Celebrations

2.2. Pesach

Pesach, which commemorates the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, is the foundation story of Jewish peoplehood. The first major festival instituted in the Torah not only celebrates national liberation but dramatizes the critical belief, recurrent throughout the Bible, that God hears the cry of the oppressed.

The key events are narrated in Exodus chapters 12 and 13. As Pharaoh obdurately continues to resist the release of his Israelite slaves, God resolves to bring the last and most terrible of the Ten Plagues, the smiting of Egypt’s firstborn.

On the eve of their redemption, on the 14th of the month of Nisan, each Israelite household is instructed to roast a lamb at nightfall. They are to daub the animal’s blood on their doorposts as a sign to ensure that their own firstborn will escape harm. “I will pass over you and there shall be no plague on you to destroy you,” God says (Exodus 12.13) – hence the name of the festival, Pesach, “Passover”. The lamb is to be consumed “in haste”, with nothing left over till morning, and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Since there is no time to let the dough rise, the bread must be unleavened. The bitter herbs symbolise the bitterness inflicted on the captive Israelites by their slave-masters (Exodus 1:14). When the plague strikes even the royal household, Pharaoh finally capitulates and the Israelites go free. As they make their escape, they are commanded to “observe this day” henceforth in every generation.

The commemoration of the festival covers the week from the Exodus to the Crossing of the Red Sea, where Pharaoh and the pursuing Egyptian chariots meet their doom. While Pesach lasts seven days in Israel and among Progressive Jews, traditional Jews in the diaspora keep it for eight. The first and seventh day are a Yom Tov in Israel and for Progressive Jews, when no work may be done, while Orthodox and Masorti communities in the diaspora observe Yom Tov on the first, second, seventh and eighth days. The most distinctive feature is to abstain from eating leavened foods, chametz, (made from the five species of grain associated with the land of Israel: wheat, barley, oats, spelt and rye). Instead, we re-enact the exigencies of the Exodus by making do with unleavened matzah, the “bread of affliction”, as it is dubbed in Deuteronony.

Pesach was originally a pilgrim festival and the paschal lamb was eaten in the precincts of the Temple in Jerusalem. But now the Temple no longer stands, lamb is not eaten at the Pesach meal and is instead symbolised by a roasted shankbone on the Seder plate. But bitter herbs remain one of the evocative tastes of Pesach. No festival involves so much preparation as Pesach because not only does the Torah command abstinence from leaven but it also stipulates that none shall be “found in your house”. The night before Pesach, the tradition is to scatter a few pieces of chametz around the house and collect them in a ceremonial search, using a feather, wooden spoon and candle (or torch). These are the formally burnt the next morning before the cut-off point when no chametz may no longer be consumed. The eve of Pesach is also the Fast of the Firstborn, which was instituted by the rabbis in gratitude of the deliverance of the firstborn Hebrews during the Tenth Plague.

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