Like all Jewish festivals, Passover has a special synagogue service that includes specific Torah readings for the holiday and the chanting of Song of Songs, the poetic work attributed to King Solomon. The memorial service Yizkor is also traditionally held in the synagogue on the final day of the holiday, one of only four times during the year it is recited.
During the first two and last two days of Passover, many traditionally observant Jews will abstain from most of the same activities they avoid on the Sabbath — no driving, working, using electricity, lighting fires or spending money.
On the intermediary days of the holiday — known as hol hamoed — those restrictions do not apply. Many Jewish schools close for the full duration of the holiday. Prep for Passover like a pro with this special email series. Hametz is prohibited on Passover.
In Israel, Jews have a seder only on the first night of Passover. We use cookies to improve your experience on our site and bring you ads that might interest you. Join Our Newsletter Empower your Jewish discovery, daily. Traditionally, that decision was made at the Temple of Jerusalem, and the news had to travel far to reach them.
Reform Jews and Jews living in Israel do not celebrate the extra day. Unleavened bread is made without yeast or sourdough culture.
It is a simple, unfermented bread made with flour, water, and salt and then thoroughly rolled into flattened dough. During Passover, Jews eat cracker-like unleavened bread called matzah. According to the Passover story, the Israelites left Egypt in such a hurry that the bread they baked as provisions for the way did not have time to rise. To commemorate the unleavened bread that the Israelites ate when they left Egypt, observant Jews don't eat or even retain in their possession any leavened grain or chametz from midday of the day before Passover until the conclusion of the holiday.
They rid their homes of any food or drink that contains even a trace of wheat, barley, rye, oats, spelt or their derivatives, and which wasn't guarded from leavening or fermentation. This includes bread, cake, cookies, cereal, pasta and most alcoholic beverages. Moreover, almost any processed food or drink can be assumed to be chametz unless certified otherwise. Traditionally, Jews do a formal search for remaining chametz after nightfall two evenings before Passover.
A blessing is read, the lights are turned off, and, by candlelight, one or more members of the household proceed from room to room to check that no crumbs remain in any corner. This search, known as bedikat chametz, is described in Pesachim, a tractate of Passover laws in the collection of Jewish oral traditions known as the Mishnah.
Bedikat chametz is typically conducting with a feather and a wooden spoon; the former, to dust crumbs out of their hiding places, and the latter, to collect the crumbs. Customarily, 10 morsels of bread no smaller than the size of an olive — a measure called a "kezayit" — are hidden throughout the house in order to ensure that some chametz will be found. The next morning, on the 14th of Nisan, any leavened products that remain in the householder's possession, along with the 10 morsels of bread from the previous night's search, are burned.
Most but not all Jews take off from work or school on this day, even ones who are not religious at other times. This is the busiest day of the year for synagogues, even though many synagogues charge for tickets to this day's services to defray the cost of serving so many extra people.
Many will also want to leave work early the night before, so they have time for a large, slow meal before this hour fast. Like Rosh Hashanah, most American Jews expect gentiles to be aware of this day, and almost all will be offended if you schedule important activities on it.
How do you pronounce the name of this holiday? Please don't pronounce it that way; there is something fundamentally wrong with naming a fast day after a food item! Chanukkah is the festival of lights, commemorating the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after a successful revolt against the Seleucid Greeks. As part of the rededication, the victorious Jews needed to light the Temple's menorah candelabrum , but they had only enough oil to last one day and it would take eight days to prepare more oil.
Miraculously, the one-day supply of oil lasted for eight days. The miracle of the oil is commemorated with this eight-day candlelighting holiday. Chanukkah begins between Thanksgiving and Christmas. About half of the time, it overlaps with Christmas, but there are many years when Chanukkah ends long before Christmas.
In , for example, Chanukkah began on Thanksgiving and ended in the first week of December, but that is unusual. Almost all Jews light candles with their families for at least some nights of the holiday, so people like to be at home during this holiday. Although almost nobody takes off from work or school for this holiday, many may not want to work nights or travel during the holiday so they can light candles with the family, and accommodations should be made for this. The most important thing to remember about Chanukkah is that it is not Jewish Christmas, no matter what the card shops and toy stores want you to believe.
Chanukkah is a very minor holiday. It's not about joy to the world and peace on Earth and presents galore for everyone you've ever met; it's about lighting candles and playing games for chocolate coins and eating potato pancakes.
Many Jewish parents give their children gifts during Chanukkah because they don't want their children to feel left out of Christmas, but Chanukkah gift-giving rarely extends much beyond one's own children.
Most American Jews feel a sort of ambivalence about Chanukkah. On the one hand, most of them know that Chanukkah is not a big deal, and they don't want to make a big deal about it. On the other hand, Christmas is everywhere, unavoidable and overwhelming, and Jews want something of their own to counterbalance it. This is the primary motivation behind elaborate Chanukkah decorations and enormous Chanukkah menorahs in public areas: Chanukkah is not very important, but asserting our Jewish identity and distinctiveness and existence in the face of overwhelming pressure to conform to a non-Jewish norm is important.
Pressuring Jews to conform to that norm or to participate in Christmas events if they don't want to is inconsiderate at best. There are many other Jewish holidays, but most American Jews do not celebrate these holidays as strictly or as regularly as the holidays above, and most do not expect gentiles to be aware of them.
In fact, there are a surprising number of Jews who don't know about many of these holidays. Sukkot: This festival of booths commemorates the Biblical period of wandering in the desert, and is commemorated by building a temporary shelter called a sukkah, usually rhymes with "book a" in the yard and eating meals in it.
Some spend considerable time in the sukkah, even sleeping there. Sukkot begins on the fifth day after Yom Kippur, in late September or October, and lasts for 7 days. From the perspective of the Bible and Jewish law, this holiday is every bit as important as Passover, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but most American Jews don't see it that way.
Shemini Atzeret is sort of an extra day tacked onto the end of Sukkot; Simchat Torah celebrates the completion of the annual cycle of Bible readings in sabbath services. Some branches celebrate these two holidays on the same day, which is the first day after Sukkot. Occurs in late January or early February. There are no restrictions on this holiday that would require accommodation.
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