Making a Quick Exodus? Try Seder Lite.

For many Jews, the annual Passover celebration marking the Israelites' exodus from slavery in ancient Egypt stretches long into the night, with songs, ritual, lengthy readings, a hidden matzoh, and two cups of wine downed before the first bite of dinner is taken. By the time guests dig in, the moon is high in the sky, children are cranky if not asleep and the brisket is . . . well, that's one reason they serve brisket -- it can cook for hours.

As a result, families have been known to take liberties with the Haggadah text, which is used during the festive Seder meal. But now, courtesy of two Arizona entrepreneurs, comes a version whose name tells it all: The 30-Minute Seder.

Created by boyhood pals Rob Kopman and Bil Yanok, "30minute-Seder" is billed as "the Haggadah that blends brevity with tradition." In 27 colorful, cleanable booklet pages, their Seder text fulfills what is asked of Jews who celebrate the widely observed eight-day spring holiday, which starts at sundown tonight. In streamlining the Seder, they believe they have covered its key components and addressed a need in the Passover marketplace.

And it's a growing market: "There are hundreds of thousands of families where one partner is not Jewish," says Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, a San Francisco think tank. "That means extended-family members who are gentile come to the Seder. Younger Jews today will say that most of their closest friends are not Jewish, so chances are good that they will invite non-Jews to a Seder.

"Having people who are not Jewish has become the norm, not the exception," Tobin says.

Whether it's assimilation or school-night pragmatism that has driven 30-Minute Seder sales doesn't seem to matter to Kopman and Yanok, who were rushing to fill orders by Friday.

"We're about sold out -- down to 100 books," Yanok, a 49-year-old graphic designer, said late last week. "The response has been unbelievably positive." That's 25,000 copies in three months, with one trade show appearance and no advertising budget.

Their 30-Minute Seder is a kind of interactive CliffsNotes with minimal Hebrew, but the impetus for the project was not how little time it could take. "I wanted to make the Seder fun," explains Kopman, a 51-year-old insurance agent. "It ought to be engaging -- the prayers. . . . It's such a good story."

http://"It's user-friendly, with appeal to just about every branch of Judaism," says Menachem Youlus, an owner of the Jewish Book Store of Greater Washington, which carries 3,500 kinds of Haggadot. Word of mouth led Youlus to place a sizable order for his store in Wheaton, and he was down to five books last Thursday. "At $5.95, it's well priced to buy in bulk," he says.

The book is also downloadable for $16.95 for unlimited printouts, at http://www.30minuteseder.com/.

About a year ago, Kopman had thrown together a cut-and-paste version of his Haggadah and put it out for the public. When Yanok saw the "less than perfect product," he offered to redesign and illustrate it. Kopman sought the counsel of Army Col. Bonnie Koppell, a chaplain and Reconstructionist rabbi who serves three Reform congregations in Phoenix (and, coincidentally, grew up just around the corner from Kopman and Yanok in Brooklyn). The three revised the text several times to make sure essential elements weren't left out and that gender-sensitive translations were used.

"One thing I found out is that Jewish people can't decide on the right spelling for anything," says Yanok, who is Catholic. They perused more than 3,000 Haggadot in their research.