Passover

We were slaves in Egypt, until God took us out
God plagued Egypt, split the sea, and then our nation came about.

After quickly making matzah and crossing a great sea
We got the Torah at Mount Sinai and finally were free!

There are lots of things we make and do just for this holiday
If you like cooking, crafts, and learning, come on in and play!

Maggid: Telling the Story

Passover celebrates one of the most important events in Jewish history: our freedom. That's why the Passover story begins with the story of our Exodus from Egypt. The Bible tells us that the Children of Israel went out of Egypt in the spring. So Passover, of course, is celebrated during the spring.

Passover has many names. In Hebrew, the word for Passover is Pesach (or Pesah). No one knows what the word Pesach really means. Some people say it comes from the Hebrew word 'pasha', which means “to skip” because God, as you read in the story of Passover, “skipped” over the Jewish houses to save the Jewish firstborn children.

There are at least four names for Passover: Holiday of Spring (Chag ha Aviv), Holiday of Matzah (Chag ha Matzot), Season of our Freedom (Zeman Cherutainu, pronounced Chey-roo-TAY-noo) and the Holiday of Paschal Offering (Chag ha Pesach).

Each name tells us about a different way of understanding the holiday. Each name emphasizes a different theme. But no matter what name it's called, Passover makes it possible for us to recall this event in Jewish history.

About Pesah/Passover

In many homes the end of Purim marks the beginning of the month-long period of preparation for Pesah-Passover, the spring holiday beginning on the fifteenth of Nisan, celebrating the Jews' escape from slavery in Egypt. The preparation includes buying Pesah foods and ridding the home of all bread, cakes, and other hametz — leaven. In Ashkenazi households, kitniyot — corn, rice, beans, and other legumes — are not eaten because they are sometimes ground into flour and used to make bread.

Matzah is bread that has not risen, and we eat it on Pesah to remind ourselves of the Jews' great rush to leave Egypt. They didn't wait for the bread they were baking to rise. There is a custom not to eat any matzah from Purim until Pesah to create a craving for it.

Central to the celebration of Pesah is the seder, the ceremonial meal on the first two nights of the holiday. The word “seder” means order, and there is a definite order to the seder rituals.

At the seder each participant should celebrate as if he or she just became free. At the seder we recline as we eat the matzah and drink the wine. Reclining is a symbol of freedom and this is how royalty ate, and at the seder each of us is a king or queen. It is also a custom to pour wine for others but not for ourselves, because members of the royal family do not serve themselves.

On the seder plate in the middle of the table are the karpos (a vegetable), haroset (an edible mortar-like mixture), maror (bitter herbs), beitzah (a roasted egg), and zeroah (a roasted shank bone). The vegetable used for karpos is usually parsley, celery, or a baked potato. During the seder the karpos is dipped in salt water or vinegar, symbolic of the tears the slaves shed.

Haroset, the mortar-like mixture, reminds us of the bricks the slaves were forced to make. Eating maror, the bitter herbs, reminds us of the bitter taste of slavery. Romaine lettuce and freshly ground horseradish are used.

The beitzah, roasted egg, reminds us of the Temple sacrifice offered on the holidays, and the zeroah, the roasted shank bone, of the special Pesah offering.

We drink four cups of wine or grape juice at the seder symbolizing the four promises of redemption in the Book of Exodus (6:6-7). A fifth cup of wine, Elijah's cup, is on the table too, for the prophet who — according to legend — visits every Jewish home on Pesah. Many people use only red wine at the seder, a reminder of the blood the Jews spread on their doorposts before the last of the ten plagues, the death of the first-born sons. The sons of Egypt died, but God spared the sons of the Jews with the blood on their doorposts. Red wine is also a reminder that Pharaoh killed Jewish children and bathed in their blood, a supposed cure for leprosy.