Every spring, Jews the world over gather to mark Passover, Judaism’s ancient celebration of divine deliverance. As told in the Book of Exodus, Moses seeks freedom for enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, but Pharaoh refuses to let them go. Unleashing his wrath, God sets 10 plagues upon Egypt, each one worse than the next. The final one is most terrible of all: God will kill the firstborn son of each family in Egypt.
(Ten plagues and a betrayal—how Moses saved the Hebrew slaves.)
The Israelites will be spared if they follow God’s instructions. They must slaughter a lamb, “without blemish, a year-old male” and smear its blood on the doorposts and lintels of their homes. Then God instructs them:
They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs ... This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every first-born in the land of Egypt ... The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt (Exodus 12:8-13).
Hebrews shall repeat this ritual in thanksgiving to God for generations to come, Moses tells them and explains the guidelines for doing so. They will celebrate “from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day” of Nisan, the first month in the Hebrew calendar, which usually falls in late March and early April.
A storied meal
Passover continues to be celebrated as a great spring festival of Judaism. In many parts of the world it lasts for seven days, while in Israel it is celebrated for eight. It is a joyous time when families gather for a seder, a meal rich with ancient rituals, to remember their ancestors’ deliverance.
The feast holds meaning for Christians too: All four Gospel writers recount how the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth takes place on, or around, the celebration of Passover in Jerusalem. Much of the core symbolism of Passover, enacted year after year, can be found in the seder. Modern Passover celebrations follow the rules set out in Exodus, but the ritual has absorbed many changes over the centuries, reflecting the upheavals and impacts of history.
(Passover honors resilience amid adversity.)
Tradition holds that Moses lived in the 13th century B.C., the period in which pharaohs such as Ramses II ruled ancient Egypt. Some biblical historians believe that the rituals outlined by Moses predate this time, going back to the dawn of Jewish history. Slaughtering spring lambs and eating unleavened bread may have once been separate spring festivals that were later incorporated into the story of the exodus. Biblical scholars broadly agree that the oldest material in the Book of Exodus is from about the ninth century B.C., and that it took its current form in the fifth century B.C.
In the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites are delivered out of slavery and will eventually settle in Canaan, the so-called Promised Land. The city of Jerusalem will become their capital, ruled by kings David and Solomon, who built a grand temple there. The Israelites’ memory of their time in Egypt is never far away, as the celebration of Passover continues over the centuries.
(The very ancient Passover of one of the smallest religions in the world.)
In a foreign land
Another exile, occurring some eight centuries after the time of Moses, would further shape Judaism and Passover. At this time, the Promised Land had split into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Geopolitically, Judah—centered on its hilltop capital, Jerusalem—was sandwiched between two great regional powers: Egypt and the Neo-Babylonian empire.
In 587 B.C., the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II laid siege to Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and made Judah a province of his empire. Swaths of the population of Judah were forcibly deported to Babylon. Many scholars use this deportation to mark the creation of the Jewish diaspora, large communities of Jews living outside Jerusalem.
(Nebuchadrezzar: the builder king of Babylon.)
Several biblical books including Jeremiah, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra document the events of the exile. Perhaps the most famous passage is the beautiful Psalm 137, which laments: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion ... How can we sing the Lord’s song while in a foreign land?”
During their captivity in Babylon, the Jewish exiles reflected deeply on what had befallen them: on their suffering and their covenant with God. Scholars and scribes continued to write, forming the foundation of several books of the Old Testament as well as solidifying the Torah (the five first books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). These books certainly have roots that predate the Babylonian period, but many biblical historians concur that a dynamic process of scholarship and national renewal inspired by the period in Babylon brought together the composition of the books of Moses, as they are known now.
(History's first superpower sprang from ancient Iran.)
Nearly 50 years later, in 540 B.C., Babylon and the Neo-Babylonian regime fell to the Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great, who allowed the exiled Jews to return to Judah. In the Book of Isaiah 44:28, the prophet has God say of Cyrus: “He is My shepherd, And he shall perform all My pleasure, saying to Jerusalem, You shall be built and to the temple, Your foundation shall be laid.” Given the experience of Babylonian exile, it is not surprising that an ancient story about captivity—in which God intervenes to smite the enemy, while “passing over” and saving his chosen people—proved to be the foundational narrative of the Jewish faith.
Judaism's calendar
Home or temple?
Following the return from the Babylonian exile, Passover could once again be celebrated in Jerusalem. This moment is chronicled in the biblical Book of Ezra, which recounts how the Jews returned from Babylon, renewed in their faith, to rebuild their temple:
On the fourteenth day of the first month the returned exiles kept the passover. For both the priests and the Levites had purified themselves ... So they killed the passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow-priests, and for themselves. It was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by all who had joined them and separated themselves from the pollutions of the nations of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. With joy they celebrated the festival of unleavened bread for seven days; for the Lord had made them joyful (Ezra 6:19-22).
The Bible offers radically different accounts of the setting in which the Passover ritual was to take place. In Exodus, the instructions are clearly given to households. In the Book of Deuteronomy, however, Passover is listed among the three pilgrimage festivals, along with the Feast of Weeks (early summer) and the Feast of Tabernacles (fall) that must be celebrated in Jerusalem: “You must not sacrifice the Passover in any town the Lord your God gives you except in the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name.”
Significant differences in the setting of the sacrifice—as well as whether the sacrificial meat should be roasted or boiled—have been the cause of much debate among religious scholars. The differences suggest that the Passover ritual underwent considerable evolution over the long time period in which the Torah was composed and compiled.
(Explore the origins of Jewish holidays, like Purim, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Hanukkah.)
Historians detected a general trend. Before the Babylonian exile, the ardor with which Passover was observed waxed and waned. It was zealously observed in the seventh century B.C. by King Josiah. Revered for upholding orthodoxy, and closely associated with the law as set out in Deuteronomy, Josiah had celebrated Passover in the Temple. Following the trauma of the exile, and the return to Jerusalem, a trend emerged to recentralize the ritual in the Temple.
Every spring in the post-exile period, the newly rededicated Temple in Jerusalem hummed with preparations for the festival. Families would enter the Temple compound and offer their sacrificial animal. The Hallel, based on the Psalms, would have been sung in celebration. The sacrificial animals would be killed by the priests, returned to the family, and then cooked and perhaps eaten somewhere in the temple precincts.
By the time of Jesus of Nazareth, early in the first century A.D., Jerusalem was a bustling pilgrimage center. The Gospel of John records: “Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves.” (John 11: 55). The sheer number of people pouring into Jerusalem meant that by Jesus’ time, the Temple, while still central to the festival, was no longer an exclusive setting for the Passover ceremony. The Paschal lamb would have been eaten in private homes across the city.
(These biblical queens played crucial roles in the rise and fall of ancient Israel.)
Beyond the temple
For the full celebration of Passover, Hebrews abstain from leavened bread (made with yeast), a time called the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, or Chag Hamatzot. Matzo is also at the heart of the seder, as is a roasted lamb, both calling back to the instructions laid out in Exodus.
(The crummy history of matzoh.)
Many modern Passover rituals were developed in the post-Babylon period. Surviving at first by oral tradition, they were written down in the Mishnah in the first and second centuries A.D. The Mishnah has a section devoted to different dishes served during a seder and what they symbolize. Matzo and roasted lamb remain at the heart of the meal. Four cups of wine must also be served. A paste of fruit, wine, and nuts, called haroseth, is part of the seder and symbolizes the mortar the enslaved people used to build Pharaoh’s monuments and cities. Bitter herbs, the maror, recall tears and pain caused by exile and enslavement.
The Mishnah also explains the roles for family members in the meal. Children participate by asking the Ma Nishtana, or Four Questions. When the adults answer, they tell the Exodus story. The call-and-response nature of the meal becomes a vehicle to reiterate the story of Israel in Egypt, beginning with enslavement and ending with triumph.
(Recreating Passover rituals while locked down required some improvising.)
In A.D. 70, more than 500 years after it had been destroyed by the Neo-Babylonians, catastrophe befell the Jewish Temple a second time. Following a revolt against Roman rule, the forces of the future emperor Titus besieged Jerusalem before entering the city and destroying nearly all of the Temple, except the Western Wall. Initially, the practice of Passover was thrown into confusion by the great loss of the Temple. It fell to the highest religious authority of the time, Rabbi Gamaliel of Yavne, to reinterpret the Passover seder so it could still be celebrated without the central sacred structure.
Dispersion and exile once again became woven into the Jewish national story, and Passover adapted accordingly. Although many of the traditions recorded in the Mishnah had long predated the dark year of A.D. 70, somewere developed after this event. Some were introduced through tradition rather than on the basis of religious authority. One example of this is the addition of the roasted egg, dipped in salted water to symbolize both the tears of the enslaved Israelites and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans.
As the Jewish world adapted to life without a central temple, the Passover seder was formalized into the text called the Haggadah. Meaning “the telling,” and compiled from the Torah, Mishnah, and other sources, the Haggadah emerged toward the end of the second century and forms the basis of the Passover meal as it is celebrated by Jews across the world today.
Although the ceremony reflects the slow adaptation of Jews to living in a world with no central place of worship, the longing for such a place is reflected in the words that are traditionally said at the end of the seder: l’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim—next year in Jerusalem.