For readers unfamiliar with the passover seder, it is a ritual whereby the story of the Hebrew people, the ancestors of the Jewish people, were delivered from slavery in Egypt by God, and brought out to journey to their promised land. During this ceremony, many generations of a family usually gather together in one home to celebrate around a table or a living room. A meal is eaten in the middle of the ceremony, but not until everyone has listened to recitations from the Song of Solomon, sung a couple of songs, told the passover story, and had the first two ceremonial glasses of wine or grape juice, which everyone drinks together at certain points in the ceremony. Many Christians are unaware that Jews usually do not eat roast lamb for their passover meal. That stopped happening when the temple was destructed in 70ad. There is now nowhere to make animal sacrifices. Jews share a smorgasbord of traditional but unleavened Jewish foods over the table. However, Christians believe that sacrifices are no longer necessary because Jesus’ sacrifice was enough to cover sin, and reconcile people to God for all time. My family share a meal of roast lamb as Passover, to celebrate that the lamb of God has come, once and for all. It is not the ceremonial sacrificed lamb, and we don’t treat it as such. The ceremonial sacrificed lamb was only for circumcised Jewish families to eat, and any leftovers were to be burned.
I felt that celebrating passover was especially important in the current climate: Not only would it give us something to celebrate, and an event with which to mark the passing of time in our lockdown, but since the events of the exodus were bittersweet, the passover seder includes rituals that help to remember and grieve sadness, while also celebrating joy.
One of these rituals is the dipping of parsley in salt water. Parsley has come to be used because the celebration takes place in Spring - in the Northern hemisphere. It is sometimes said to celebrate new life, or the growth of the Hebrew people. This parsley is dipped in salt water, which represents the tears of the Hebrew people while in slavery.
A little later in the ceremony, the story of the exodus is told. After this, a glass of wine or grape juice is drunken to celebrate God’s deliverance of his people. I don’t know how widespread this custom is in Jewish circles, but I like to remove a drop from the cups for each of the plagues that were sent on Egypt, to acknowledge that the joy of freedom for the Israelites came with a cost. Then, we remove one more drop for all the suffering in the world today. This year, that came with going around the table, with everyone saying their own prayer for the world in the face of the virus.
The final ritual involving bittersweetness (literally) is the hillel sandwich - that the sweet charoset - a mixture of sweet honey, nuts, and fruit, is eaten with bitter “maror” - some bitter food -usually ground horseradish. The maror was eaten to as a picture to all the Israelite and Jewish generations of how bitter their slavery had been. The charoset, -supposed to look like mortar that the slaves used to make bricks- eaten with the maror can remind us how God can bring deliverance, sweetness, and love to any situation.
At the moment, my reality is very bitter-sweet. In my bubble of 6 people including my fiancé, I am doing well, but I know that so many people are struggling. Aside from the suffering caused by the corona virus itself, the lockdown is making it hard for many people, and it is hardest for single parent families and adults living alone. I’m starting to think more about our wedding plans. We are hoping to be able to go ahead with our planned July date, but I am feeling sad knowing that would likely mean a very different wedding than I had originally hoped for. I am counting down, and there are 99 days to go. I am feeling excited but sad at the same time.
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