The celebration of Passover, also known as Passover, is one of the most important dates in the Jewish calendar. This year, the festival takes place between Monday, April 22 and Tuesday, April 30. That week, millions of Jewish people celebrate holy days full of symbolic elements, traditions and typical foods.
The Passover holiday has a fixed start date: the 15th day of Nisan (month of the Hebrew calendar between March and April). The first and last days are sacred (“yom tov”) and there is no work, in addition to sacralizing the day with kiddush (prayer with wine).
Passover is the “festival of freedom.”
What is celebrated on Passover
The ceremony is one of the most characteristic of the Jewish calendar and commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. Therefore, Passover is also called “the festival of freedom.”
In Hebrew, the word Passover means “to skip.” According to the biblical account, the tenth plague that God sent to Egypt—due to Pharaoh’s refusal to free the slaves—killed the firstborn of all households, except those of the Hebrew people, who were marked with the blood of a lamb sacrificed by instruction of Moses.
What is eaten at Jewish Passover
The celebration of Pesach follows an order established by the Haggadah, the book that tells of the liberation from Egypt and which indicates when during the ceremony the different foods arranged on a plate called keará should be eaten.
The festival is also known as “the festival of unleavened bread” (Chag hamatzot), since the consumption of all “Chametz” is prohibited, that is, the five cereals: wheat, rye, barley, oats and spelled, in contact with water for more than 18 minutes.
Meanwhile, the only exception is matzah or unleavened bread—baked with all the necessary precautions. This food symbolizes that during the departure from Egypt the Hebrew people could not wait for the flour to rise.
In addition, other symbols are used, such as bitter herbs (to remember the forced labor to which the Egyptians were subjected), the jelly called charoset (recalls the mud and bricks that the Hebrew people made during slavery), the bird’s wing roast –zroa– which goes back to the sacrificed lamb- and the four cups of wine, as a sign of rejoicing.
According to the Enlace Judío site, wine, matzah and maror – which are used on the first day – represent the three “most important symbols of the holiday: the control of personal will (the Passover sacrifice), happiness and bitterness in freedom (maror and matza).”
