The Safran Foer Haggadah

The Forward‘s got the scoop on novelist Jonathan Safran Foer’s next writing projects. The first is a continuation to his vegetarian activism:

Over the course of 2006, Foer spoke to specialists in biology, farming, ethics and nutrition as he drove around America visiting farms of all shapes, sizes and smells, those ranging from the small-scale organic to the industrial and downright toxic. He is chronicling his road adventure and the ecological crisis he observed in a new nonfiction book that looks to be a sort of muckraking cross between Edward Abbey and a modern version of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.”

The second is a new kind of Passover Haggadah:

“Passover is the jewel in the crown� of Judaism, Foer said, arguing that we don’t hold “capital J� Jewish books like the Haggadah to the same literary standards as “lowercase j� books, like a Philip Roth novel, when we should.

“There’s no reason we can’t make this book as good,â€? he said. “The themes are so important, so relevant, so exciting. The stories — everybody knows the stories, [from] the 10 plagues to the parting of the Red Sea. They have so much resonance, and this is an opportunity for artists to do something with them. The Haggadah begs us to make it new.” (MORE)