Celebration of Passover : Jews Begin 8-Day Celebration at Sunset With Seder Ritual

Gathered with friends at the Jewish Senior Center of Orange County for an early Passover Seder, Izak Kuncewiecki reminisced about his personal road to freedom.

“They tell me this story about Egypt,” the 82-year-old Kuncewiecki said, but “I got my own story” to tell.

Indeed, Kuncewiecki’s personal recollections of surviving 16 months in an Arctic Circle labor camp during World War II, where temperatures routinely fell well below zero, seemed particularly relevant to a holiday that commemorates freedom from slavery.

Beginning at sunset today , Jews will celebrate Passover, the eight-day festival that commemorates the story of Moses leading the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.

After wandering 40 years in the desert, biblical accounts say, the Jewish people arrived in the Promised Land and created the nation of Israel. Today Jews commemorate the event by conducting Seders, ceremonial meals during which the story is retold and certain foods are consumed in symbolic re-creation of the exodus.

Rabbis throughout Orange County say the holiday is especially significant this year in light of recent events from California to the Middle East. And many say they plan to expand congregational Seders tonight and Sunday to include discussions of some of the important modern-day issues upon which the holiday touches.

“This year feels extremely different from other years,” said Rabbi Robert Baruch, spiritual leader of Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach. “We feel more vulnerable and frail than at any other time.”

At his own temple, Baruch said, he intends to use a particular portion of the service to drive home his belief that the lessons of Passover are relevant to modern life. Traditionally, the portion enumerates the 10 plagues said to have been visited upon the Egyptians by God in His defense of the fleeing Jews.

But Baruch said he plans to encourage participants to enumerate the more recent plagues that have been visited upon residents of California itself: fire, earthquake and mudslides, as well as more enduring social ills such as poverty, AIDS and violence.

“What I’m emphasizing,” Baruch said, “is that we should rethink the plagues as not something that happens to our adversaries, the Egyptians, but as something that occurs to us. We should think of these things, not so much as things that are visited on us by God, but as opportunities to be co-workers with God in improving the world.”

At Thursday’s model Seder at the Costa Mesa Jewish Senior Center, Ziporah Prihar, 92, recalled how she made the decision to leave home in Poland in 1920 with a group of young pioneers to build a Jewish community in the Palestine desert that would later become the modern state of Israel.

“My mother said, ‘All right, go. If it’s too hard for you, you’ll come back,’ ” Prihar remembered. “But I never went back.”

Prihar said she worked to pull rocks out of fields and crush them with hammers to build roads. “I was sick so many times,” Prihar said. “I had malaria. But I didn’t want to go home because I knew my mother wouldn’t let me go back.”

Having built their own nation after experiencing persecution themselves, said Rabbi Bernie King of Harbor Reform Temple, Jews should be especially sensitive to such modern-day “slaveries” as the economic servitude imposed by inner-city poverty.

“The haves need to reach out to the have-nots,” he said. “There needs to be more contact between the more affluent and less affluent aspects of our community.”

Many area rabbis said they plan to discuss developments in the Middle East, where recent efforts to reach a peace agreement were shattered when dozens of Muslims were massacred by a Jewish settler as they worshiped in a mosque.

“People are enslaved by violence,” said Rabbi Allen Krause of Temple Beth El in Aliso Viejo.

Krause said he plans to emphasize that point during a portion of the Seder during which Jews traditionally drip wine off their fingers as each of the 10 plagues is recited, symbolically reducing the joy they take in the suffering of others.

“Because of the recent events in Hebron,” he said, “we really have to reduce any joy we have at this time when we recall what’s going on there and how many innocent people were killed.”

“This year has special meaning for Jews because of the hope for the peace process in the Middle East,” added Rabbi Marc Rubenstein of Temple Isaiah of Newport Beach, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a communal Seder. At the Seder, the traditional fifth cup of wine, which is normally set out for the Prophet Elijah, will be dedicated to the hope of peace in the Middle East, he said.

Not all rabbis, however, said they will deliver a message of cooperation between Jews and Arabs.

“What happened in Hebron is simply a repeat of history,” said Rabbi Aron Berkowitz, the orthodox head of Congregation Adat Israel of Huntington Beach. “Jews and Arabs have had great difficulty living together. What it tells us is that the idea of having two independent countries next to each other is impossible. The Arabs and the Jews do not get along.”

The Seder Plate

Passover begins at sundown today with a ceremonial dinner called the Seder. A Seder plate is prepared with ceremonial foods, which are referred to at specific points during the reading of the Haggada, the story of the Jews’ enslavement in Egypt 3,000 years ago and their escape to freedom under Moses’ leadership.

* Roasted lamb shank bone: Symbolizes the sacrificial lamb, whose blood was smeared above the doors of Jewish homes in Egypt so the Angel of Death would know to “pass over” these homes when he killed the Egyptians’ firstborn children. In the Bible, this the last and most terrible of the 10 plagues sent by God to persuade the Egyptians to free the enslaved Jews.

* Haroset: An apple-nut-cinnamon-wine mixture symbolizing the bricks and mortar Jewish slaves used to build the pyramids in Egypt.

* Parsley and salt water: Parsley or celery is dipped in salt water to recall the tears shed by Jews under Egyptian bondage.

* Horseradish: Eaten to recall the bitterness of slavery.

* Roasted or hard-boiled eggs: Symbolize the free-will festival offering that accompanied the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb in the Temple.

* Wine: Four cups are drunk by each person at specific moments during the meal. An extra cup is placed on the table for the prophet Elijah, who, it is believed, will pave the way for the coming of the Messiah.

* Matzo (unleavened bread): During the eight days of Passover, no leavened foods, such as bread, are eaten. Unleavened bread, such as matzo crackers or matzo meal, recalls the hasty flight to freedom of the Jews, who had no time to let their bread rise when the moment came for them to leave Egypt.

Source: American Book of Days

Los Angeles Times