Passover, described as the warmest home-celebrated holiday...

Passover, described as the warmest home-celebrated holiday on the Jewish calendar, begins Wednesday night and continues for seven days in Reform Jewish households and eight days in Conservative and Orthodox traditions.

Nevertheless, ritual seder dinners will also be held at Jewish community centers, campus Hillel centers and synagogues at various times during the period.

Like other major Jewish festivals, Passover originated in agricultural and historical tradition. The holiday symbolizes the spring harvest as well as commemorates the biblically described exodus of Jews from slavery under Egypt’s Pharaohs.

Virtually hundreds of ritual books, called haggadot , are available for seders in order to relate the ancient Jewish flight to freedom to contemporary situations.

In a “freedom seder” at 7 p.m., April 23, at Temple Israel in Hollywood, for instance, recently installed Rabbi John L. Rosove and others will conduct a service attended by recent immigrants from Ethiopia, the Soviet Union, Central America and Southeast Asia.

Continuing a 15-year tradition in La Mirada, two-dozen members of a United Methodist Church will prepare and serve the traditional Jewish meal to members of the the neighboring Temple Beth Ohr on Thursday, the second night of Passover.

CONFERENCES

More than 17,000 people have registered for the three-day Religious Education Congress of the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese that starts Friday at the Anaheim Convention Center. Participants at 8:30 a.m. opening-day rites will be welcomed by Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and Sister Edith Prendergast, director of the archdiocesan Office of Religious Education. More than 145 speakers are scheduled for the 225 weekend workshops. About 11,000 high school students are expected to attend “Youth Day” on Thursday preceding the Congress.

Pepperdine University’s 46th annual Bible Lectureship may draw more than 4,000 people for four days, starting Tuesday night, of speeches and seminars--some on the biblical Book of Exodus, the conference theme, and many on contemporary Christian issues. The event begins Tuesday night and ends with a talk Thursday night by Pepperdine President David Davenport.

The Los Angeles-based synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will open its three-day annual assembly Friday at the Stouffer Concourse Hotel. The Rev. Jerry Schmalenberger, president of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, will address delegates three times during the meeting.

PEOPLE

Gerald Larue, a USC emeritus professor of religion and adjunct professor of gerontology, will receive the 1989 Humanist of the Year award next Saturday during the American Humanist Assn. convention in San Jose. Larue chairs the national Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion and has served as president of the Hemlock Society, which advocates legalized voluntary euthanasia.

DATE

The Rev. Duane Lindberg, presiding pastor of the Minneapolis-based American Assn. of Lutheran Churches, will speak during services Sunday at Fellowship Lutheran Church in San Gabriel. Fellowship is one of four Southern California congregations aligned with the conservative denomination that formed in reaction to the 1987 formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the product of a three-way merger. The splinter body now has 60-member congregations and about 70 “affiliates,” many of them churches said to be in the process of leaving the larger denomination, according to a spokesman.