The Taylor seder was an annual event at which several of their friends assembled for a Haggadah reading and a great dinner. Because it was pervasive and free, we used the Maxwell House Haggadah as the source of our service. After a few years I became frustrated with that source, and chanced upon the Second Edition of the New Union Haggadah illustrated by Leonard Baskin. That was a breath of fresh air to me. We were not in a position to purchase sufficient quantities of that book for our group, so I undertook the task of creating a computer document based on its text.

       The first year I did it using a terrific DOS-based word processor called FinalWord that eventually evolved into Borland Sprint. Shortly afterward I acquired an early version of Ventura Publisher, and decided to redo the Haggadah using that program and to learn a bunch of Ventura in the process.

       Each year I would seek out other Haggadah's, often picking up interesting local versions as I travelled around the country. Each new Haggadah provided fuel for me to tinker with my version. Sometimes I borrowed a paragraph. Sometimes I gained inspiration for a new insight into a piece of the Seder which was then reflected in some addition or change.

       As the years unfolded, new computer technologies became available to me, and I would use the opportunity to convert my Haggadah to a new format in part as a way to learn the new technology. There have been versions of the Haggadah in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, and (most recently) HTML. You are now reading a version made with Adobe Pagemaker and converted to PDF for Adobe Acrobat.

       Throughout my "affair" with the Haggadah I have had some guiding principles in mind. Foremost among those principles was to make a document that I would be comfortable having my family and friends use. My comfort level requires that it be understandable and well written, based mostly in English but with sufficient Hebrew so as not to offend 3500 years of history. It had to be consistent with a view of Judaism that I hold, which leans strongly toward cultural liberalism. One of the great struggles is how to treat references to God/Adonai. I have adopted a gender-neutral way of doing it, that I hope does not offend traditionalists.

       I have written the Haggadah for an audience that often had a mixed background with Judaism, but was quite educated (many graduate students and professors). I wanted to weave into the Haggadah a lot of explanatory text, but do it in a way that didn't feel like it was a digression. On top of that requirement, I had to create something that was just long enough for my crowd to be willing to sit through. It could not be as long as a more traditional service because I would face a rebellion and a lot of excision, so I had to gloss over or omit many traditional passages. For a while I played with moving the order of the service around, but I have settled into a traditional order, since one of my goals is to teach our tradition to my family and friends.

       It arrived onto the Internet when I converted it to HTML. A main reason for the conversion (besides to learn HTML) was so that I would be relieved of the task of being a paper publisher of it. Once it was up on the net, I could hand out a URL whenever people asked me for a copy. That's much easier than handing out paper copies which must then be replaced. Now that it has been on the net for a few years it has obtained somewhat of an international reputation which I enjoy but which I do nothing to promote. I let people discover it as they can, then use it as they wish.

       For those interested, I have an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering, a Masters in Experimental Psychology, and a Doctorate from the University of Michigan in Educational Psychology. I've been playing with, and earning a living from, computers for all of my adult life. Currently I am a computer consultant in the Ann Arbor Michigan area.

                                                                  Robert Parnes