The text is executed in block calligraphy and accompanied by colorful illustrations of Jews performing the Seder practices and reenacting Jewish historical events.

A Haggadah is a ritual Jewish text containing prayers, hymns, Midrashic statements, and commentary on the story of Passover – the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt.

[9][a] The scribe Menahem is also credited with copying the Leipzig Machzor (High Holy Days prayerbook) around the same time; he encoded his name in that illuminated manuscript in a "decorated text panel".

[1][8] The extant manuscript shows smaller, densely packed script written in the margins of some pages, detailing instructions for conducting the Seder and fulfilling the laws pertaining to Passover.

[15][18] Within the rather modest field of Jewish visual culture it is, in its own unassuming way, as mysterious as the Pyramids of Giza, the monoliths of Easter Island, or Mona Lisa's smile.

A prevalent theory for the use of bird rather than human faces is the illustrator's attempt to circumvent the Jews' Second Commandment's prohibition against making a graven image, in the tradition of Jewish aniconism.

[25][2][21] Other Ashkenazi Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from the 13th and 14th centuries depict humans with animal heads, known as zoocephalic figures,[26][27] thought to be in keeping with this prohibition.

The legendary griffin – the body of which resembles both a lion and an eagle – reflects the prevalent use of "lion-eagle-human hybrids" in Jewish iconography.

[33] Epstein further theorizes that the blank faces assigned to non-Jewish and non-human figures sends a message to Jewish readers of the Haggadah that these entities have no intrinsic power, but are subject to God's will.

In addition, a number of biblical passages can be taken as identifying the Jews with eagles, including Exodus 19:4, especially relevant to the Passover, and Deuteronomy 32:11–12[25] Carol Zemel postulates that the birds' heads affixed to Jewish men and women going about their Passover preparations are a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the animal-head gods worshipped by the ancient Egyptians.

Jewish artists, who were more familiar with the Hebrew text, did the design and copying, and the manuscript was commissioned by Jews as well, but Christian antisemitism heavily influenced the illustrations.

This expressed itself in the "stereotypical long noses" and "large eyes", the pigs' ears, and the conical hat worn by many Jewish figures.

Far from being anti-Jewish caricatures, the griffin-headed figures in the Birds' Head Haggadah are dignified portrayals of Jews, full of character and personality.

[40] In late 2016 the Marum family obtained more than 1,000 documents from German historians in Karlsruhe, which depict Kahn as a low-paid schoolteacher in constant need of cash.

[40] In 1965/1967 a two-volume color facsimile edition of the Birds' Head Haggadah was published in Israel by M. Spitzer, bringing the manuscript to international attention.

[41] Designed for children, the book is printed on heavy cardstock and incorporates pop-ups and pull-tabs for users to manipulate the illustrations of the bird-headed characters reenacting historical and Seder practices.

The illustrations include the reenactments of the Ten Plagues, baking matzo, crossing the Red Sea, drinking the Four Cups at the Passover Seder, and more.