MOUNT VERNON — Passover, or Pesach in Hebrew, begins at sundown tomorrow. It is the most commonly observed Jewish holiday, perhaps because it is directly mandated in the Torah, in the book of Exodus, chapter 12: “And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the Lord, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes ... you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree.”
The first evening of Passover — which lasts a week — is observed with a seder, a meal so full of ritual, symbolism, remembrance and love that even some Christian congregations host seders. There are community seders, but the seder meal is an important event for family members to observe together in the home. The seder tradition is spelled out in a book called the Haggadah.
Passover is a time to remember the Exodus story of the enslavement, many centuries ago, of generations of Jews by the Egyptians. In the story, God sent plagues on Pharaoh and the Egyptians in order to compel them to release the Jews from captivity. In the tenth plaque, God killed all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, but first warned the Jewish families to sacrifice a lamb and sprinkle its blood on their door frames so that God’s vengeance would “pass over” the Jewish homes.
Thus, lamb is often served at the meal. Other symbols include eating bitter herbs, the children asking questions of the adults, dipping vegetables in salt water to represent the tears of the Hebrew slaves. Another is removing all leavening from the home because the Jews left Egypt in such a hurry that they had no time to let their bread dough rise. Chametz is also banned from the house and from the diet of both people and animals; the term refers to grains that are commonly used to make leavened bread. Instead, during Passover, Jews eat matzah, unleavened bread.
Tradition dictates a thorough cleaning of the home in advance, then making a ritual search of the house on the morning of the seder in an effort to find any chametz remaining, which is then burned.
Rabbi Dosha Parrott of Mogen David Synagogue on Harcourt Road will host a community seder meal on Saturday that will begin at 6:30 p.m.
“It’s traditional, it’s orthodox,” she said. “We do the Passover Haggadah, the telling of the Passover story.”
Parrott referred to her service as a “miniature seder.”
“Last year I was in Israel for Passover. We started at 4 in the afternoon and didn’t finish until 2 in the morning. At our service, we eat, we sing, we dance. Everything is traditional, but it will not be Israeli in length.
“We sing traditional songs in Hebrew, Aramaic and English. We’ll have a full course meal. My favorite part is the Eliyohu HaNevi where we fling open the door, we go out into the street and we ask Elijah the prophet to hurry and bring the messiah. It’s a great time of celebration.”
