it as part of a complete illuminated Haggadah—of which many have been produced over the centuries—indicates that he viewed the song both as a message of Jewish liberation based on the Exodus story and as an allegorical expression of freedom for the Russian people. Several stylistic and icono­ graphic elements that were incorporated into the final two plates for the litho­ graphs of 1919 underscore Lissitzky's interest in the song as a parable of the Russian Revolution, of the defeat of the czarist rule and the victory and lib­ eration of the Russian masses. The angel of death, for example, who is shown slaying the slaughterer Fig. 3. Eliezer (El) Lissitzky, sketch for the final in verse 9 and then again as the victim of God's divine hand in the next verse of "Had gadya," 1917, watercolor, 29.8 x 26 cm and final verse, wears a crown, absent in the 1917 sketches, whose shape 3 1 (11 /4 x 10 /4in).TretyakovGallery, Moscow resembles that of czarist crowns as depicted in Russian folk art. In verse 10, the hand of God is strikingly similar to an image of a hand that appeared on one of the first series of stamps printed after the revolution of 1917. On the LISSITZKY'S EARLIEST ILLUSTRATIONS BASED ON THE "HAD GADYA" stamp, the hand is clearly a symbol of the Soviet people. And the angel of song were a set of brightly colored, folklike watercolors that he painted in death, who is depicted as dying in the set of illustrations from 1917 (see fig. 1917 (fig. 3). Two years later, he returned to the Passover song, first creating 3), is now dead—clearly, in light of the symbolic link to the czar, killed by the a series of watercolors and then, closely based on the watercolors, a set of force of the revolution.13 lithographs. The secular Yiddish organization Kultur Lige, of which Lissitzky The optimism expressed in Lissitzky's plate for the final verse is telling and fellow artists Natan Altman and David Shterenberg were founders, pub­ given the political situation in Russia in February 1919. The period in which lished the lithographs in book form in 1919 in an edition of seventy­five Lissitzky produced his lithographs was one of great violence. Although 11 copies. From the earliest drawings to the final plates, subtle but significant the Provisional Government of 1917 had announced the transformation of changes occurred in Lissitzky's treatment of the subject matter. By compar­ Russia into a liberal democratic and pluralistic state and had abolished ing the two versions, we can see that for Lissitzky the appeal of illustrating laws restricting citizens on the basis of religion or nationality, in October the song was twofold: not only did it enable him to create a modern piece of 1917 the Bolsheviks toppled the Provisional Government, and the country Judaica but it also allowed him to represent and comment on the Jewish descended into civil war. Yet even the potential victory of the Red Army was experience in Russia during these volatile years. obviously a great source of hope for young Russian Jewish artists like A folk song probably derived from a late medieval German source, Lissitzky, and in the imagery of his Had gadya, and especially the prostrate "Had gadya" was first included in the Passover service, the Seder, in the angel of death, Lissitzky posited this hope. 12 fifteenth century. Though not part of the service proper, the song appears In terms of the development of Lissitzky's artistic technique, the litho­ at the end of the Haggadah, the text used at the Seder. The song has a con­ graphs reveal several fascinating and novel approaches to typography and catenated, or linked, structure, and it introduces a series of characters, each design. Here we see an early example of Lissitzky's integration of letters and one destroying the last: a cat devours the kid, a dog gobbles up the cat, a images: for each verse, he arranges the words of the story to form an archi­ stick beats the dog, fire burns the stick, and so on, until God slays the angel tectural frame around the illustration. To connect text and image even fur­ of death, thus ending the chain of violence. The connection from verse to ther, and perhaps to make the book more accessible to young audiences, verse is not necessarily causal or logical; for instance, there is no particular Lissitzky invented a system of color coding in which the color of the princi­ reason why a cat would appear and eat the kid. The capricious nature of the pal character in each illustration matches the color of the corresponding song suggests that it may have been designed to capture and hold the atten­ word for that character in the Yiddish text. For instance, the kid in verse 1 is tion of young children until the conclusion of the Seder—certainly, it gave yellow, and the Yiddish word y^VPE (kid) in the arch above is also yellow; the Lissitzky the freedom to be whimsical in his illustrations. green hue of the father's face is matched by the green type used for the 14 The precise meaning of the "Had gadya" song is ambiguous, but, given Yiddish word PONO (father). While the bold colors and two­dimensionality the context of the Passover Seder, which celebrates the story of the Exodus, of the lithographs are reminiscent of Chagall's work, the formal properties V it is traditionally thought to be a parable for the divine deliverance of the of the illustrations are also Cubistic in their use of geometric forms and Jewish people, whom Moses led out of Egypt and freed from bondage. The Futuristic in their use of the spiral to evoke motion. With their colorful flat­ different characters worsted in the song have been interpreted, by extension, ness, expressive distortions of proportion, rhythmic simplification of form, as nations that have attempted to destroy or oppress the Jewish people. and humorous and sometimes grotesque faces of beasts and humans, the Lissitzky's decision to let his Had gadya stand on its own, rather than publish Had gadya illustrations yield a sense of childlike fantasy.