Posts tagged ‘Passover’

Passover?

This week both Passover and Easter are being celebrated. As is often the case they fall within the same week. Every spring, Jews celebrate when God led their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt. The commemoration begins with a seder (Hebrew for “order”), a ceremony full of symbolic foods and rituals. Over the following week, Jews may eat matzo, a flat cracker that doesn’t have leavening (yeast, baking powder, or baking soda which is often the Biblical symbol for sin), and strictly avoid leavened flour products like bread and cookies. (Other dietary restrictions during Passover also apply for some Jews, depending on their culture.) The restriction against leavened foods honors the fleeing slaves who didn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise, and ate it flat instead. Christians see that flat bread without leavening is symbolic of Jesus who was also “without sin”.

The seder story comes from the second book of the Old Testament, Exodus, a Latin word that means “exit” or “departure”. It is a story of miracles, acts of bravery, and deliverance from oppression that has inspired people for centuries.