Passover Explained

Passover is winding down just as Easter is gearing up and last night I had a few of my gentile friends over for dinner (I won't tell you what I served, for mine is a wrathful and vengeful God). Soon enough conversation turned to this most beloved of annual Jewish celebrations and as I fielded questions it occured to me that this would be a good subject for today's post.

Passover begins with two consecutive and enormous evening meals called "Seders". While there is no exact English translation for "seder" Talmudic scholars point to the word "reflux" as a reasonable approximation.

Many of the foods served have important symbolic meaning: The bitter herbs to remind us of our enslavement at the hands of the Egyptians, eggs in salt water...the latter representing the tears of our ancestors, charoses; a concoction made of chopped nuts, honey, apples and wine that resembles the clay used to make the bricks with which we, as slaves, built the pyramids, a lamb shank bone that harkens back to the lamb's blood that was used to paint the door posts of all Israelite homes so that the angel of death would whack only the 1st born sons of the Egyptians and pass over the Jewish ones.......and this is one of our happy holidays!!!

The one food that stands alone as a symbolic Passover staple is matzoh. These plank like sheets of unleavened bread look (and taste) more like something one would purchase at Home Depot than at a grocery store and indeed, matzoh, when carefully lacquered and cured makes wonderful acoustic tiling for your home studio and can be used in hand to hand combat.

Passover, as mentioned earlier, begins with the 1st seder which itself begins with lots of prayers, rituals, and recitations. By the time this is all done everyone is starving to the point where things like dry matzoh and a hard boiled egg sitting in a puddle of brine seem like the most delicious food ever! Every 1st seder quickly becomes a joyous feeding frenzy but just as the last piece of sponge cake is working it's way through your lower intestine it's time for another onslaught of savoury yet heavy holiday fare known as seder #2.

The remaining 6 days of Passover are basically a built in recovery period as your body's cardio-vascular and digestive systems work to rebound from the self-inflicted trauma. BTW if you're into good karma and happen upon a Jew during this period offer him a TUMS or similar product. It will be readily accepted with a wan smile and a weak grasping motion and you'll score major life points!

I hope this post has been informative and helpful. If you still have questions then ask away and I'll see what I can do. (Man it feels good when the blood stops pooling in your feet!!!)