courtesy Shelley Atlas Serber, Wikimedia. Design by Jackie Hajdenberg)
(JTA) — Taylor Swift has (unofficially) entered her Exodus era.
Swifties can now combine their love for the pop icon while celebrating Passover, thanks to the “Unofficial Taylor Swift Haggadah,” written by author Na’ama Ben-David.
Ben-David says the idea came from her teenage daughter, a big fan of Swift.
“She loves talking about Taylor Swift,” Ben-David said in a statement. “Her music, her lyrics and the inspirational messages she gets from listening to the albums. When we started talking about Pesach, she remarked that there are a lot of parallels between the story and themes of Pesach, and Taylor Swift’s music — and the idea was born!”
Illustrated by Shelley Atlas Serber, this edition of the haggadah, or central text that guides participants through the Passover seder, joins a crowd of creative Passover haggadahs published for the 2024 holiday.
It begins by calling the seder, a word that literally means “order” or “sequence,” a “setlist,” and is steeped in Tay-Tay esoterica, including: a paper plane motif (a reference to a necklace mentioned in the song “Out of the Woods”); page numbers hidden in friendship bracelets (a reference to a lyric in the song “You’re on Your Own, Kid” from her 2022 album “Midnights” and a trend adopted by Swiftie concertgoers in recent years); hot pink cowgirl hats from the singer-songwriter’s early days as a teenage country artist; and trivia about Swift’s life and discography.
Ben-David connects one especially famous metaphorical section of the haggadah, the story of the four sons — the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask — to four characters whose romantic entanglements are a theme of the 2020 album “Folklore.”
“The vibrant and modern design of the Haggadah was inspired by Taylor Swift’s worldwide hits,” Serber said in a statement. “When we all sit down at our seder tables around the world, we share the same songs that we’ve enjoyed together for years — the hits of the Jewish people.”
The book, which is printed in Hebrew and English, is available in paperback and costs $19.89 — Taylor Swift’s birth year, and the name of her fifth studio album, released in 2014.
First up on the list of the 10 plagues? Blood — or should we say, “Bad Blood.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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