Passover Meal

Seder Intro

2006-04-18T01:58:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, my family celebrated the Passover feast (called "seder" in Hebrew). We invited my best friend, Joanna; another friend, Ruth; Haye (a volunteer from Holland who is helping my sister and dad in MegaVoice); Sophie (Danny's sister who was staying in my parent's house that week); and a Russian family (Vitally & Rusina and their two sons; Ben and Omri).

The meal consists of reading the Haggada which is a book with scripture portions, other anecdotes, songs, and ceremonial descriptians. Depending on how much of the ceremony you do, the ceremony can take up to 5-6 hours. Ours started a little late (at around 19:30) and ended around 22:30 (including the meal in the middle). We used a new Messianic Haggada this year which cut portions of the regular haggada out and added New Testament readings of Jesus and his disciples celebrating the passover and Jesus being the atonement lamb. Even so, we had to cut out much of the Rabbi's interpretations which were left in there or the meal/ceremony would have lasted much longer.

Part of the seder involves drinking 4 wine/grapejuice glasses and the instructions are to lean to the left (probably due to the fact that the initial seders were done laying on pillows by a low table).

Here Tehila, Joanna and I are drinking one of these cups "leaning" to the left.

Eating during the ceremony

2006-04-18T01:30:00.000-07:00

Michael was the clown of the party as usual
Here he is with the Passover platter (everything on this tray symbolizes something in the Exodus which we discuss and eat during the ceremony)
Marianna very bravely ate quiet a bit of the bitter herbs which represent the hard labor that Pharoah made the Israelites work.
Besides the delicious Charoset (apple and cinnamon spread) my mother made, my sister's matza-ball (unleavened bread-ball) soup was the best!

Our guests

2006-04-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

Ben and Stav at the end of the table Sophie and Haye sat across from me

Mariana was unusually quiet, Ruth was a little bashful, and David and my parents were in serious conversation when I took this shot.

Vitally, Rusina, and their sons; Ben and Omri were our family of guests. They are Russian Immigrants who came to the Lord only in the last few years. I didn't get much time to talk to Vittaly and Rusina, but they seamed to be a very sweet family.

Afikoman & Singing at the end

2006-04-18T00:56:00.000-07:00

Omri's eyes grew large when we got to cutting the Afikoman (the middle Matza which you hide one half of). My parents had a bit of a hard time hiding it without him seeing. As he was quite a bit younger than the other two who were allowed to go look for it, he was allowed to start looking first... But Stav found it
At the end of the meal/ceremony we sang quite a few songs (some as part of the feast, and others as well)
Tehila especially liked the tongue-twisting songs which go faster and faster