Ethiopian Immigrants Join in Israeli Celebration of Passover

Jews the world over marked the beginning ofPassover at sundown Friday with the seder, the ceremonial meal marking the exodus of Moses and the biblical Israelites from Egypt 3,300 years ago.

Here in Jerusalem, rabbis supervised the ritual sterilization of cooking utensils in vats of boiling water, and in the ultra-Orthodox quarter of Mea Shearim, families symbolically burned pieces of bread in preparation for the observance.

“The deliverance of the Jewish people is truly a significant chapter in the history of freedom,” President Reagan said Friday in a message to Israeli President Chaim Herzog.

Passover took on new meaning for thousands of recently arrived Ethiopian Jews, who celebrated their own return to the land of their forefathers. The Ethiopians trace their descent to the Old Testament era of Solomon and Sheba.

On Friday, many of them were invited to join in seders with local families. Others held observances in their native language of Amharic at the absorption centers where they have been living since their arrival.

On a light note, the Jerusalem Post reported that Coleco, the U.S. manufacturer of Cabbage Patch dolls, flew 1,000 of the dolls to Israel to be given to Ethiopian children as a Passover gift.

In preparation for the eight-day holiday, shoppers in Jerusalem rushed to buy food despite higher prices that took effect this week. Many Israelis pleaded for a postponement of a 7% price increase until the end of the holiday, but the financially pressed Israeli government did not give in, putting priority on its plan to stabilize Israel’s inflated economy.

The term Passover refers to the 10th Plague, the final one that the Bible says Moses brought upon the Egyptians to induce Pharaoh to let thousands of Jews go free from bondage and to the Promised Land.

According to the Hagadah, the Passover book of biblical quotations, hymns and commentary, God killed all first-born Egyptian sons during Passover night, but “passed over” the homes of Jews--which Moses had ordered marked with splotches of lamb’s blood.

This same account has it that God urged the Jews to leave Egypt so quickly that bread baking in the ovens had no time to rise. Jews who observe Passover eat no bread or other leavened food during the holiday, substituting the flat, wafer-like matzoh.

The Israeli government symbolically sells all stored-up flour, grain and other leavened food to a non-Jew, who then sells it back for the same nominal amount after the holiday ends.

This year, the government sold its food to Ahmed Mughrabi, a prominent Jerusalem Muslim lawyer, who joked in a Haaretz newspaper interview that he would decide on the last night of the holiday whether or not to sell the food back.