What is Passover?

Pessah means "to pass over"

We call this holiday passover because when the plagues hit the homes of the Egyptians God passed over the homes of the Jewish people. Passover lasts eight days. On the first and maybe the second nights we get together with family and friends and tell the story of Passover

A Seder means order. A seder is a meal that has a special order. It has fifteen steps that help us remember that the Jewish people were once slaves in Egypt. We remember how God took us out of Egypt and brought us to Israel.

During the Seder we read from the Haggadah.

Haggadah means the "the telling" On passover we use a book called the haggadah to tell the story of the Jewish people leaving Egypt. It is like a siddur. It has prayers and songs in it. The haggadah tells of our move from slavery to freedom

But we not only use the haggadah to tell the story, we also have a seder plate on the table. It is a sort of show and tell object of the seder. Everything on it will be used or talked about during the Seder.

A long time ago, in the land of Egypt, there was a King named Pharaoh. He made the Jewish people his slaves.

They had to work hard building cities for Pharaoh. The Charoset Mixture : A mixture of chopped nuts and fruit reminds us of the ortar used to hold the buildings together.

The Bitter herb (maror) : Herbs such as horseradish and romaine lettuce taste bitter. Maror, reminds us that a life of slaverly was bitter. We cried big, salty tears. The salt water is salty like our tears. God saw the sadslaves and wanted us to become free. God sent Moses to King Pharaoh to tell him to 'Let my people go. '

When Pharaoh told us we could leave Egypt, we had started baking bread but did not have time to let it rise. We made matzah instead.

Matzah is unleavened bread. Unlike regular bread, matzah is made without yeast or baking powder, which makes bread dough puff up and become soft when baked. The dough is rolled flat, and small holes are punched into it.

This helps the matzah bake quickly. We call the food made with leaven chametz. Before passover and certainly before we have our seder we remove all chametz from our homes.

We eat matzah to remember that we had to hurry because it is better to be free.

Shank bone (zroah) : This is also called the pesah. In ancient Israel we would have brought a lamb to the Temple in Jerusalem to show our love for God. Today, we roast the shank bone of a lamb instead.

Green Vegetables (karpas) : Parsley and celery make us think of life, spring, and hope. It reminds that Passover is a spring holiday. It is dipped into salt water.

Egg (beytzah) : The egg is roasted. It reminds us of a second offering, it is also a reminder of new life - the birth of the Jewish nation

Our Passover lesson

During our last class we learnt about our next holiday coming up. This holiday is called Passover. We learnt through song about our main character of the passover story - Moses. Our song went like this : Where is baby Moses, Moses, Moses? Where is baby Moses, by the river Nile? He's floating in basket, basket, basket He's floating in Basket, in the river Nile The princess she is swimming, swimming, swimming The princess she is swimming, in the river Nile She finds the baby Moses, Moses, Moses She finds the baby Moses, in the river Nile She takes him to the Palace, palace, palace She takes him to the palace, by the river Nile There our Moses grows up, grows up, grows up There our Moses grows up, by the river Nile We looked at how Moses ended up leaving Egypt and then with the help of God comes back to free the Israelites from slavery Our craft too showed the story of Moses as a baby floating in the Nile and being found by the princess and brought up as an Eygptian prince. We remembered just like in our Purim story Moses was put in that place at that moment for some reason that was yet to come. The kids listened carefully and then went to work preparing the scene of baby Moses floating in his basket in the river Nile :

Thank you again to Gabrielle and JD for opening up their home on such short notice...

Hag Sameach

Celebrating freedom ...

A kite soars high in a cloudless sky. No one pulls it to the ground A child turns cartwheels in the grass, no one restrains her joy. That's how freedom feels. Freedom gives us the power to choose how to live our lives, which foods to eat, which clothes to wear which schools to attend, which friends to make, which God to pray to. Thousands of years ago, the Jewish people didn't know that joyous feeling we call freedom. They were slaves in Egypt crying out to be free. Imagine a narrow passageway, so tiny that our streched-out arms touch the sides, and we have to sit huddled up, knees bent, in a tight ball. That's how slavery feels. The seder is the story of the Israelites' journey from slavery to freedom. Everything we do on Passover reminds us of that journey that began in the darkness of Egypt , in the middle of the night, an ended in a land the people had never seen, the land God had promised them, the land of Israel. On passover, we look forward to walking again on that road to freedom, as if we ourselves were there. by Rahel Musleah