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Dr. Seuss Does Mah Nishtana
Contributed by Hillary Goldberg

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

Why is it only on Passover night 

we never know how to do anything right? 
We don't eat our meals in the regular ways, 
the ways that we do on all other days. 

`Cause on all other nights we may eat 
all kinds of wonderful good bready treats, 
like big purple pizza that tastes like a pickle, 
crumbly crackers and pink pumpernickel, 
sassafras sandwich and tiger on rye, 
fifty felafels in pita, fresh-fried, 
with peanut-butter and tangerine sauce 
spread onto each side up-and-down, then across, 
and toasted whole-wheat bread with liver and ducks, 
and crumpets and dumplings, and bagels and lox, 
and doughnuts with one hole and doughnuts with four, 
and cake with six layers and windows and doors. 
Yes-- on all other nights we eat all kinds of bread, 
but tonight of all nights we munch matzah instead. 

And on all other nights we devour 
vegetables, green things, and bushes and flowers, 
lettuce that's leafy and candy-striped spinach, 
fresh silly celery (Have more when you're finished!) 
cabbage that's flown from the jungles of Glome 
by a polka-dot bird who can't find his way home, 
daisies and roses and inside-out grass 
and artichoke hearts that are simply first class! 
Sixty asparagus tips served in glasses 
with anchovy sauce and some sticky molasses-- 
But on Passover night you would never consider 
eating an herb that wasn't all bitter. 

And on all other nights you would probably flip 
if anyone asked you how often you dip. 
On some days I only dip one Bup-Bup egg 
in a teaspoon of vinegar mixed with nutmeg, 
but sometimes we take more than ten thousand tails 
of the Yakkity-birds that are hunted in Wales, 
and dip them in vats full of Mumbegum juice. 
Then we feed them to Harold, our six-legged moose. 
Or we don't dip at all! We don't ask your advice. 
So why on this night do we have to dip twice? 

And on all other nights we can sit as we please, 
on our heads, on our elbows, our backs or our knees, 
or hang by our toes from the tail of a Glump, 
or on top of a camel with one or two humps, 
with our foot on the table, our nose on the floor, 
with one ear in the window and one out the door, 
doing somersaults over the greasy k'nishes 
or dancing a jig without breaking the dishes. 
Yes-- on all other nights you sit nicely when dining-- 
So why on this night must it all be reclining?
haggadah Section: Cover
Source: Dr. Seuss

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