The eight-day festival of
Passover is celebrated in the early spring, from the 15th through the 22nd of the Hebrew month of
Nissan. It commemorates the emancipation of the
Israelites
from slavery in ancient Egypt. And, by following the rituals of
Passover, we have the ability to relive and experience the true freedom
that our ancestors gained.
The Story in a Nutshell
After many decades of slavery to the Egyptian pharaohs, during which
time the Israelites were subjected to backbreaking labor and unbearable
horrors,
YAH saw the people’s distress and sent
Moses
to Pharaoh with a message: “Send forth My people, so that they may
serve Me.” But despite numerous warnings, Pharaoh refused to heed YAH’s
command. YAH then sent upon Egypt ten devastating plagues, afflicting
them and destroying everything from their livestock to their crops.
At the stroke of midnight of 15 Nissan in the year 2448 from creation
(1313 BCE), YAH visited the last of the ten plagues on the Egyptians,
killing all their firstborn. While doing so, YAH spared the Children of
Israel,
“passing over” their homes—hence the name of the holiday. Pharaoh’s
resistance was broken, and he virtually chased his former slaves out of
the land. The Israelites left in such a hurry, in fact, that the bread
they baked as provisions for the way did not have time to rise. Six
hundred thousand adult males, plus many more women and children, left
Egypt on that day, and began the trek to Mount Sinai and their birth as YAH’s chosen people.
Passover Observances
Passover is divided into two parts:
The first two days and last two days (the latter commemorating the
splitting of the Red Sea) are full-fledged holidays. Holiday candles are lit at night, and
kiddush
and sumptuous holiday meals are enjoyed on both nights and days. We
don’t go to work, drive, write or switch on or off electric devices. We
are permitted to cook and to carry outdoors (
click here for the details).
The middle four days are called
chol hamoed, semi-festive “intermediate days,” when most forms of work are permitted.
NO CHAMETZ
To commemorate the unleavened bread that the Israelites ate when they
left Egypt, we don’t eat—or even retain in our possession—any chametz from midday of the day before Passover until the conclusion of the holiday. Chametz
means leavened grain—any food or drink that contains even a trace of
wheat, barley, rye, oats, spelt or their derivatives, and which wasn’t
guarded from leavening or fermentation. This includes bread, cake,
cookies, cereal, pasta and most alcoholic beverages. Moreover, almost
any processed food or drink can be assumed to be chametz unless certified otherwise.
Ridding our homes of
chametz is an intensive process. It
involves a full-out spring-cleaning search-and-destroy mission during
the weeks before Passover, and culminates with a ceremonial
search for chametz on the night before Passover, and then a
burning of the chametz ceremony on the morning before the holiday.
Chametz that cannot be disposed of can be
sold to a non-Jew for the duration of the holiday.
MATZAH
Instead of
chametz, we eat matzah—flat unleavened bread. It is a
mitzvah to partake of matzah on the two
Seder nights (see below for more on this), and during the rest of the holiday it is optional.
Click here for more on matzah.
THE SEDERS
The highlight of Passover is the Seder, observed on each of the first
two nights of the holiday. The Seder is a fifteen-step family-oriented
tradition and ritual-packed feast.
The focal points of the Seder are:
- Eating matzah.
- Eating bitter herbs—to commemorate the bitter slavery endured by the Israelites.
- Drinking four cups of wine or grape juice—a royal drink to celebrate our newfound freedom.
- The recitation of the Haggadah, a liturgy that describes in detail the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The Haggadah is the fulfillment of the biblical obligation to recount to our children the story of the Exodus on the night of Passover. Information furnished by chabad.org
