Passover and Easter

By Dan Kohnstamm

4/16/06

Like Yom Kippur and Ramadan, Passover and Easter are very closely related.  Passover is the Jewish holiday celebrating the deliverance of the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt.  The term Passover comes from the angel of death "passing over" the Jewish homes and killing the first-born Egyptian sons as they slept.  The angel of death knew the Jewish homes by the blood of a lamb smeared on their doorposts.  This happened on the eve of the exodus.  This occurrence was the last of the many plagues that were cast upon the Egyptians and spurred the pharaoh to finally release the Jews. 

Passover is celebrated in an elaborate meal, called a seder.  The seder includes many symbols of the exodus including parsley dipped in salt water.  A shank bone is symbolic of the lamb that used to be sacrificed for God.  A hard-boiled egg is symbolic of God's loving kindness.  The most important symbol is matzoh, symbolizing bread that was used in the rush to leave Egypt.  A combination of apples, honey and wine represents the mortar used by Jews to build the Egyptian monuments and it is mixed with bitter herbs that represent the bitterness of slavery.  Finally wine is used in several occasions.  Children are part of the ceremony and ask questions of the elders as to the significance of the holiday.  Also the children are bribed to be good during the ceremony by promising a chance to look for hidden matzoh later for which they receive a prize, if they are good.

Matzoh is particularly symbolic of the Jewish religion.  It is important because it represents freedom from slavery yet it is not sweet nor is it entirely tasty.  It represents in my mind the giving up the sweetness of leavened bread for the unleavened bread representing the sacrifice Jews gave up to live in freedom yet without a homeland.

Easter, too, is both joyous and a deeply sad holiday.  It occurred to me in writing this paper that the main two holidays in the Christian calendar celebrate the birth and death of Jesus. Easter commemorates the death of Jesus and also celebrates the joy of his resurrection.  His death occurred during Passover and his last supper was a seder.  The wine of the seder he used is symbolic of his blood.  And very possibly the wafer of communion can be traced back to a section of matzoh, though this is a guess of mine.  Christians celebrate Easter through the symbols of the egg and the lamb for which Jesus is compared to.  Bread is also used as a symbol, for example, hot cross buns, but it is always leavened bread.  Egg is a symbol of the resurrection.  Eggs are painted red in the Orthodox tradition to symbolize the blood of Jesus on the cross. 

Unfortunately, Jews have been blamed for Jesus' death because he was purported to say that he was king of the Jews and Jews are very sensitive to the fact that God is the only one who is ascribed to be a holy leader.  He was seen as a threat to the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem at the time.  He was an outsider from Bethlehem who spoke Aramaic, the common people's language, rather than the learned language of the priests who spoke Hebrew.  He was an outsider who brought miracles and challenged the priests who were seen as puppets of the occupiers, the Romans.  The priests were also seen as supporting a religion that had expanded to have more than 600 laws.  Jesus said only two commandments were necessary.  So he represented the common man with few requirements.  He also challenged the money lenders at the temple in Jerusalem which was seen as a fundamentalist act against corruption.  Money lenders were not to be within the confines of the temple.

The seder, then, became a vessel for Jesus' last supper before his trial and crucifixion.  He was put on the cross on Friday and his body was put in a safe place because Jews would not bury their dead on the Sabbath, on Saturday.  When his body was not found on Sunday morning, he was thought to have risen to heaven.

It is deeply sad that through Jesus' death, a Jew, would spur persecution for two thousand years.  Pope John Paul's visit to Jerusalem was an attempt to heal those deep wounds.  Let us hope that the egg, the symbol of God's loving kindness for Jews, and new life for the Christians, will be a common symbol of forgiveness and rebirth.