The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Passover S 335

she wanted to take a bath, but Siva was away, so she created Ganesa from the dirt of her body and set him to stand guard. Parvati is generally shown accompanying Siva. Certain religious texts known as TANTRAS take the form of a dialogue between Parvati and Siva ( see T ANTRISM ). Passover One of the most widely observed J EWISH FESTIVALS . The Hebrew name for Passover is Pesach. Passover is celebrated from the 15th to the 23rd of the Jewish month of Nisan (in Israel, to the 22nd). This period occurs in late March or April. Because the Jewish calendar is partly lunar, Pass over does not occur on any fixed date in the Grego rian calendar used in North America and Europe. Passover combines two ancient festivals. One was the SACRIFICE of a lamb. This RITUAL was discon tinued when the J ERUSALEM Temple was destroyed in 70 C . E . The other was the feast of unleavened bread. At its most ancient, this feast seems to have been a spring harvest festival. In celebrating it, the inhabitants of ancient Canaan disposed of the previous year’s grain products and used only grain from the new harvest. The products disposed of included the fermenting agent used in baking, something like the starter used to make sourdough bread. For about a week, they ate unraised or unleavened bread, because it took that long for the starter made from the new grain to ferment. Passover also has roots in the early history of the Jewish people. It recalls the E XODUS from Egypt under M OSES . This is the freeing of the children of Israel who were living in Egypt as slaves. The name “passover” derives from an event recorded in Exodus 12. There it is said that G OD visited the Egyptians with one final plague to convince the king of Egypt to release the children of Israel from slavery. First he instructed the children of Israel to smear their doors with the blood of a sacrificed lamb. Then he sent the ANGEL of death to kill the first-born sons of the Egyptians. The angel is said to have “passed over” houses of the children of Israel, whose doors had been smeared with blood.

The reading of the Haggadah takes place at a Passover seder, like the one in the background of this picture. The Haggadah read here has been written completely in Hebrew, although many are written in both Hebrew and English. (Ya’acov Sa’ar, Government Press Office, Israel)

He killed only the first-born sons in the unmarked houses of the Egyptians. The first two and the last two days of Pass over are especially sacred for traditional Jews. On those days one is not allowed to work. (In Israel work is not allowed only on the first and the last day of Passover.) Jews observe the central ritual of Passover on the first two nights, generally at home with family members. This ritual is known as a seder, from the Hebrew word for “order.” The seder “haggadah” or story recounts the events of the exodus. One of its best known moments comes