Our First Passover Dinner

I have wanted to introduce the children to some Jewish feasts/holidays for a while now.  We did spend some time during Hanukkah the last two years reading a little bit about it and in 2009 we made paper menorah crafts.  This year I really wanted to look into Passover a little more.  It seemed important because Jesus was Jewish and would have grown up celebrating/observing the feasts of the Old Testament.  And to my understanding Jesus was celebrating the Passover when he instituted Communion.

As I began to research Passover from a Christian perspective I found two great sites with information on observing the Passover Seder for Christians.  Over at The Voice I found a very detailed script, the recipe for the charoset and lots of information.  I decided not to use this one because of the ages of the children.  I went with the one that was more family (with young children) friendly that I found at CurrClick (technically I Googled Passover Celebration for Christian Families).  Here is the link for the free ebooklet Passover For Christian Families


As I was researching I began discovering quite a few blogs of ladies who believe in Jesus but have been learning about the importance of Torah and the Old Testament, which of course includes the feasts and the Sabbath.  I am still researching, but if you would like to look into some of them you can check out my sidebar where I have a list of blogs titled "Blogs That Are Challenging Me in Following God's Word"

Anyway, yesterday the children helped me prepare part of the meal.

They helped chop apples for the charoset:

Apple Charoset (chunky uncooked version)

1 cup chopped apples (2-3 apples)
1 cup chopped walnuts, almonds, or pistachio
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ginger or 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. honey or to taste
grape juice, wine vinegar, or lemon juice

Hannah enjoyed chomping on chopped apples for the first time while we chopped.  I spent the afternoon preparing and cleaning.  I decided to serve our normal dinner first because I didn't think the girls would be as attentive if they were hungry.  We had chicken with gravy, rice and corn.  then we cleared the table and had our first ever Seder.  The one site called it a "symbolic Seder."

It was hard keeping Hannah content because I didn't give her any of her usual favorite, graham crackers as they contain leaven.  So she got to munch on apples.  I couldn't find mahtzah in our area, so I opted for Wasa crackers I found.  The only ingredients were whole wheat rye flour, water and salt.  If anyone knows what would be an acceptable substitution for mahtzah I'd love to know.  If there is one.  I had it in my mind that Passover started next week, so I didn't have a good opportunity to find the Mahtzah.  When I bought the Wasa crackers I thought they would be a good substitute.  But I don't think they were.  

We used a chicken bone as a substitute for the lamb bone that was to represent the Passover Lamb.  For a Christian this represents Jesus the Lamb of God.

The Matzah represents to unleavened bread the Israelites made when they were fleeing Egypt.  They didn't have time to let the dough rise.  It is also said that leaven represents impurity or sin, so the unleavened bread represents purity.  Also, Jesus is the bread of life.

We had prepared horseradish to represent the bitter herbs which are to remind us of the bitterness of slavery.

The charoset represents the mortar the Jewish slaves used.  The sweetness reminds us of the sweetness of hope for redemption through the atonement of Jesus.

The parsley represents new life.  It is dipped in salt water to remind us of the bitter tears the Israelites shed as slaves.

The egg represents the Passover sacrifice.  It was also dipped in salt water.  (Tabitha actually enjoyed dipping it in the salt water and kept doing it after the dinner was over.)

(Quite a bit of the above explanation was taken from the Passover for Christian Families)

I am anticipating learning more about the Jewish festivals.