— More than 250 public television affiliates throughout the nation will broadcast, starting tomorrow through April 26, a 30-minute documentary entitled “Passover,” starring Ed Asner, star of motion pictures and TV. A feature of the TV show will be films of various groups in Israel celebrating the seder as well as an American model seder using “A Passover Haggadah, “the New Union Haggadah prepared in 1974 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the rabbinic group of the Reform movement of Judaism.
Producer of the television show is the Mississippi Center for Educational TV of Jackson, Mississippi, which has “one of the top reputations in the country for instructional television,” according to television sources.
It was also announced that Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, Professor of Liturgy at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City, and chairman of the Liturgy Committee of the CCAR, served as content advisor. Hoffman, who is considered an expert on the Haggadah, wrote the introduction to the CCAR Haggadah.
Another highlight of the nation-wide TV documentary will be the display of ancient and rare Haggadahs, as well as photographs of Sinai, Masada, and the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The film also shows Falasha Jews conducting a seder outside the house; a Yemenite seder program reciting the Exodus from Egypt, and an excerpt from a Georgian (Russian) seder showing the entrance to the Promised Land. The co-producers are Edward Cohen of Jackson, Miss., who is also writer of the production, and Edward Van Cleef of Dayton, Ohio.
Among the cities where the documentary will be shown are: New York, April 16, 10:30 pm and April 23, 2:30 pm; San Francisco, April 16, 8:30 pm; Buffalo, April 17, 6:30 pm; Sacramento, April 17, 1 pm and April 18, 6 pm; Los Angeles, April 19, 12 noon; Chicago, April 19, 1 pm; Springfield, Mass., April 22, 10:30 pm and April 26, 10:30 am; Connecticut, April 26, 3 pm.
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