"Three things come together in these volumes," says Emily Rose's father Daniel, a real estate developer and senior member of the family who lives in New York City. "Graphic arts, the Rose family's love for books, and the Jewish tradition." In 1974, graphic artist Leonard Baskin's watercolor contributions to the family seder book highlighted Hebrew verses from the Song of Songs that are read liturgically during Passover to celebrate regeneration and the return of spring. A decade later, minimalist painter and sculptor Frank Stella's collages for the seder book included one that gave prominence to a line from 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine: "Ever since the Exodus, freedom has spoken with a Hebrew accent." And in 1994, the seder book featured striking black-and-white photographs by Joan Roth, known for her pictures of Jewish women around the world.

The illustrated book has been a way to introduce creativity, change, and interpretation into the seder, says Emily Rose. "That to me is the Jewish tradition. We have tradition, and then we reinterpret it every year." Reinterpretation was the theme for New York-based artist and illustrator Mark Podwal's playful 1981 pen-and-ink drawing of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet literally dancing off a Torah scroll onto the pages of an English-language haggadah -- and then off again. The lively line drawing is accompanied by these words: "The Torah is a living document and must be reinterpreted to each generation in its own idiom, in the language and culture of the time."

Michael Terry, chief librarian of the Dorot Jewish Division at the New York Public Library and curator of the library's exhibition of Passover-related manuscripts, books, and prints, of which the Rose family's seder book is a part, says that the Passover ritual "is all about representation -- representing the defining moment in Jewish history through speaking, singing, acting, and as far back as the most primitive Passover gesture of all, smearing a lamb's blood on the doorposts through painting." The object of a seder, he says, is "to visualize and re-create a sense of participation." The Rose seder book both reinforces that participation and serves as an aesthetic endorsement of the participants' religious and spiritual attachments -- an expression of the belief that "this is my God, and I will beautify him," says Terry.

Each of the commissioned artists also creates a sign-in page for the family, another part of the family's Passover tradition. As guests arrive at the seder, "Everyone signs in, no matter how young," says Rose. "The seder book illustrates the richness of the tradition visually" she adds. "It's about the multiple ways one can interpret the haggadah." Because of the range of the artists' relation to Judaism and their varying understandings of Passover, says Rose, "It's a very liberating book" -- not unlike the Exodus story itself.

Juliana Ochs is a doctoral candidate in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, where she is a Gates Cambridge scholar. Missy Daniel is an editor at RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY.