Passover! (Annie)

This post has been in the works for weeks, and I've decided it's definitely time that it sees the light of day.

A few weeks ago we had the opportunity to have an authentic Passover (Seder) dinner here at the JC! It's kind of funny because Passover isn't for another half of a year, but they have one here every semester anyway so that the students can experience it. Other than the date, though, it was all pretty legitimate.

Our Israel teacher, Ophir, set up and delegated the entire dinner and lead it tonight. He came with his little daughter and explained to us the significance of everything and read the words in Hebrew and, for some parts, Aramaic. We started off with a specially designed Seder plate that held romaine lettuce, an egg, parsley, etc. We ate these throughout the dinner and they all represent different things in the story of the Exodus. For example, bitter herbs represented the bitterness of the bondage of the Israelites under the Egyptians, the parsley represents springtime, and I never really figured out what the egg represented. We also read through a book provided for us that the Jews read through (in Hebrew) during the Seder meal each year. There is a certain order to and way to do everything, which is very typical of Jews, and it was pretty exciting to experience that. It took a long time to go through the entire dinner, but it was worth it!

Oh yeah, we also drank grape juice during the meal and afterwards Neil and Nicole and I got a little bit crazy and started picking up grape juice bottles from random tables and drinking them and pretending we were drunk...it was a BLAST!