Passover

Last night began Passover for our fellow Jew, Leslie. She introduced us to Sedar by cooking a traditional meal and printing off "Passover for Dummies" for us to read during the meal. Traditionally, the meal take hours and full of prayers recited in Hebrew. Our version was a bit shorter than normal and although we didn't recite the prayers, we took part in a few other traditions. She made an extra plate for Elijah which included a bone, a few greens (green beans in our case), horseradish (or the closest thing France had to offer), a hard-boiled egg, a "sweet" side dish (in our case cinnamon sugar apples) and a glass of wine. Before we devoured our Jewish meal, she read us the significance of each part of the plate. We each had to dip a green bean into salt-water and lean to the left while eating it. The leaning to the left represents the Jews freedom from Egypt. Then, we had to combine the sweet and spicy by making a "matzo sandwich" with the horseradish and the apples. Next, we dipped our pinky fingers into the wine and placed ten dots of wine around our plate to represent the 10 plagues. We all had a little trouble remembering all 10 plagues and we eventually resorted to Wikipedia to help us out. Our meal consisted of matzo ball soup, roasted chicken and potatoes, green beans, cinnamon sugar apples and "matzo dessert", which was matzo with caramel and melted chocolate. The whole time Leslie was apologizing for the lack of food and telling us we could make other food if we didn't like the meal. Despite her lack of faith, we each had second (in some of our cases, thirds) of each dish. My favorite was the matzo ball soup and I might have had three servings. By the end of the meal, none of us could move and we were greatly satisfied with our first Passover meal. It was really neat to experience a second Jewish holiday and learn the history behind all of the traditions. Sunday, we will get the chance to show her how we celebrate Easter and explain the importance of the day and how it greatly impacts our faith.