Pesach - Passover – Easter

As it’s Pesach/Passover tomorrow, I want to dedicate this post about this holiday. It will also be the reason why I won’t be available much over the next few days so you are forewarned and also informed.

What is Pesach:

Pesach is a Jewish holiday or holy day as I like to call them. It is one of the main holidays in the Jewish year. During this fest we remember the time when we were slaves in Egypt, we celebrate the exodus that was led by Moses and we anticipate, countdown and re-tell the story of receiving the holy bible from G’d.

_{Image Source: Crosswalk.com}

If you're into movies like I am, a few movies that tell you more about the history:

• the Ten Commandments (1956) with Charlton Heston
• Exodus: Gods & Kings (2014) with Christian Bale
• the Prince of Egypt (1998) with Val Kilmer's voice

When does it start:

The Jewish calendar is based on the moon, therefor its holidays are not synchronized with the calendar we use on a daily basis. In the Jewish calendar a month has either 29 or 30 days. A Jewish year has 353, 354 or 355 days, but I won't go into that at this moment in time. Important to know is that due to the fact that our years are shorter, we often add another month into the calendar to make up for the loss. This prevents that our holidays are all over the calendar and that holidays that are supposed to happen in Spring also stay in the Spring. This year Pesach starts tomorrow evening, so simultaneously with Easter.

What are the customs:

_{a Nicely set table for Passover}

As we remember the exodus from Egypt, which happened (the exodus itself) in a hurry and the people didn't even have time to let their breads rise. We also spend the whole duration of the celebration without eating anything that rises like bread, rice, pasta, etc

This also entails that we don't posses any stuff like that, we call that chametz. We clean our houses like possessed people beforehand, we do 'search and destroy' missions to look for anything we might have overlooked and afterwards we 'sell' any remaining chametz, under the pretence that there is any.

How do we celebrate:

_{This is our 'Seder Plate', which we'll use tomorrow evening}

As the exodus is a central point of our history and traditions, the most important part of it all is to tell the story and ensure that our children know about it.

The first 2 evenings of this fest we come together for the Seder evening. Seder is Hebrew for order. There are 15 points we follow throughout the evening and children are the focal point of the evening, they can ask questions, they get to sing songs and it's to the adults to explain everything to them.

We also have a plate on the table called a Seder Plate that assists us in telling the story and ensures that certain traditions live on. On this plate we have 7 items:

• Zeroa: Shank Bone, reminds us of the lamb we had to sacrifice
• Beitzah: Egg, reminds us of the offerings we made in the temple
• Maror: Horseradish, it reminds us of the bitter times we had as slaves
• Chazeret: Bitterherb, another bitter reminder
• Charoset: Sweet Paste, reminds us of the mortar used between the bricks in Egypt
• Karpas: Vegetable, it reminds us of the backbreaking work our fathers had to do in Egypt
• Salt Water, this reminds us of the tears of the slaves

Beneath the Seder Plate there are 3 Matzot, one for each of the tribes of Israel (Cohen, Levi & Israel).

As I mentioned before, we have an index of 15 'chapters' that we follow and we do things we wouldn’t do on a 'normal’ evening. We drink 4 cups of wine, we learn, we lean at the table and other things.

During the whole 8 days we usually eat Matzot, this is bread that does not have time to rise, so usually baked in 18 minutes or less, they resemble crackers a lot.

What do WE eat:

My wife, mother-in-law and sister-in-law have been cooking all week, so a special mention to the stuff we'll be eating tomorrow evening:

We usually start with gefillte-Fish, followed by Liverpaté, then we have a soup (chicken) with balls made of Matze. Then we get to the main course which is Ghoulash with potatoes. Our guests will bring the desert, so I don't know what that's going to be.

I hope you found this post interesting and insightful. This is a huge part of me these traditions and I love them. I also enjoy explaining others about them. Tomorrow will be the first time that we're hosting it, so I have to follow and educate the children about our history and traditions. I'm really looking forward to it.

Thank you and a koshere Pesach and a happy Easter everyone!

Doron