For busy parents, working professionals, and homebound populations like the elderly, Instacart can feel like a godsend. Customers place orders through the company and can have items from stores like Costco, Whole Foods, Kroger, Petco, and CVS delivered straight to their doorsteps.

Instacart has made schedules much more manageable, turning into a multibillion-dollar venture along the way. Founded only seven years ago, Instacart now makes about $2 billion a year in revenue, according to a recent Forbes estimate; it’s credited with changing the grocery industry forever, and CEO Apoorva Mehta is celebrated as a top tech executive after founding 20 failed startups.

Instacart’s success is dependent on some 70,000 independent contractors the company calls “shoppers” who purchase and deliver groceries. Like their peers in the gig economy, they aren’t guaranteed minimum wage or overtime. One recent study even found that most of them aren’t making minimum wage before tips, though Instacart disputes these kinds of calculations.

Back in February, the company was the subject of widespread outrage after it was reportedly found guilty of tip theft; the company was applying tips to worker baseline pay, as opposed to letting them keep tips as extra pocket cash. The company publicly apologized and announced that Instacart would be paying its shoppers more “fairly,” with a new pay structure that included increasing its minimum baseline payment on orders from $3 to between $7 and $10 (though the company did not clarify what would put a shopper on one end of the range versus the other).

But some claim the company’s pay structure has only gotten worse. Recently, I spent some time talking to Kris, a 53-year-old former paralegal who works as an Instacart shopper in Seattle. Kris explained the routine of an Instacart shopper, how she believes the startup is making it harder to earn money, and why she believes it rarely has the best interest of its workforce in mind. Our interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

In response to this conversation, a spokesperson from Instacart said that the company “values our community of over 70,000 dedicated shoppers and are committed to improving the Instacart shopper experience. While there’s more work to do, we’ve begun turning feedback into actionable changes for shoppers. The voice of the Instacart shopper community plays an integral role in shaping our product and we look forward to continuing to have an open dialogue with shoppers to deliver the best possible experience.”

When did you start working as an Instacart shopper?

A few years ago, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, which prevented me from working a regular job. I needed flexibility, and saw an ad for Instacart. I know the company has been around for a while, but it feels like it’s only been really big in Seattle over the last year. I started in January of 2018.

My goal is to be able to make $100 a day, in order to support myself. I used to be able to pull that off by working about four hours, four days a week, but Instacart changed its pay structure a few months ago and these changes have affected us poorly. Now it takes about six days to make that.

What’s it like to grocery shop for other people?

I shop for them the way I would shop for myself. I think of it as a personal luxury shopping service, so I am checking the dates on the bread and milk, looking for the best produce, and making sure I find all of the special requests. I think there’s a lot of work that goes into this job that people don’t think about. All produce, for example, has to be bagged and weighed, so you are constantly working with a scale to make sure everything is accurate. We also spend a lot of time waiting on lines at the deli, or at the fish counter.

Are there any rules of grocery shopping that are unique to Instacart?

One big one is to not give the customer the receipt. You can actually get deactivated if you do. They are marking up products so that Instacart can make a profit as a third-party vendor, and customers get Instacart receipts emailed to them. The company doesn’t want us giving customers the grocery receipt because then everyone would see the real costs. We also have to take off all stickers that reveal any sales or prices, like a buy-one-get-one.

[Instacart told Vox the price discrepancies are easy to find in its app.]

How does your current payment structure with Instacart work? Are you getting paid per item?

No, we used to get paid like that. We’d make a 40-cent commission on each item. But in November, Instacart changed the system so we now get paid via a batch payment.

It’s become really confusing. We don’t know how our payments are calculated, other than the fact that Instacart gives us a $7 to $10 baseline, and then some payment that’s supposed to cover the costs of mileage from a store to a customer. Instacart says our payments are based on some sort of algorithm, but they aren’t transparent with us and none of us know how the payments work.

Can you walk me through a breakdown of an order?

Sure. The other day, I picked up an order that paid me $25.02. Instacart covered $20.99 and then the customer tipped me $4.03. The order included cases of water and soda. I know the baseline pay was $7 to $10, but I have no idea how they calculated the rest of the pay.

Instacart’s payment system, in general, is pretty frustrating because sometimes the payments can be really high, and sometimes it can be really low. It’s become pretty unreliable, and a lot of us feel like Instacart is playing games with our income so that the company can keep the profits.

[Instacart said its payment system was redesigned “to improve, enhance and create clarity around shopper compensation. The new minimums better protect shoppers from smaller, outlying batches and the changes increased Instacart’s overall contribution to shopper earnings.”]

How do you feel like the company is playing games with your income?

A good example is how Instacart moved from commission-based payments to batch payments with multiple orders in each batch. Recently, for example, I went to Kroeger’s for an order, and I got a batch payment with somewhere between $7 to $10 as a baseline. There were two different customer orders on the batch, though. So I had to run around for customer A’s order, and then do customer B’s shopping list. Really, my baseline pay should be $14 to $20 because it’s two orders, but Instacart has lumped them together when you are going to one store. I’ve done triple batches too. Instacart just never has our best interest in mind.

[Instacart told Vox that while the $7 to $10 baseline pay applies to multi-order batches, “shoppers have an opportunity to get additional pay through boosts earned for each order in the batch, as well as customer tips from each individual order in the batch.”]

Do they offer any incentives for you to make extra money?

They do, but those have also been harder to come by. I’m in a lot of [social media] groups for Instacart shoppers, and we all agree that since the chaos happened in February, things have actually gotten worse. Personally, my income has fallen 30 percent.

Instacart used to give you $3 extra if you got a five-star bonus from a customer, but the place to leave reviews has recently become harder to find. I’ve confirmed this with my customers. Unlike the Uber app, which has an automatic pop-up window for the customer to review the driver, shoppers have to go through multiple steps now to leave a star-rating. I believe that this is on purpose. Anything that costs Instacart money, they make sure the app works in their favor.

We also noticed that the tip was magically moved to 5 percent as a default setting which, quite honestly, does not cut it for this job. Not that it matters: Our tips are still disappearing. I have seen with my own eyes, and I believe Instacart is keeping them.

[Instacart said it offers “several additional opportunities to earn money” like “peak boosts” that give shoppers bonuses for working during busy times, as well as “heavy order payments.”]

I’ve asked Instacart about keeping tips, and the company denies this is happening.

Instacart is not being transparent with us. As shoppers, we have no idea if we are getting the full tips or not. We don’t get notifications if the tip has been increased after the delivery. We just have to believe Instacart, and this is a company that has caught underpaying tips before and had to pay out [a settlement in a class action lawsuit].

Us Instacart shoppers have seen our tips go down significantly, and we just assume the company is taking it. I absolutely believe they are still pocketing our tips, and I’m not the only one. I’m in groups on Reddit, and Facebook, and a few local ones in Seattle, and this has happened to many of us. I’ve spoken with Instacart shoppers who have watched their customer’s phones when they’ve sent a $15 tip. It will be confirmed on the customer’s phone, but the Instacart shoppers will still only get a portion of it.

What was the reaction when the company said they were going to start treating shoppers better?

We all rolled our eyes. It looked like one giant publicity show to us because Instacart has actually gotten rid of ways that we can earn more.

There used to be a club bump, where you could get $5 for shopping at Costco or Sam’s Club, and that’s gone. There used to be a bump for spending more than $200, but now that’s gone. We also used to have a long distance bump for driving more than 14 miles, but that’s gone too.

Honestly, that whole episode felt like a punishment to us Instacart shoppers because we had asked for a little bit of transparency, and that makes sense for Instacart, since the company builds punishment into the system.

How are workers punished?

If you decline an Instacart order, they’ll have you sit for 20-30 minutes until they’ll find you a new job. We joke that it’s a “time out” for turning down a job. The algorithm penalizes shoppers who turn down orders.

Instacart also has this demerit system called reliability incidents. You have to give the company six hours’ notice if you are going to back out on the number of hours you sign up for, and if you don’t, you get a reliability incident. After you get four reliability incidents, you are only able to select certain hours. On Sunday, Instacart hours unlock for the week, so I can make my schedule ahead of time. With enough reliability incidents, though, they only unlock one day ahead, so it’s essentially a punishment. This doesn’t really seem fair, given that we are independent contractors.

[Instacart told Vox that “reliability incidents are put in place to ensure we can offer a consistently beneficial experience to both our customers and our shoppers.”]

What would a better Instacart payment system look like for you?

Most of us want Instacart to be paying us on a commission system again, but where we are paid per unit — not item, unit. A unit, for Instacart, is how many of an item a customer wants. If they order four 2-liter bottles of Coke, that’s one item, four units, but the commission was only paid on the item, which is the Coke. If a customer ordered 15 apples, we wanted 40 cents per apple because there’s labor into picking all that, but they paid us 40 cents when someone ordered apples, not paid per apple.

I also think they should be creating more ways for us to make money, not taking away our bonuses. There should be more incentives for us to work and make more, just like the way they punish us when we don’t.

Lastly, we want tips to be totally separate from Instacart payments. We don’t like that we’re sent jobs where the company gets their hands on our tips.

What parts do you enjoy about the job?

I really love getting to know the staff at grocery stores. In Seattle, a lot of stores are hiring refugees and people with disabilities, and it’s a great opportunity to get to know them because when you’re a shopper, you see them every day and develop connections.

I also love seeing the populations who need this type of service. I love delivering to parents that have small babies, and I deliver to a lot of sick people, and people with disabilities who live in group homes. I also love my elderly customers, because for a lot of them you are the only social interaction they are getting, so I try to make it meaningful. There’s one elderly woman who I’ve shopped for a few times who lives in an assisted living facility, and I delivered her groceries last year right before Thanksgiving. I picked up a slice of pumpkin pie for her because I know she lives alone and you can’t have Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie! Interactions like that make the job feel really fulfilling.

What do you dislike?

I hate that we don’t get compensated for our wait time. Uber, for example, pays drivers who wait on riders, but I can be leaning on a buzzer for 20 minutes before someone will let me in. Seattle has a lot of buildings where you can’t get up to floors without key access, and so I can sometimes spend almost two hours a day waiting on people to come get their order.

I also don’t like that the company doesn’t take into account difficult parts of the job, like if there are a lot of stairs. I’m dragging huge orders from Costco to houses on hills with a lot of stairs and it’s a hazard that I’m just expected to deal with. Instacart also doesn’t take into account weather issues, which is a big deal in Seattle. Even when it snows here, they are expecting us to deliver to customers as usual. I’ve been to houses where nobody has cleaned the driveway or sidewalks, and have had to carry watermelons through the snow. To Instacart, that just isn’t a big deal.

Who are the worst tippers?

Rich tech people. This city is basically consumed with people who work for Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, and they tend to congregate in certain neighborhoods that I deliver in. A lot of them work from home, and so I see them. They are always on conference calls, and telling me to just leave their stuff at the door. The human interaction is limited to basically nothing, and so they don’t feel like they have to tip me much. They will order 60 bottles of expensive kombucha and organic green onions with comments like how I have to make sure I’m buying them ones that are two inches thick, but then they tip me $2.

I don’t think people understand the terms of this job, and it bothers us that Instacart’s automatic options for a tip is 5 percent, or no tip at all, considering that [as independent contractors] we supply our own vehicles and bear all the expenses. A tip could be the difference in a gig worker making rent, paying for school or medical or something really important in their life.

What do you want people to know about your job at Instacart?

People think we are just packing up bags, which can be done by a machine. It can’t be. We are looking for parking, moving around the store, weighing and bagging stuff, waiting on line, paying, driving to customers, and unloading. Our grocery shopping is being tailored very specifically to you and your family, and it requires not only a lot of personal handling, but is saving you the time and difficulty of driving, parking, loading, and unloading. I think the human factor of this job is totally discounted.

On January 22, 2018, a father living in New York City filed a complaint on SaferProducts.gov, the website of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It read, in part:

“My 6 month old son was put down for a nap in the Fisher-Price Rock n Play. During the time of his nap, he rolled over in the Rock N Play and silently died. The Rock N Play is sold as a sleeper and is marketed for ‘great overnight sleep’ … Fisher-Price has been notified of infant deaths due to their product and will still not recall it. This product can not be labeled as a sleeper or for “great overnight sleep”. My son was a beautiful, healthy baby and only died because of the Rock N Play and the false sense of security they provide with their false and UNSAFE claims of the Rock N Play being used for safe sleep.”

On April 12, 2019, Mattel, the owner of Fisher-Price, recalled 4.7 million Rock ‘n Plays it had sold, citing safety concerns.

The recall, which essentially forbids any retailer from selling the troubled product, happened more than a year after this complaint of an infant death caused by the Rock ‘n Play was made to the CPSC, and likely only happened because a Consumer Reports article had recently linked 32 infant deaths to its product, causing the American Academy of Pediatrics to urge the CPSC to recall it. As angry Facebook commenters noted, this recall was long overdue.

The CPSC had for many years heard complaints that the Rock ‘n Play was dangerous. The baby sleeper, which came out in 2009, rocked, vibrated, and played music to soothe an infant. Although the sleeper’s snug and angled cocoon-like shape directly violated the AAP’s SIDS prevention guidelines that recommend babies sleep on flat surfaces, the Rock ‘n Play advertised as a safe sleep product. Yet there were dozens of complaints filed to the CPSC about how some infants were developing plagiocephaly, or flat head syndrome, because of the bed’s shape or “respiratory issues” because of the product’s tendency to grow mold. Parents had also labeled the Rock ‘n Play an “asphyxiation hazard” because of the way it laid babies in an upright position.  

And yet, the fact that it took years for Fisher-Price to voluntarily recall the Rock ‘n Play speaks to the long and complicated recall process in the US — a process public safety advocates say needs to be improved.

How a product gets recalled

When shoppers spend money on a product, they assume it’s been expertly tested, manufactured, and produced. In reality, though, millions of units get pulled from shelves every year because they are safety hazards: Overly flammable BBQs, lawn mowers that are liable to spit out sharp objects, toys that kids can choke on, scuba diving masks that cause restricted airflow, and cellphones that spontaneously combust.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, a tiny government agency, is in charge of the recall process. The CPSC researches hazardous products, studies consumer complaints, enforces safety rules in specific product categories, and works with companies to issue recalls.

The CPSC has been around since 1971, when Congress established the Consumer Product Safety Act, establishing the agency as a watchdog that would keep consumers safe from potentially hazardous products. This law was reissued in 2008 as the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, giving categories like children’s products specific safety rules for the first time.

The CPSC now monitors categories like baby products; toys; appliances and other home goods; sports and recreational items; and fire and carbon monoxide-emitting items like generators and space heaters, as well as products with lead or mercury. (Vehicle recalls happen through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration while food recalls are issued by the Food Safety and Inspection Service and by the Food and Drug Administration.)

The CPSC has five commissioners (the majority of the seats go to the sitting president’s political party, but no more than three are allowed to be from the same party to ensure bipartisanship). The agency sifts through complaints filed against roughly 15,000 different types of products and issues about 300 recalls a year.

In order for a product to be recalled, the CPSC first needs to determine if it can “present a significant risk to consumers.” Coming to this determination is not so easy, though, as Joseph Martyak, the director of communications at the CPSC, writes in an email (the CPSC did not make its commissioners available for this story).

“Many of the reports CPSC receives require no corrective action because CPSC staff concludes that the reported issue or product defect does not create a substantial product hazard,” Martyak writes. “In the case of reporting a non-compliance with a CPSC rule or regulation, there are other corrective actions that CPSC staff may consider short of a recall, for example, correcting future production, destroying products, or removing or repairing the non-compliant aspect of the product prior to sale.”

Once a report is issued, the product is investigated by the CPSC staff, which determines if a recall is necessary. Martyak says most product recalls kick off when a brand alerts the CPSC. Legally, all companies have to report when they find a defect in one of their products that could cause harm or risk of death, or if they are aware that they are violating mandatory consumer products safety rules. Martyak says the CPSC’s advice is “when in doubt, report.”

But the CPSC doesn’t just rely on companies to report on themselves; it gathers data about product-related deaths from coroners and hospitals, and studies news reporting. It also fields complaints filed to CPSC’s own website.

If the CPSC does decide something needs to be recalled, it works directly with the company to come up with a game plan, like how it will remove products from stores and what type of refunds customers will get. Most recalls are voluntary, since brands don’t want to face the PR disaster of publicly butting heads with a public safety watchdog agency.

In some rare situations, though, if a company doesn’t agree to pull its products, the CPSC will sue in order to issue a mandatory recall. Last year, the agency sued Britax after the company refused to recall a stroller that had a faulty wheel that kept popping off, injuring children and adults. The Washington Post recently reported that the CPSC agreed to settle with Britax, a decision that was moved along by a commissioner appointed by President Trump. Public safety advocates had previously raised concern that Trump’s picks for the CPSC had close relationships with the business world and might bring their biases with them when faced with holding corporations responsible.

The case for improving the recall system

As Martyak of the CPSC notes, not every death or injury associated with a product results in a recall. In many cases, companies are able to shift the blame onto consumers. In the case of the Fisher-Price Rock ‘n Play, the company said the deaths linked to the sleeper were caused by a product misuse; in an emailed statement to Vox, Fisher-Price VP Chuck Scothon said that there were “reported incidents in which the product was used contrary to the safety warnings and instructions.”

Adam Garber, a consumer watchdog with the United States Public Interest Research Group, says the CPSC should be active instead of reactive; it should tell companies to halt the sale of a product until the investigation is concluded.

“We would argue that when it comes to death being tied to a product, safety should be ensured first,” he says. “At a minimum, the sale of the product should be stopped, especially if there are children involved, and people should be notified that products that they own are being investigated.”

Martyak admitted in his email that the agency does not seek out complaints; it does not read negative product reviews on website, where plenty of these product complaints live (the comments section for Rock ‘N Play listings on Amazon were littered with warnings). Instead, it waits for companies to report themselves to the CPSC. This system might have worked a decade ago, but with the surge of manufacturing, cheap labor overseas, and the ability for anyone to sell anything online today, Garber believes the agency needs to be aggressive.

“The current methods of the Consumer Product Safety Commission allows them to stay on top of a market where there are, let’s say, 1,000 new products,” he says. “But in reality, there are tens of thousands of new products hitting the market every year.”

Advocates also take issue with the nature of recalls — specifically, that they are product-focused, as opposed to category-focused. For example, the CPSC has reported that every two weeks, a child dies after a piece of furniture or a TV tips over and falls on them. In 2017, Ikea recalled 29 million Malm dressers after the model was linked to the deaths of at least eight children. Consumer Reports has identified 24 different dressers in 2018 that have the same safety hazards as Ikea’s Malm dressers. None have been recalled. Neither have copycats of the Rock ‘n Play.

“Because a lot of recalls are related to an individual product or a manufacturing flaw, there’s no invitation for a recall on a class of products,” Garber says. “Really, they should all be recalled, and at a minimum, the CPSC could stop the sale of these items until they do further investigation.”

Do recalls even work?

Advocates have issues with the recall itself: How do customers even find out?

When a product is recalled, both the brand and the CPSC spread the news via press releases, social media, and the occasional personal notification if a company has access to a customer’s information. But Nancy Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger (KID), a nonprofit dedicated to the safety of children’s products, believes the CPSC lets brands off too easily, since they don’t make it mandatory for companies to track down shoppers or ensure that the recalled product disappears completely. KID, in fact, was founded in 1998  by the parents of a baby who died in a recalled portable crib; news about the recall had never reached his parents.

“Getting these products out of people’s homes is the hardest part, and we don’t believe there’s enough emphasis on making sure the recalls are effective,” she says. “Guarantee, in a year from now, we’ll hear about injuries of more children from [the Rock ‘n Play] because there’s no planning to make sure every customer is reached.”

Consumer safety watchdogs note that since recalls aren’t as effective as they should be, the CPSC should really be focused on something that’s crucial: product safety.

What it can do, and what advocates want, is for the agency to make product safety mandatory. Currently, there are no laws that make product development teams factor in safety. The CPSC has mandatory safety standards for about 200 products, including electric garage door openers and children’s cribs. Other products, though, are subject to voluntary standards, or considered “industry consensus.” These standards are put together by groups like the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which works with manufacturers, retailers, and other product experts. But they are suggestions; companies do not have to fully comply by them. According to the US Government Accountability Office, “compliance with voluntary standards is not routinely tracked.”

“Recalls should be the last line of defense in our product safety system, and the first is that dangerous products don’t reach people’s homes in the first place,” Garber says. “Our product safety system has gotten infinitely better, and we’ve made huge strides in getting away from toxics materials, but there’s more room to be done to make sure dangerous products aren’t slipping through the cracks.”

Recalls in general are on the decline — which makes advocates worry

Back in March, KID released its annual Recall Report and it found that under the Trump administration, there has been a 44 percent decrease in recall of children’s products (52 recalls a year, down from 93). The report also found that the number of actual items being pulled as a result of a recall had dropped from 12 million in 2017 to 2 million in 2018.

The CPSC has instead been relying on issuing warnings, according to the New York Times.

Pulling millions of products from shelves can be extremely destructive to a business, so it’s easy to understand why a company would prefer sending a warning instead. But the declining number of recalls concerns public safety advocates.

“Consumers react to product recalls with more urgency and more care and attention than they do for warnings,” Pamela Gilbert, who was the agency’s executive director from 1995 to 2001, told the Times. “When deaths are involved, especially for babies and children, warnings are really not the appropriate remedy.”

In its report, KID urges the CPSC to “invigorate its efforts” to getting more dangerous products off the market. It’s unlikely the agency will decide to take a proactive approach and start combing products on Amazon in search of reviews that hint at danger. The CPSC is notoriously understaffed and has a tiny budget.

“Most parents will say they hear about a product recall once a month or so, but last year, there was one recalled product a week, but they just aren’t hearing about them,” Cowles says. “The product safety system has a long way to go to ensure the safety of our most vulnerable consumers: children.”

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Public advocates have long argued that shopping innovations like e-commerce and cashless stores marginalize low-income shoppers. In order to shop online, customers need credit cards and bank accounts, and per the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 6.5 percent of households in the US weren’t affiliated with a bank in 2017.

Now Amazon and Walmart are piloting a two-year program that will allow low-income shoppers to pay for groceries online using food stamps.

On Thursday, the US Department of Agriculture announced it had teamed up with Amazon and Walmart to allow participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, a.k.a. food stamps) to buy groceries on these sites using their government-allotted benefits.

“People who receive SNAP benefits should have the opportunity to shop for food the same way more and more Americans shop for food — by ordering and paying for groceries online,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. “As technology advances, it is important for SNAP to advance too, so we can ensure the same shopping options are available for both non-SNAP and SNAP recipients.”

There are currently about 38 million food stamp recipients in the US, according to the USDA. In order to qualify, participants need to be at or below the poverty line. (A family of four, according to these guidelines, earns around or below a gross monthly income of $2,665.) Participants in the government-funded program receive benefits on payment cards, which can be used like debit cards to pay for groceries; the average family of four receives $465 a month.

The SNAP program used to only allow payment for groceries on the spot, so this partnership will be the first time low-income shoppers can use their benefits to shop online. SNAP participants will be able to purchase foods like bread, cereal, fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, poultry, and dairy products (the SNAP program does not cover the purchase of beer, wine, pet food, or household supplies). The pilot will not cover delivery charges.

The program is starting in New York, but the USDA said it will soon expand to Alabama, Iowa, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington. The grocery chain ShopRite is also on the list of companies that will allow SNAP participants to shop on its site.  

There is, of course, an incentive for participating companies. According to the USDA, $52 billion worth of food stamps in 2017 went to big-box stores and grocery chains; Walmart and Amazon will now gain access to this new stream of revenue. The two companies have long been locked in a battle over shoppers’ wallets, so it makes sense that they’d want to expand their customer bases.

Amazon has set up a website for SNAP participants and already told the Associated Press it would give these shoppers free access to some Prime membership benefits, like AmazonFresh, where shoppers can buy meat, dairy, and vegetables, as well as Prime Pantry, which sells dried goods like cereal and canned food. As Walmart told the AP, “Access to convenience and to quality, fresh groceries shouldn’t be dictated by how you pay. This pilot program is a great step forward.”

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When former DC Comics editor Jordan Gorfinkel sought to update the Haggadah, the written guide to the traditional Passover meal known as the Seder, he looked to comic books.

Gorfinkel managed the Batman franchise at DC for nearly a decade before starting his own creative branding studio. He believes that Passover’s Exodus story, in which the ancient Jews are enslaved in and then freed from Egypt, is just as exciting as any superhero story.

This year, just in time for the holiday — one of the most important on the Jewish calendar — he published the Passover Haggadah Graphic Novel. In his version, the superhero in question is Moses, Pharaoh is just as scary a villain as the Joker, and the Ten Plagues are drawn in classic comic book style. Illustrated by Israeli artist Erez Zadok, the book offers a fresh take on an old story, intended to engage kids who might be bored at the Seder and superhero-loving adults alike. It’s also an Amazon best-seller (at least among religious graphic novels).

Passover, which spans eight days, is a celebration of freedom. The Seder (which means “order” in Hebrew) is held on the first two nights of the holiday; the ceremonial meal involves the recitation of the Exodus story, a standard set of songs, and plenty of ritualized eating and drinking. The Haggadah, which means “telling,” acts as both a storybook and a guide to the meal’s many traditions. It tells readers when to drink their wine, why they’re supposed to recline while they eat, and the meaning behind all the accoutrements on the Seder plate at the center of the dinner table.

As far as Jewish holidays go, Passover is the great equalizer. According to the Pew Research Center, 70 percent of American Jews say they participate in a Passover Seder, including 42 percent of Jews who don’t consider themselves religious. In fact, Passover ranks the highest for Jewish holiday participation.

“There are few barriers to entry so a Seder can be made very accessible to those with diverse backgrounds,” explains Hadas Fruchter, a clergy member at Beth Sholom Congregation in Potomac, Maryland. “It’s structured around a cool and interesting sensory experience, with foods and songs, that replaces the pews with pillows, and a prayer book with a full plate.”

Another tradition has sprung up around the Seder: the novelty Haggadah. In addition to Gorfinkel’s graphic novel Haggadah, there’s an emoji Haggadah, a sitcom Haggadah, a zombie Haggadah, a baseball Haggadah, and even a “hipster Haggadah,” written by novelists Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander. Because it’s 2019, there’s also a Trump Haggadah (tagline: “People All The Time They Come Up And Tell Me This Is The Best Haggadah They’ve Ever Read, They Do, Believe Me”).

According to the Jewish Book Council, the Haggadah is the most published Jewish book of all time, with at least 3,000 versions to appeal to Jews of every demographic and interest.

Occasionally, a mainstream publishing house will put out a Haggadah, like when Simon & Schuster debuted the Elie Wiesel Haggadah in 1993, or when Little, Brown published Foer’s New American Haggadah in 2012. But Haggadahs are typically relegated to niche Jewish publishing houses serving a small religious minority.

Typically, Haggadah best-sellers have been more traditional versions with scholarly commentary, like the Jonathan Sacks Haggadah, written by the former chief rabbi of London, or the Artscroll Family Haggadah, a favorite of observant Orthodox Jews. But novelty Haggadahs have become a holiday favorite, especially as people have begun incorporating several versions into their Seders. “A variety of Haggadot [the plural form of Haggadah in Hebrew] can be used at the same Seder,” explains Matthew Miller, CEO of the Israeli publisher Koren. “It’s fun.”

The Haggadah text is a compilation of psalms, benedictions, commentaries, and prayers. Although the core text has received additions over time, the Haggadah’s authorship is largely unknown, says Aaron Koller, a professor of Near Eastern and Jewish studies at Yeshiva University.

“The Haggadah as we have it came together over many centuries,” says Koller. “Some of the most beloved parts at the end are from as late as 1500 CE, but the heart of it comes from roughly the time of the Talmud — 1,500 to 1,800 years or so ago, although some parts may even be older than that.”

After centuries of handwritten texts, the first printed Haggadah was produced in 1480s Venice; Italian Jews began printing Jewish texts shortly after the invention of the printing press. It did not take long for contemporary adaptations to proliferate, says Miller. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the original Hebrew text was kept intact while original commentary and illustrations were included in different versions as additional insight. Things only got more creative from there.

“The Haggadah says that every generation should interpret it to their own circumstances,” says Miller, “and it’s lasted for so many generations because it speaks to so many generations.”

It helps that the story of Exodus itself is particularly universal.

“Folks identify with the experience of being faced with a challenge — personal, spiritual, professional, national, global — that makes them feel like they are in ‘Egypt,’” says Fruchter. “There’s deep joy that comes with the hope that somehow they will find redemption and clarity, and cross the sea to start the journey to the promised land.”

Adds Miller, “It’s the Bible story that everyone has used to describe their liberation, from Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement to the Ethiopian Jews immigrating to Israel.”

Even before the invention of the printing press, the Haggadah had long been used as a way to talk about modern Jewish life. The Birds’ Head Haggadah, for example, was a hand-drawn 14th-century German version depicting human bodies with avian heads. Some scholars believe the birds are in fact griffins, a mythical lion-eagle creature meant to illustrate the conflicted allegiance German Jews felt to their country at a time when some Jews were thriving and others were experiencing religious persecution.

During the 1800s, different Yiddish versions popped up, featuring commentary delivered through parody that mocked everyone from rabbis to politicians to capitalists. The Szyk Haggadah, created by Polish graphic artist Arthur Szyk in 1936, was an anti-fascist work; Szyk drew the ancient Hebrew slaves as European Jews and the Egyptians as Nazis.

“Jews, and especially modern Jews, have always felt that the Seder ought to be a meaningful experience and so they bring themselves into the text as a way of bringing the text back to the next generation,” Koller says. “It’s an ongoing quest for meaning and continuity in an age when both of those seem elusive.”

Over time, versions of the Haggadah began to reflect the American Jewish community’s focus on tikkun olam, or social justice. The Freedom Seder Haggadah from 1969 was created by rabbi and political activist Arthur Waskow, and it juxtaposes the story of Exodus with black persecution in America. The Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb came out in 1988 and centered on vegetarianism and animal rights.

It makes sense that as Passover has become the most mainstream Jewish holiday, contemporary editions of the Haggadah have strived for novelty. As Miller notes, Passover is often “the last vestige for people holding on to their Judaism,” and so the Haggadah needs to be accessible to everyone.  

In addition to Gorfinkel’s graphic novel Haggadah, another item on Amazon is the (Unofficial) Hogwarts Haggadah, written two years ago by Moshe Rosenberg, a rabbi at a modern Orthodox day school in New York who runs the school’s Harry Potter club. Rosenberg, who’s sold more than 25,000 copies of his Haggadah, says there are endless parallels between Harry Potter and the Haggadah, like the four sons of the Passover Seder and the four Hogwarts houses, or the trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermione and that of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

“Every single year, hundreds of thousands of Jews wonder how they are going to keep people awake at their Seder table with the same ancient text,” says Rosenberg. “My theory was, why not draw from something that already has audiences engaged? My students know the Harry Potter canon inside and out, so it’s criminal not to use it! J.K. has already done all the work — all I have to do is connect the dots.”

He’s not the only one turning to Hollywood for new Passover material. The Maxwell House Haggadah has gone all in on novelty too. The coffee company’s original Haggadah came out in 1932 as part of a marketing campaign to educate consumers that coffee was indeed kosher for Passover; the Haggadahs were, and still are, a free gift with purchase of Maxwell House coffee.

The Maxwell House Haggadah became the most popular Haggadah for American Jews, especially for those who were less observant, since its layout and English translation was approachable enough for those with little knowledge of Hebrew. Naor Danieli, Maxwell House’s brand manager, says the brand has given away more than 50 million copies.

This year, Maxwell House debuted a special edition in honor of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a show about a 1950s Jewish woman in New York City named Midge Maisel who pursues a career in comedy. The show is a time capsule of midcentury American Jewish culture, complete with a classic New York Jewish deli scene and Borscht Belt references.

Midge’s New 1958 Edition Haggadah, the official title of the new Maxwell House edition, comes with illustrations of the Maisel family and a recipe card for Midge’s infamous brisket. The Haggadah’s typical yellow-brown color scheme has been replaced with Midge-approved pink, and fake drops of wine are printed on the pages.

True to its roots, you can only get Midge’s Haggadah with a Maxwell House purchase (and, in this case, only on Amazon). Danieli anticipates the coffee company will give away about 500,000 copies of its traditional Haggadah this year.

“It felt like an organic partnership because the Maxwell House Haggadah is definitely the one the Maisels would be using in their imaginary universe,” Danieli says. “I think there’s been more interest in celebrating Passover since the Obama administration had their Seder in the White House, and we’re looking forward to approaching new audiences by offering the Haggadah exclusively on Amazon. We’re bringing a contemporary approach, but also taking into account the tradition behind the holiday.”

Of course, the Haggadah will never be as popular as the Bible, which sees 100 million copies printed annually. Miller says Koren sells just 120,000 Haggadahs a year, which amounts to a drop in the bucket for the publisher.

Still, new versions continue to proliferate. For Jews celebrating the same holiday every single year, a fresh interpretation can go a long way.

“There are endless amounts of lessons from the Haggadah,” Rosenberg says, “and anyone can have an enchanted Seder if they have new ways to look at the story.”

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