A Passover
•
er

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Pesach, which begins
Monday at sundown,
is a participatory holiday.
Here are some tips to
help you join in the fun.

DAVID HOLZEL SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

here were you when the Is-
raelites left Egypt? The cele-
bration of Passover — Pesach
in Hebrew — is constructed to
help every Jew feel and think as though he or she
was there.
"Even if we were all scholars," says the Hag-
gadah, the guidebook of the Pesach seder, "it
would still be our duty to tell the story of the Ex-
odus." The message is that no one knows too
much — or too little — to try to relive the mo-
ment in which the Jewish people were born.
Passover begins at sundown, Monday, April
21. What follows are some Pesach basics to help
you get in the holiday spirit.

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How many days?
Pesach is like a bridge with two towers of hol-
iday at the beginning and at the end that are con-
nected by intermediate days. The holiday is seven
days long in Israel and for Reform Jews. Other
diaspora Jews celebrate Pesach for eight days.

Find it in Exodus 12
Need to put your finger on a basic version of
the Passover story?
Chapter 12 ofExodus mingles the story of the
first Passover with instructions for celebrating
the festival in its following years. A variation is
found in Numbers 28:16-25.

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First month
Although Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish new

year, the first month — called Aviv (spring) in
the Torah and Nisan today — is the month in
which Pesach falls. 'Phis month shall be for you
the beginning of months," it says in Exodus 12:2.
Passover begins on the 15th of Nisan.

a lamb to warn away the angel of death on the
night of the death of the firstborn. They ate
matzah during their flight from Egypt the next
day because they didn't have time to let their
dough rise.

Two festivals
Pesach seems to be an ancient fusion of two
even more ancient festivals. One is pastoral —
shepherds sacrificing a sheep during the spring
lambing time and smearing the blood on the door-
posts of their tents.
The other is agricultural — farmers clearing
their homes of sour dough before the spring wheat
and barley harvest and eating the most ancient
and simple bread, the unleavened matzah.
In the story that comes down to us the two
are woven together: The Israelites slaughtered

Season of freedom
Because Pesach celebrates the Jews' liberation
from slavery in Egypt, the holiday is known as
z'man charuteinu — the season of our freedom.

Very punny
Pesach comes from the Hebrew root mean-
ing to "pass over," recalling the angel that passed
over the Israelites' houses. Pesach also is the
name for the lamb that was sacrificed on the hol-
iday in the Temple times. It is sometimes referred
to as the paschal lamb.

Spring cleaning
The days before Pesach are the traditional Jew-
ish spring cleaning time. The goal is to remove
chametz, or leavening, from the house — "You
shall put away leaven out of your houses," says
Exodus 12:15.
The ritual includes searching with a candle
and sweeping out the last bits of chametz with a
feather. On the morning before Pesach, the
chametz is burned.
To avoid having to empty your cupboards, a le-
gal fiction was developed. Store and seal away
your chametz and sell it to a gentile. A rabbi usu-
ally acts as the agent of the sale, which is legal-