Russia Trying To Interfere In Haggadah To Make Slavery Seem Fine

Changes made to the text include replacing “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt” to “We were slaves to capitalist hegemony and the mainstream media.”

Moscow, March 15 – Kremlin agents continue to sow discord and to undermine other nations’ sense of confidence in their leaders, sources reported today, with a new initiative that aims to undercut a central assertion of the Jewish Passover Haggadah, namely that slavery is a bad thing.

As millions of Jews prepare for the seven-day festival celebrating liberation from physical and cultural subjugation, Russian intelligence operatives are working to hack certain prominent Haggadah publications and alter their content, with the objective of causing Seder attendees to question whether they want to be free at all, and that perhaps the Egyptian slavemasters are actually the aggrieved party in the whole story.

Mesorah Publications, a Brooklyn-based publisher of Jewish texts, confirmed this week that it had detected a security breach in its editing software, and had to recall a batch of Haggadahs from the distributor upon discovered alterations to the traditional text. Other Mesorah publications, mostly in their Artscroll series, have been put on hold pending another review.

Several Israeli publishers noted similar efforts to interfere in their texts. A police spokesman declined to identify the publishers, under investigation rules, but disclosed that the changes made to the text include replacing “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt” to “We were slaves to capitalist hegemony and the mainstream media.”

“The Four Questions, which are supposed to describe the odd juxtaposition of practices marking slavery with those of freedom, have undergone subtle alteration,” states the official. “For example, while the original authentic text, already recorded in some form in the late-second-century, notes that on other nights there is no insistence on either leavened or unleavened bread, on the first night of Passover only unleavened bread appears at the feast. One Russian change to the text inserts the phrase ‘and everyone knows only cucks eat unleavened bread.'”

In the final segment of the Haggadah, at least in the Ashkenazic rite, the famous liturgical poem “Had Gadya,” waxes metaphoric about the various empires and cultures that have in turn subjugated Israel and fallen. In the Kremlin version, gadya, the young goat, is replaced by a bear that soundly defeats various other creatures, including an eagle, a cabbage, another eagle, a pair of chopsticks, and a beefeater. God makes no appearance in the Russian version.

Kremlin officials denied any such effort. “It is not our work,” insisted Putin spokesman Leffin Myazov. “It is probably Jews with Russian citizenship behind this.”

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