Passover: Celebrating the Miracle of Freedom

Passover (Pesach) commemorates the liberation of the Jews from their 210-year-long slavery in ancient Egypt. To remember the unleavened bread that the Jews ate when they left Egypt, we don’t eat any chametz during Passover. Chametz means leavened grain, any food or drink containing wheat, barley, rye, oats, or their products, and which were left to rise or ferment.

Instead of chametz, we eat matzah, a flat unleavened bread. Matzah is made of just two ingredients, flour and water, which are quickly mixed and baked, in exactly 18 minutes, before letting the dough rise. Eating matzah we recall our ancestors' leaving the Egyptian lands in such a hurry that they had no time to allow their dough to rise.

Passover, which constitutes the focus of the Jewish life and has always acted as a life guide with its still up-to-date teachings, is our first festival that is spoken of clearly in the Torah. Passover's requirements were told by God to Moshe Rabenu two weeks before the Exodus from Egypt.

Even though commemorating the miraculous Exodus from Egypt is always a part of our daily prayers, the Jews living in the diaspora on the first and second nights of the Passover Festival, the anniversary of this extraordinary event, as an addition, get together with our extended family around a table for the Passover Seder (Jews living in the Holy Lands only make Passover Seder the first night). On these special nights, we bridge the gap between the events that took place 3336 years ago and today, talk about the meaning of enslavement of the past and today, the importance of being free, and try to find useful clues for our lives.

This year the Passover (Pesach) Festival, the anniversary of the miracle of Exodus from Egyptian slavery, will be celebrated for 8 days in the diaspora starting on the eve of Monday, April 22nd.

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