The Haggadah (Hebrew: הַגָּדָה‎, "telling") is a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. Reading the Haggadah at the Seder table is a fulfillment of the Scriptural commandment to each Jew to "tell your son" of the Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus in the Torah. ("And thou shalt tell thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that which the LORD did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. " Ex.  13:8)

Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews also apply the term Haggadah to the service itself, as it constitutes the act of "telling your son."

According to Jewish tradition, the Haggadah was compiled during the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods, although the exact date is unknown. It could not have been written earlier than the time of Rabbi Yehudah bar Elaay (circa 170 CE) who is the last tanna to be quoted therein. According to most Talmudic commentaries Rav and Shmuel argued on the compilation of the Haggadah, and hence it had not been completed as of then. Based on a Talmudic statement, it was completed by the time of Rav Nachman (mentioned in Pesachim 116a). There is a dispute, however, to which Rav Nachman, the Talmud was referring: According to some commentators, this was Rav Nachman bar Yaakov (circa 280 CE), while others maintain this was Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak (360 CE).

Hanna Rovina (Hebrew: חנה רובינא‎) (born 1 April 1893, Berazino, Minsk district (guberniya); died 3 February 1980, Tel Aviv), written also Hannah, Hana, or Chana Rovina or Robina, Israeli actress, is recognised as the original "First Lady of Hebrew Theatre".

Born in Belarus in the Russian Empire, she originally trained as a kindergarten teacher, at a course for Hebrew-speaking kindergarten teachers in Poland.

She began her career on stage at the "Hebrew Stage Theatre" of Nahum Tzemach. She joined the Habima theatre in 1917 just as it was being launched, and participated in its first production, a play by Yevgeny Vakhtangov. She became famous for her role as Leah'le, the young bride who is possessed by a demon in The Dybbuk by S. Ansky.

Rovina and the other actors of HaBima immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1928. She quickly became a symbol of the emergent Hebrew theatre, and especially of HaBima, which became the flagship of the new national theatre movement. For many years, the icon representing HaBima was a young girl in a white nightdress with two long tresses: Rovina in her role as Leah'le.

Arthur Szyk (June 16, 1894 – September 13, 1951) was a graphic artist, book illustrator, stage designer and caricaturist. Arthur Szyk was born into a Jewish family in Łódź, in the part of Poland which was under Russian rule in the 19th century. He always regarded himself both as a Pole and a Jew. From 1921, he lived and created his works mainly in France and Poland, and in 1937 he moved to the United Kingdom. In 1940 he settled permanently in the United States, where he was granted American citizenship in 1948.

Arthur Szyk became a renowned graphic artist and book illustrator as early as the interwar period – his works were exhibited and published not only in Poland, but also in France, the United Kingdom, Israel, and the United States. However, he gained real popularity through his war caricatures, in which, after the outbreak of World War II, he depicted the leaders of the Axis powers – mainly Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Emperor Hirohito. After the war, he also devoted himself to political issues, this time supporting the creation of Israel.

Yehoram Gaon (Hebrew: יהורם גאון) (informally, Yoram Gaon) (born December 28, 1939) is a Jewish Israeli singer, actor, director, producer, TV and radio host, and public figure. He has also written and edited books on Israeli culture.

The son of Sephardic Jewish parents—a Macedonian father and Turkish mother, both immigrants to Israel—he became an early inspiration of "solidarity and pride" for the Sephardic community.

Gaon was born in the Beit Hakerem section of Jerusalem in 1939. His father, Moshe-David Gaon, a well-known historian, was born in Sarajevo in 1889, and immigrated to British mandate Palestine, where members of his family had lived for five generations. He was a school master and Hebrew teacher in areas that included Jerusalem, Buenos Aires, and Izmir, Turkey. He was also a poet and a scholar of Ladino. In Turkey, he met and married Sara Hakim,^{[citation needed]} returning with her to Jerusalem.

Yehoram enlisted in the IDF in 1957.^{[citation needed]} In the military, he joined the Nahal entertainment troupe, beginning a career in the performing arts that would eventually bring him fame as both a singer and actor.

Jonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005). In 2009, he published a work of nonfiction titled Eating Animals.

Jonathan Safran Foer was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Albert Foer, a lawyer and President of the American Antitrust Institute, and Esther Safran Foer, a child of Holocaust survivors who was born in Poland and is now the Director of the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. Foer is the middle son in this tight-knit Jewish family; his older brother, Franklin, is the former editor of The New Republic and his younger brother Joshua is a freelance journalist. Foer was a "flamboyant" and sensitive child who, at the age of 8, was injured in a classroom chemical accident that resulted in "something like a nervous breakdown drawn out over about three years," during which "he wanted nothing, except to be outside his own skin."

Foer attended Georgetown Day School and Princeton University. In 1995, while a freshman at Princeton, Safran Foer took an introductory writing course with author Joyce Carol Oates, who took an interest in his writing, telling him that he had "that most important of writerly qualities, energy." Foer later recalled that "she was the first person to ever make me think I should try to write in any sort of serious way. And my life really changed after that." Oates served as the advisor to Safran Foer's senior thesis, an examination of the life of his maternal grandfather, the Holocaust survivor Louis Safran. For his thesis, Foer received Princeton's Senior Creative Writing Thesis Prize.