In , Passover will take place from sundown on April 8 to sundown on April In contemporary Passover celebrations, relevant political or social justice themes have been incorporated into the seder.
And while there are myriad Haggadot to choose from to fit nearly all religious, age-specific, political or even satirical needs , the retelling of the Exodus is a key fixture in a Haggadah, along with the reading of the 10 plagues, the asking of the four questions, and explaining various Passover rituals, some of which date back 2, years, according to My Jewish Learning. In the very basic Passover storyline , the Pharaoh is fearful that there will be too many Jews living in Egypt so he institutes slavery and demands that male Jewish babies be killed.
After killing a slave master, Moses flees into the desert, and encounters a burning bush of God revealing himself to Moses. God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh and lead the Jews out of slavery. Moses goes to the Pharaoh and asks that he let the Jews go free from Egypt. The tenth and final plague is the most drastic: the killing of the first born by the so-called angel of death. The Israelites were ultimately freed from slavery and wandered the desert for 40 years before making it to the promise land.
Families hold a seder on the first and sometimes second night of Passover. It is fundamentally a religious service set around a dinner table, where the order in which participants eat, pray, drink wine, sing, discuss current social justice issues and tell stories is prescribed by a central book called the Haggadah.
On Passover seder tables, you may see a partitioned plate containing small amounts of specific food. This is the seder plate, and each food is symbolic for an aspect of Passover: A roasted shank bone represents the Pescah sacrifice, an egg represents spring and the circle of life, bitter herbs represent the bitterness of slavery, haroset an applesauce-like mixture with wine, nuts, apples, etc.
Also placed on the table are three pieces of matzah — a cracker-like unleavened bread — that represent the bread the Israelites took with them when they fled Egypt, and salt water to represent the tears of the slaves. At your seat, you may see a specific wine glass or kiddish cup. The Torah commands that at least four symbolic cups of wine be consumed during the Passover seder. Up to the present time, all Jewish streams in Israel liberal, Orthodox, and secular follow the Torah's calendar and observe each yom tov for one day and Pesach for seven days.
But outside of Israel, the two-day eight-day custom stuck. In the fourth century, we switched over to a calendar that is based on mathematical computations rather than astronomical observations, so that the calendar can be computed anywhere in the world and the original reason for the extra day no longer applied.
Fast forward to A group of European rabbis convened in Breslau to debate various reforms to Judaism. They concluded that " The second days of the holidays Therefore, if any congregations abolish some or all of these second days, they And within the Reform Movement, one-day yom tov became the standard practice, whether in Israel or anywhere else.
Enough time has passed that this has become our own minhag avoteinu ; as a seventh-generation Reform Jew, I am proud to inherit this tradition from my family. The other modern Jewish movements outside Israel have taken different approaches. In thes, the Conservative movement ruled that individual rabbis were authorized to choose one-day or two-day yom tov for their communities; however, the vast majority of Conservative congregations recognize two days.
The Reconstructionist movement also gives congregations the choice, and most Reconstructionist congregations do one day. In the Orthodox world, two days are standard, with the exception of some Israeli expats who maintain their one-day practice even outside Israel. So the answer is that in Israel and for most Reform Jews around the world, Pesach is seven days, but for many other Jews including the ones who seem to print most calendars , it is eight days. What to do about seder? For more traditional Jews living outside of Israel, however, Passover is observed for eight days.
Why eight days? Official word as to which day had been declared the beginning of the month had to be communicated far and wide, and it took a long time for information to travel by messenger all the way to Babylonia! A clever solution. Thus, one-day holidays were made two-day holidays, and seven-day holidays were made eight-day holidays. This is also the reason why some families celebrate a second night seder, and some only celebrate one.
In my family, we always said we only needed one seder because we got it right the first time. The moral of the story is that there are multiple ways to celebrate Passover, and there are many ways to be Jewish.
If you choose to observe an eighth day of Passover despite living in this current era of accurate calendars and instant communication, you go for it! And make or attend one seder or two, as you wish. Or in addition to….
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