The Jewish Passover Story

The holiday of Passover is one that involves the invocation of memory.  The Jewish people have a long and rich history and a very important part of it is preserved in the story and the ritual of  Passover.  Passover is celebrated on the fifteenth day in the month of Nisan, and according to the Hebrew Bible, it is considered the first month of the Hebrew calender's festival year.  The celebration is begun with a seder, a celebratory feast, on the first night of Passover, and an important part of the seder is the recitation of the story of Passover itself.

The story of Passover is one that is set in Egypt, where the Jewish people settled after the Joseph became the Viceroy of Egypt.  Over the next few generations, the Jewish people prospered and were numerous, and their success sat very uneasily with the pharaoh of the land, Ramses II.  He was wary of their influence and a great tyrant besides, and because of his order, the Jews of Egypt were enslaved and persecuted.  When he issued an order that every newborn son of Jewish descent was to be killed, one father took his son and floated him down the river in a basket of reeds, hoping that he might be saved.

The baby floated down the river, watched from the shore by his sister Miriam, and he came to the attention of the pharaoh's daughter, who was bathing in the river.  She named him Moses and reared him as her own, and when he became an adult, he recognized his heritage.  He and his brother Aaron came before the pharaoh demanding the release of the Jewish people, and at the pharaoh's refusal, Egypt was struck by the ten plagues.

The final plague is the one that gave Passover its name.  The tenth plague was the death of every first born son in the land of Egypt.  The Jewish people were warned to sprinkle the lintels of their door with lamb's blood, keeping the Angel of Death away, allowing the Jewish firstborn sons to be spared, or "passed over".

The pharaoh finally relented and allowed the Jews to depart, but when they had reached the Red Sea, he changed his mind.  With his army, he pursued them.  Moses opened the waters of the Red Sea to allow the Jews to walk between the waves, but as the Egyptian army came behind them, the waters crashed down, drowning the army completely

Though the Jews would wander the desert for forty years thereafter, the story of Passover is one of freedom from oppression and of Moses, who brought the Jewish people out of slavery and oppression.