For The UninitiatedEither way, you're cordially invited to read on. What is Passover?
Passover is an eight-day festival celebrating the freeing of the Hebrews from slavery, and their flight from Egypt. Originally the Hebrews had left their lands due to drought, and obtained permission to stay "temporarily" in Egypt, where there was no drought, and the land was fertile. In the 400 years they stayed there, their number increased dramatically, and soon their presence grew troubling to the rulers of Egypt. (Mainly this was because the Hebrews refused to speak anything but Hebrew, would not take Egyptian-style names, and would not worship the Egyptian gods. This was no big deal when the Hebrew were few, and penitent. However, when they became numerous and prosperous, it was an irritant.) Ultimately Egypt took means to enslave the Hebrews, to keep their numbers down and to keep them from becoming a potent political force. The worst of the measures taken against the Hebrews to control their numbers, was an edict that all newborn Hebrew males should be slaughtered. One brave woman named Naomi cast her infant into the Nile River in a watertight basket, hoping that some nice Egyptian lady might retrieve the infant and he'd have a chance to grow up. That infant grew up to become Moses, the man who led the Hebrews out of Egypt. The story has it that God sent a number of plagues to Egypt, to convince Pharaoh that He meant business. The plagues got progressively more heinous, until they culminated in a night where the Angel of Death went from house to house in Egypt, slaying all first-born children. The Hebrews were instructed to mark the door posts of their homes with lamb's blood, so the Angel would know not to strike there. The holiday gets its name from the fact that the Angel of Death passed over our homes, and struck only our erstwhile hosts.
What is a seder?
Seder (SAY-dir) is a Hebrew word meaning "order," or service. Of course, for Jews -- who never do anything without food -- the implication of seder is service-plus-meal. For Jews who keep the sabbath, the dinners at the beginning (sundown Friday) and end of the sabbath (sundown Saturday), are actually seders; there are rituals that mark these meals, and make them especially meaningful. The Passover Seder is a service conducted around the dinner table, with the meal as its centerpiece. You read from a book called the Passover Hagaddah (properly pronounced ha-ga-DAH, but you'll hear Freda slip into the the eastern European ha-GUH-duh from time to time), which gives the order of the service, takes you through all the appropriate blessings, and fulfills the mitzvah (MITZ-vuh, or commandment) of retelling the story of the Exodus from Egypt. During the course of the eight-day festival, observant Jews eat no leavened products. This commemorates the fact that, once the call to leave was given, the Hebrews were in such a rush to split that they grabbed their bread out of the ovens before it had a chance to rise. Traditional Hagaddot (ha-ga-DAWT, the plural of hagaddah) read right-to-left, and are entirely in Hebrew. Orthodox Jews generally read traditional Hagaddot; in fact, most of the seders of Freda's youth were conducted entirely in Hebrew, in a drone that put all the cousins to sleep. Conservative, Reform, and other types of Jews generally use Hagaddot that intersperse the Hebrew with English. However, those Hagaddot still read right-to-left, rather than left-to-right. The full Passover service is supposed to stop for a bit while everyone eats dinner, and then pick up again. If you run through the entire book, you get four glasses of wine. Custom dictates that a cup of wine always be poured for that freeloader, the Prophet Elijah. The door to the house is also usually cracked, so Elijah can slip in and take a sip from his cup. Frankly, we think the cup is drunk by invisible Gang members. But hey.
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